Yuri Kageyama Tokyo
TOYOTA’S quarterly profit tripled, driven by a recovery from natural disasters, and the company raised its full-year earnings forecast yesterday despite a sales slump in China.
Toyota, on track to regain the crown of world’s number one carmaker this year, reported a July-September net profit of ¥257.9 billion (R28bn) compared with an ¥80.4bn profit a year earlier. The result was better than the ¥238bn quarterly profit forecast by analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Japan’s top carmaker raised its profit forecast for the full fiscal year through to March 2013 to ¥780bn from ¥760bn.
It had a profit of ¥283.5bn the previous fiscal year when Toyota’s car production was hammered by the tsunami disaster in north-eastern Japan and flooding in Thailand.
The company’s optimism comes despite a sales plunge in China, where a territorial dispute over tiny islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China has set off protests and a boycott of Japanese cars in recent months. – Sapa-AP