Toyota increasingly confident on its outlook after record sales
TOYOTA Motor raised its operating profit forecast for the fiscal year after posting record quarterly earnings thanks to robust global vehicle demand and improving supply chains. The Japanese carmaker will buy back as much as 0.44 per cent of shares for 100 billion yen (S$905.4 million), it said.
Operating profit should reach 4.5 trillion yen, up from prior guidance for three trillion yen, the company said on Wednesday (Nov 1). For the three months till September, the figure was a record 1.44 trillion yen, exceeding analysts’ average estimate of 1.1 trillion yen. Net sales rose 24 per cent to 11.4 trillion yen.
Toyota rose as much as 6.2 per cent immediately after the results on Wednesday. Before the release, the stock had climbed about 50 per cent this year, the fifth-best performer on a Bloomberg Intelligence index of global automakers. China’s Li Auto and Tesla are the top two, having both advanced more than 60 per cent.
The Toyota group sold an unprecedented 5.6 million vehicles in April-September, putting it on track for its 11.4 million-unit goal for the fiscal year and remaining the world’s biggest carmaker. Demand for its hybrid and fuel-burning powertrains persists, even as BYD, Tesla and others take the lead in the shift to electric.
The company has stepped up efforts on electric vehicles (EVs), saying Tuesday it is investing another US$8 billion in a plant in North Carolina that will make batteries for fully electric and plug-in hybrid models.
Last month, it announced plans to make solid-state batteries for EVs with Idemitsu Kosan, an oil refiner and petrochemicals company. The partnership will focus on developing technology that could improve battery output and charging time, and help establish a supply chain for mass production.
When Koji Sato was appointed as Toyota’s chief executive officer earlier this year, he pledged to sell 1.5 million battery EVs annually by 2026, and 3.5 million by 2030. Last week at the Japan Mobility Show, he unveiled a pair of concept cars as a teaser for the EV line-up Toyota promised to roll out in 2026.
While Toyota has said it will sell 200,000 battery EVs this fiscal year, it only got to 58,984 in the first half that ended September, mostly outside Japan. BLOOMBERG
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