Toyota Profits Slip In 1Q

TOKYO August 5, 2003; Dow Jones News Service reported that Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday its fiscal first-quarter group net profit fell 9.7% because model changes at its North American plants and currency fluctuations cut into profits.

The world's third-largest auto maker reported group net profit of 222.59 billion yen ($1.85 billion) for the April-to-June quarter, compared with 246.37 billion yen in the year-earlier period.

The company's group sales rose 5.6% to 4.093 trillion yen from 3.878 trillion yen, while group operating profit dropped 13% to 340.77 billion yen from 392.57 billion yen.

Toyota Motor started reporting its earnings results under U.S. accounting standards from this fiscal year.

Last week, Toyota became the only Japanese company holding Moody's Investors Service's (News - Websites) triple-A long-term credit rating, the agency's top score for debt quality.

Moody's said it upgraded its rating on Japan's largest auto maker from double- A-one because of Toyota's conservative financial-management strategy, its successful cost cuts, the company's high-quality and diverse product lines and the growing global reach of its business.

Toyota's market capitalization, at 10.974 trillion yen as of Friday, was the second-largest in Japan's stock market behind NTT DoCoMo, and it posted the biggest consolidated pretax profit in Japanese history in the fiscal year that ended in March.

Despite the weakness of the Japanese market, Toyota increased its domestic automobile sales by 9.9% on year to 543,000 units during the three-month period. As overseas demand was also robust, Toyota's overall global auto sales rose 8.2% to 1.594 million units, it said.

Backed by strong sales overseas and a weaker-than expected yen, Toyota lifted its parent earnings estimates for the first half ending Sept. 30.

For the first six-month period, Toyota now expects to post a parent pretax profit of 430 billion yen, up from a 330 billion yen profit projected earlier. The company also raised its parent sales outlook to 4.200 trillion yen from 4.100 trillion yen.

In the April-September period a year ago, Toyota posted a parent pretax profit of 481.7 billion yen on sales of 4.205 trillion yen.

The company didn't release any group earnings estimates.

Speaking at a news conference, a company official said the Toyota group aims to achieve world-wide retail sales of more than 6.5 million vehicles this year through March 2004, up from 6.3 million units a year ago.