Nov 08 2013

Toyota raised its net profit forecast for the year to 1.67 trillion yen ($17.9 billion), up from 1.48 trillion yen. The car maker - again the world's largest by number of vehicles sold - said it expected net sales of 25 trillion yen and operating income of 2.2 trillion yen. If Toyota meets its forecast, it will be almost back to its best year on record, in 2008, when it earned 1.72 trillion yen in net profit on sales of 26 trillion yen

Toyota Motor was at giddy heights in 2008. Profits soared to a record high. The Japanese company knocked General Motors off its perch as the world's largest car maker.
Then an extraordinary run of bad news - the global economic crisis, a huge recall scandal and a devastating earthquake and tsunami - led Toyota's chief executive, Akio Toyoda, to declare the company a step away from irrelevance.

For the three months to September 30, sales grew 16 per cent to 6.28 trillion yen.
Nobuyori Kodaira, an executive vice-president, attributed the strong results to a weaker yen, which increases the value of the company's earnings overseas. He also credited the change in fortune to a concerted undertaking to reduce costs, both within Toyota and at its suppliers.
''Of course, the weakening of the yen worked in our favour,'' he said. ''But the effort we and our partners put into driving down costs also led to this turnaround.''

After five difficult years, Toyota is picking up where it left off. It said this week that net income for the September quarter rose 70 per cent and that it expected profit to rebound to near-record highs for its full financial year, thanks to favourable exchange rates and a more streamlined cost structure.