Top-selling automaker Toyota Motor Corp yesterday said that its full-year net profit beat expectations, and projected better sales and revenue for the year ahead as supply chain disruptions ease.
The Japanese firm reported ￥2.45 trillion (US$18.12 billion) in net profit for the fiscal year ended March, down 14 percent from a year earlier, but better than its projections of ￥2.36 trillion.
It said it expects full-year net profit to increase 5 percent for this fiscal year to ￥2.58 trillion on “improvements in semiconductor supply and the efforts of production sites.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
The auto titan retained its top-selling crown for the third year in a row last year, but like much of the industry, has battled COVID-19 pandemic headwinds and the effects of a global chip shortage.
“In a word, it was a very tough year for us to produce and deliver vehicles to our customers,” Toyota CEO Koji Sato told reporters.
The company cited everything from natural disasters to the chip crisis for production constraints over the past fiscal year and acknowledged “soaring materials prices” had weighed on the bottom line.
It said it managed to beat its forecast in part due to foreign exchange rates, but also thanks to the efforts of production sites and dealers, which helped increase year-on-year sales volume across all Toyota’s regions.
Toyota sold more than 10.5 million vehicles worldwide in the past fiscal year, including those made by its subsidiaries, such as Hino Motors Ltd and Daihatsu Motor Co, and is projecting a massive jump to 11.4 million for this fiscal year.
“We expect growth in all regions,” Toyota chief financial officer Yoichi Miyazaki said. “For the immediate term, it is not all normal yet, but our ability to manage semiconductor [supply] has significantly improved.”
This year Toyota unveiled a surprise shake-up of its leadership, replacing Akio Toyoda, whose grandfather founded the company, with 53-year-old Sato as CEO.
Sato has vowed to “accelerate” the development of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) through a “new approach,” including the invention of “next-generation” Lexus vehicles by 2026.
Toyota has set a target of boosting annual EV sales to 1.5 million units by 2026 — a huge jump from just more than 20,000 last year.
However, the delayed focus on EVs by Toyota and other Japanese automakers has left them “unable to assert their presence at all” in the burgeoning market of China, Takada said.
China is one of the world’s largest auto markets, with about 30 million vehicles sold annually, and it is pivoting rapidly to EVs.
That means the question of how Japanese automakers, including Toyota, would “retake their competitive lead in China” is of “paramount importance,” Takada said.
Sato said that Toyota is committed to China’s EV market, while insisting hybrid demand would remain strong.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
RSS