By Anna Mukai, Masatsugu Horie and Yuki Hagiwara - Nov 8, 2011 1:12 PM GMT+0700
Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), Asia’s biggest carmaker, scrapped its profit forecast after Thailand’s worst floods in almost 70 years and the appreciating yen hampered the company’s ability to recover from Japan’s record earthquake.
The company needs more time to assess the financial toll from the Thai floods, the Toyota city, Japan-based company said in a statement today. Profit fell 19 percent to 80.4 billion yen in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with the 103.5 billion yen average of seven analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The Thai floods floods have halted production at Toyota’s Southeast Asian production base, disrupting parts shipments and prompting the company to cancel plans to run factories overtime in North America. That’s allowed General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG (VOW) and Hyundai Motor Corp. to gain market share in the U.S., while the yen’s gains erode the value of Toyota’s exports.
“Toyota needs to do change the way they’ve been doing things for a long time,” said Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW. “The Thai floods showed that their production capacity may be too concentrated. They may have to think about dispersing production to developing countries.”
The Camry-sedan maker, which follows Honda in reporting second-quarter results that missed analyst estimates, fell 1.7 percent to 2,503 yen at the close of trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, before results were disclosed. The stock has fallen 22 percent this year, underperforming Nissan Motor Co. and outperforming Honda.
To contact the reporters on this story: Anna Mukai in Tokyo at amukai1@bloomberg.net; Masatsugu Horie in Osaka at mhorie3@bloomberg.net; Yuki Hagiwara in Tokyo at yhagiwara1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
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