730 billion yen down 64 percent from last year
Toyota expects sales to recover by early 2021
While Toyota has, like most manufacturers, seen a big drop in business from the coronavirus pandemic, the company still expects to post a profit of more than CAD $9 billion with sales recovering to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year and return to growth in early 2021.
That net profit forecast of ¥730 billion (CAD 9.1B) is an impressive one, but it’s still down 64 percent from company profits last fiscal year of CAD 25.2B. In the automaker’s first quarter of the fiscal year, starting April 1, the automaker sold 1.12 million vehicles globally, excluding joint ventures in China. That’s half of the 2.31 million sold in the same period of 2020, with the drop similar in every region reported.
But the pace of the recovery worldwide is happening more quickly than expected. Toyota has already added 200,000 vehicle sales to fiscal year 2021 sales projections, and is now expecting to hit 7.2 million instead of 7 million, down from 9 million in 2020.
As far as Toyota and Lexus sales specifically, Toyota now believes that sales will hit 85 percent of 2019 levels from July through September of 2020, 95 percent from October through December, and then rise to 105 percent in the first quarter of 2021.
With other automakers expecting major losses, including close to $8 billion in the case of Nissan, and those expecting a profit suggesting much smaller than normal numbers, Toyota appears to be in a good position to weather the downturn.
