Toyota Q1 Profits Drop 39%
Toyota is beginning to feel The Big 2.8's pain. The world's largest automaker released their first quarter financial results. No question: they got dinged. While ToMoCo's books are not in the same universe as GM or Ford, the Japanese carmaker's operating profit dropped 39 percent to "only" $3.8b. That's just over half of the $6.2b they showed for the same quarter last year. Toyota Exec VP Mitsuo Kinoshita attributes the losses to a number of factors, including the weak U.S. dollar and the soaring price of raw materials. He's not too concerned over lease residuals and dropping used car prices, though. "With Toyota's traditionally prudent approach in lending, together with its efforts to further strengthen the credit control and collection system, the percentage of credit losses has shown some stability. As for residual values, Toyota will continue to keep a close eye on the used car market and set suitable values in a timely manner." This is the second consecutive quarter their operating profit has dropped. [source: Toyota Press Release]
Click here for First Quarter Operating Results and First Quarter Financial Summary
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Why are they releasing their "Q1" numbers when everyone else is releasing their 2nd quarter results? Typo? Or is this the same type of "restatement" that Gm always gets slammed for?
Only $4 billion in profit! Can you imagine what GM would do to Rick Wagoneer if they "only" had a profit of $4 billion.
if GM made $4b profit then they'd give all their executives a $200 million bonus so in the end they'd reflect a loss still.