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Toyota's 1H net profit accelerates 12 pct to 10.35 bln USD

Xinhua, November 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday that its group net profit had soared to record levels in the first half of fiscal 2015, owing to cost-cutting initiatives and brisk sales in its North American markets offsetting slumping demand in Japan.

The Aichi Prefecture-based automaker said that its group net profit in the recording period totaled a record 1.26 trillion yen (about 10.35 billion U.S. dollars), a rise of 12 percent on year, while its operating profit in the same period came to 1.59 trillion yen, also a new record for the company, on sales of 14.09 trillion yen.

Japan's leading automaker opted to maintain its full-year net profit forecast of 2.25 trillion yen, a rise of 3.5 percent on year and an operating profit of 2.8 trillion, an increase of 1.8 percent.

The maker of the popular Corolla sedan and ubiquitous Prius hybrid said however its global car sales had dropped in the April to September period by just less than 200,000 vehicles to 4.28 million units sold worldwide.

While sales in Japan slumped, owing to falling demand triggered by last April's sales tax hike and compounded by a new tax on ownership of minivehicles, Toyota said that conversely sales in its North American markets rose, due to the global oil glut encouraging buying, due to cheaper running costs.

The global behemoth also announced that, while it was scaling back on plans to produce new factories in the foreseeable future, with an aim at boosting productivity at its existing plants, and has been setting about reducing production costs by overhauling its manufacturing methods, it had lowered its sales outlook.

Toyota reduced its annual sales outlook to 27.5 trillion yen, up 1.0 percent from a year earlier, compared with previous projections of 27.8 trillion yen and its global sales target for the year was cut to 10 million vehicles, a 150,00 unit drop, due to the likelihood of continued lackluster demand in Japan.

The automaker's second-quarter net profit, meanwhile, increased 13.5 percent on year, due to a comparatively weak yen compensating for a slowdown in sales in Japan and Southeast Asia, to 611.7 billion yen from 539.0 billion yen booked a year earlier.

Revenue for the quarter came in at 7.1 trillion yen, a rise of 8.4 percent on year, Toyota said. Enditem