Toyota Q4 operating profit down 52 per cent, production woes cloud outlook

TOKYO: Toyota Motor Corp posted a 52 percent fall in quarterly operating profit on Wednesday and gave no annual forecasts, as expected, as it struggles to measure the scope of the disruption to production after the March 11 earthquake.

The world's biggest automaker is facing another tough year as a severe shortage of parts caused by Japan's biggest earthquake on record hammers production just as it was putting its recall woes behind it.

President Akio Toyoda said Wednesday the automaker should see a pick-up in output from June to 70 percent of prequake plans, earlier than expected on April 22 when it forecast a return to full production by November or December from less than half of planned volumes now. It did not specify how fast it would get there.

On Tuesday Toyota denied a Nikkei newspaper report on Tuesday that normal production would come two to three months earlier than planned.

The massive hit to production will almost certainly mean Toyota will fall behind General Motors Co and possibly Volkswagen AG to rank third in global vehicle sales this year.

With inventory tight and supplies short for popular models such as the Prius hybrid, Toyota is losing consumers to rivals such as South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co, which has been nipping at its heels for the past several years.
Toyota said on Wednesday its January-March operating profit was 46.1 billion yen ($570 million) , compared with an average estimate of 94.6 billion yen from 17 analysts who revised their numbers after the quake, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Fourth-quarter net profit, which includes earnings made in China, fell 77 percent to 25.4 billion yen.

For the business year to March 2012, analysts forecast an average operating profit of 307.5 billion yen ($3.83 billion), down 34 percent from 468 billion yen last year. Uncertainties over the broken supply chain have yielded a wide range, from a loss of 25 billion yen to a profit of 846 billion yen.

Analysts say the disruption is a temporary one caused by the shortage of supply, not demand, and that Japanese automakers should reverse the trend next business year.

Toyota's shares have led a fall in Japanese auto stocks since the disaster, losing 11 percent compared with 9.9 percent at Honda and 5.8 percent at Nissan as of Tuesday's close.