Toyota’s mainstay vehicle operations are likely to post their first-ever loss for the fiscal year through March 2009, Japanese media reports said Friday, highlighting the dire conditions faced by global automakers.

The Nikkei, Japan’s top business daily, said Toyota’s standalone operating result will be a loss for the fiscal year ending March 31. It did not cite sources. Kyodo News had a similar report.

The reports said that the Toyota group of companies — including Daihatsu Motor Co., which makes small cars, and truckmaker Hino Motors — will manage to post a profit for the fiscal year through March.

Toyota declined comment on the reports.

Toyota Motor Corp., which makes the popular Camry sedan and Prius gas-electric hybrid, has never reported a full fiscal-year loss since it began disclosing operating profit in 1941.

But Japanese automakers — which had until recently avoided the serious problems of their U.S. rivals — are getting hammered by plunging auto sales in the key U.S. market and elsewhere.

The surging yen, which erodes overseas earnings, have also battered their bottom line. The dollar has fallen to 13-year lows below 90 yen.

Analysts say calculations show that a loss for Toyota alone may be inevitable, given the strong yen and plunging auto sales.

“It looks as though Toyota will fall into red ink for the full year,” said Mamoru Katou, auto analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research. “Things have clearly gotten worse since the earlier outlook of breaking even.”

He noted even Honda Motor Co., which has fewer models, is suffering, and damage to Toyota’s bottom line was unavoidable.

Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe is scheduled to hold a news conference Monday. Usually, the president announces ambitious sales and production goals for the coming year in the annual event.

Grabbing attention in recent years was whether Toyota would dethrone Detroit-based General Motors Corp. as the world’s No. 1 in annual vehicle sales.

But Toyota said Friday it was still undecided whether it will announce such targets this year.

In his annual year-end news conference, Honda President Takeo Fukui said Honda’s worldwide vehicle sales in 2008 are expected to reach 3.77 million units, unchanged from 2007. He did not give a vehicle sales target for 2009 — an unusual move for Honda.

Toyota’s U.S. sales plunged by a third for the year in November, when overall sales fell to their lowest level in more than 26 years.

There is little hope for recovery in the next few months as consumers hold back on big purchases.

Toyota is forecasting a 550-billion yen ($6.2-billion) profit, less than a third of what it racked up the previous fiscal year, on 23 trillion yen ($258.4 billion) sales, down 12.5% percent on the year.

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Source : corism.221616.com

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Toyota Motor Corp. is freezing its plan to build Prius hybrids in the United States as it battles a collapse in global profits by cutting spending.

Toyota’s board reached the decision late today, Japan time, to halt the $1.3 billion project near Tupelo, Miss., “due to the steep decline” in the United States. Toyota has no timetable on resuming construction, spokeswoman Barbara McDaniel said. The plant will build the Prius when the project resumes.

U.S. sales of the market-leading hybrid have softened as gasoline prices declined from their summer peak of more than $4 a gallon. In November, the Prius accounted for 8,660 U.S. sales, down from 16,737 a year earlier.

Total Toyota U.S. sales fell 32 percent in November.

The move reflects the increasing pressure on Toyota’s global profits. Last month, Toyota said it will do everything it can to meet a reduced operating profit forecast of about $6.6 billion for the fiscal year that ends March 31 — less than half of its initial projection.

Options include halving the number of temporary workers it employs in Japan, delaying new factory launches and cutting r&d costs, Toyota said. Reducing salaries and bonus payments for directors also is on the table.

Toyota has more than a dozen factory projects in the pipeline, including plans to expand vehicle capacity by more than 55 percent in China in the next few years, and to build new car plants in India and Brazil. It also has a new joint venture factory for batteries due in early 2010 to power hybrid cars.

“It would be natural to expect a delay in new factories,” said Tairiku Sakaguchi, auto analyst at Japan’s Shinko Securities.

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Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s three biggest automakers, are working to boost funding for U.S. auto loans and leasing to spur sales as the North American vehicle market shrinks, Nikkei English News said today, without citing sources.

Honda, which already has a credit line of more than 900 billion yen ($9.7 billion) for its consolidated operations, is considering increasing that amount to aid American Honda Finance Corp. should market conditions worsen, the report said. Toyota arranged a 30 billion yen loan from seven Japanese banks in October, and Nissan is adding cash at the parent company in Japan to assist its U.S. unit, Nikkei said.

source:Bloomberg

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Nothing so cheers the soul of a hardened businessman as the sight of a competitor on his knees. So you’d expect the spectacle this week of Detroit’s struggling Big Three carmakers begging Congress for $34 billion in loans and lines of credit would be cause to break out the sake in Japanese boardrooms.

After all, Japan’s own big three — Toyota, Honda and Nissan — have battled for decades to surpass once mighty GM, Ford and Chrysler. Now it would appear victory is at hand. Even if lawmakers bail out all three, the U.S. companies will require major restructuring that will leave them smaller and weaker, making it easier for their Asian rivals to gain market share both in the U.S. and globally. (See the 50 worst cars of all time.)

