Toyota Tracking To Post First-Ever Annual Loss
By Michelle Krebs December 19, 2008By Bill Visnic
Japan's financial sector is buzzing with the prospect Toyota Motor Corp., one of the nation's most successful and powerful corporate entities, is likely to record it's first-ever full-year operating loss, reports Japan's Nikkei English-language business newspaper.
Toyota has not recorded an annual operating loss since it began publicly reporting its earnings in 1940, and the Nikkei says fallout from World War II led to Toyota's only pre-tax loss -- in 1949.
The vaunted Japanese company's heady profit-making run appears over, thanks to cratering vehicle sales in many global regions, but most seriously in the U.S. market, where the company has been absorbing double-digit sales declines for months. The currency-exchange effects of a rising yen also have chopped into Toyota's revenues.
Toyota has been cutting production in many of its U.S. assembly plants, and last week conceded it will be in no hurry to complete its new plant in Blue Springs, Mississippi, that was originally slated to produce the Highlander crossover. Toyota then shifted gears to say it would build the next generation of its preeminent hybrid-electric vehicle, the Prius, at the Greenfield, Mississippi, site. But with Prius sales nosediving in the U.S.-- down a titanic 48.3 percent last month and 9.9 percent for the first 11 months -- Toyota said completion of the Blue Springs plant is not a priority.
Even Toyota's blue-chip credit rating may be in for a bit of tarnish. Standard & Poor's signaled earlier this week it may consider a downgrade for the company.
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What a shame - Toyota never has done well in Europe, with around 5% of the market. GM (through Opel) and Ford are still market leaders (along with VW). So Toyota only does well in their protected homeland (Japan) and in the US but they have made mis-stpes like the gas guzzling, oversized Tundra and several of their SUV offerings.
Well to say Toyota made mis-steps with their truck/SUV lineup is extremely damning to US manufactures. Go list the 2008 and 2009 models for Ford/GM/Chryslers and compute the truck to car ratio. Then compare do the same for Honda and Toyota.
It is clear everyone has made up their minds on these issues, bailout, US vs foreign, Hyrbid, Diesel, Whether any of this was predictable, whether this is all 100% consumer demand driven, whether the Detroit 3 tried to manage consumers vs respond to demand etc. It;s like the last Presidential election. You could put a mop up there with the right party affiliation and people will chant "We want MOP".
Toyota will be fine in the end, that is my prediction.
George - yes Toyota will be fine. My point was that some people think Toyota is a different type of car company and can do no wrong. But they make mis-steps, they make big polluting cars/trucks etc. All I want is consistency , not domestic = bad and foreign = good.
Oh they make mistakes. They had a HUGE number of recalls just last year or the year before while Ford's quality greatly improved. They just make a lot less mistakes and they don't drop the ball on the HUGE decisions in my opinion.
And again, I have been testing GM cars. I wish I could afford the Enclave.
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