Toyota Maintains Black Ink in Last Quarter

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

An ongoing pandemic and serious North American sales hit weren’t enough to bring Toyota to a loss in the quarter ending June 30th.

The automaker posted its weakest fiscal first-quarter return in nearly a decade, but last quarter’s operating profit, despite plunging 98 percent on a year-over-year basis, still came out in positive territory. While the road ahead is rocky and paved with uncertainty, Toyota says it was surprised as how quickly it bounced back.

Reporting an operating profit of $132 million, Toyota’s revenues declined 40.4 percent in the quarter just ended. You’d have to go back to 2011, and the wake of Japan’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami, to find a Q1 with a balance sheet as weak as this one.

All told, the automaker’s salves were halved in Q1, with North American sales only 69 percent of normal. In the U.S., combined Toyota and Lexus sales fell 34.6 percent. This showing was actually better than Toyota predicted.

The same goes for its financial results, as the general expectation among analysts was a quarterly loss. Other major automakers dipped into the red last quarter.

“The pace of recovery in a number of regions has been faster than we had initially forecast,” a Toyota spokesman told Reuters.

“But the virus situation continues to place many uncertainties on the business outlook … and we see a possibility that our forecast could change.”

[Image: Toyota]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Lorenzo Lorenzo on Aug 06, 2020

    This is the clear sign that Toyota is the GM of the 21st century. In the old days, GM could be counted on to still make a profit in the deepest recessions. Now only Toyota can do that. Now they have to stay clear of the GM mistakes of the last 40 years.

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    • PrincipalDan PrincipalDan on Aug 07, 2020

      @tomLU86 Give me a Camry XSE V6 (sorry TRD model isn't available with the features I want), Avalon TRD, Supra, or Land Cruiser. But the rest of Toyota's lineup puts me to sleep.

  • Pveezy Pveezy on Aug 11, 2020

    I was hoping that this supposed economic disaster we are living through would be a good time (like 2009) to replace my 2015 Camry with a new one... but it really is a different story. Talking to some Toyota sales people I know, apparently as soon as they were allowed to open their doors again the cars were flying off the lot. Demand coupled with the factory shutdowns slowing inventory mean this really isn’t a particularly good time to buy one. Maybe even worse than most summers. I’ve been driving past a few Toyota dealers and their lots are basically empty of new inventory.

  • Pveezy Pveezy on Aug 11, 2020

    I was hoping that this supposed economic disaster we are living through would be a good time (like 2009) to replace my 2015 Camry with a new one... but it really is a different story. Talking to some Toyota sales people I know, apparently as soon as they were allowed to open their doors again the cars were flying off the lot. Demand coupled with the factory shutdowns slowing inventory mean this really isn’t a particularly good time to buy one. Maybe even worse than most summers. I’ve been driving past a few Toyota dealers and their lots are basically empty of new inventory.

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