Yet Japan’s automakers are not celebrating. Far from it. They are suffering mightily from the same massive decline in auto sales that is killing Detroit. Moreover, the bankruptcy of one or more of the Big Three could create havoc among parts suppliers that sell to Japan’s carmakers; job losses would send more shock waves through the U.S. economy, deepening the recession in what is by far the largest single market for Japanese cars. “What we’re seeing is the 30-foot tsunami that not even Toyota can cope with,” says Tatsuo Yoshida, executive director and senior analyst at UBS Securities Japan.

While no Japanese automaker is on the brink of bankruptcy, Toyota’s executive vice president Mitsuo Kinoshita calls the sharp contraction of global sales “unprecedented.” Toyota, Honda and Nissan are slashing earnings estimates, firing workers and trimming production. In November, the Japanese auto industry saw its worst month in more than three decades, as domestic sales fell 27.3% compared with the same month last year. Sales of Japanese cars in the U.S. fell more than 30% last month.

Toyota, the industry behemoth, just recorded its seventh consecutive month of declining sales, and the company’s second-quarter net profit plunged nearly 70%. Toyota has cut its earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2009 to $6 billion, which is just one-third the profit it made the previous year. “You are looking at the deepest downturn that Japanese automakers have ever seen,” says Chris Richter, senior research analyst at CLSA, a Hong Kong–based brokerage house. “They’ve faced downturns before, but not downturns in virtually every global market simultaneously. Even Honda Civics and Toyota Priuses aren’t selling well.”

This bleak outlook could get even worse, at least in the short term, if GM, Ford or Chrysler went bust. That’s because of a domino effect that would probably result in the subsequent failures of parts suppliers that also sell to factories operated by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the U.S. Vehicles built on American soil accounted for 63% of Japan’s total U.S. sales in 2007, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. A sudden parts shortage could force companies to shut down some of those assembly lines, generating major losses.

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source : http://www.newcar-network.org

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The Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor is reviewing its investment plan in Thailand, which may prompt the automaker to delay its eco-car project amid the alarming global market slump.

However, Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT) would continue another project, hybrid car production, which is due to begin in the middle of next year, said TMT vice-chairman Ninnart Chirathirapinyo.

”We are reviewing capacity expansion plans and have to set the priority for these projects’ implementation,” Mr Ninnart said yesterday.

”Some projects may be suspended depending on the situation, including eco-car production.

”The hybrid would not be delayed as the model is a response to the current market demand from consumers who prefer fuel-efficient vehicles.”

TMT, Thailand’s biggest carmaker, had planned to invest 4.6 billion baht in the eco-car project to make 100,000 units a year of the small, fuel-efficient cars, half of which would be exported.

The company earlier announced that it would reduce production volume by 20-25% or 40,000 units between December and April next year and cut total 2009 volume from 500,000 to 400,000 units due to weaker demand from abroad.

Mr Ninnart said the global vehicle market was expected to drop from 72 million units this year to 69 million in 2009. The US market alone would see a drop of 16% to 13.5 million units next year.

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Fitch Ratings cut Toyota’s top-notch credit rating on Wednesday, blaming the world’s auto market slump and surging yen — the latest sign that even Japan’s top automaker is suffering from the global slowdown.

Fitch also cited high material costs as another challenge as it lowered its rating on Toyota Motor Corp. two notches to “AA” from “AAA,” with a negative outlook, meaning the rating could be lowered in the next year or two.

The automaker’s shares dropped nearly 5% in Tokyo morning trading.

While Toyota’s Detroit-based rivals scramble to avoid bankruptcy and plead for a bailout from the U.S. government, the Japanese auto maker is grappling with its own mounting problems.

Toyota earlier this month reported a 69% drop in fiscal second-quarter profit and cut its full-year forecast by more than half. Toyota recently announced production cuts in the U.S in response to a steep decline in sales in its largest and most profitable market. The company’s shares are down about 45% from their high for the year.

“In these times, no company is immune,” Toyota spokeswoman Mira Sleilati said Wednesday, responding to news of the downgrade.

“Toyota is suffering severely from the ongoing turmoil in the global automotive sector,” said Tatsuya Mizuno, a Fitch director.
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From : Mag-x Magazine

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Gas prices are relatively low now, but they were incredibly high last summer, and could well revert to those high levels. But the price of compressed natural gas (CNG) remains fairly stable, and there’s a strong, reliable domestic supply of CNG. It just happens to be one of many alternative fuel applications being explored in Toyota’s broad sustainable mobility research and development strategy.

That’s why we built a special concept CNG Camry Hybrid that we’ll display at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Wednesday.

To convert a stock Camry Hybrid to a CNG vehicle, the gasoline fuel system was replaced with a CNG system that includes a pair of CNG tanks installed in the spare-tire well of the vehicle’s trunk. Because it now lacks a spare tire, the CNG Camry Hybrid rolls on runflat tires.

And roll it does. With the proposed CNG equivalent of 8 gallons of gasoline in its tanks, the estimated range of the CNG Camry Hybrid is more than 250 miles. Link that efficiency to the price of CNG and you can see why we’re interested in this – as this is written, CNG is about a dime cheaper, per gallon, than the national average price of regular-grade 87-octane gasoline.

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