Yesterday, the Associated Press revealed that Toyota Motor Co. had revised its fiscal-year profit forecast for 2013, based on continued sales growth, particularly in the U.S.
Toyota said that its October-December profit had increased by 23 per cent to 99.91 billion yen ($1.09 billion U.S.). Aided by that solid performance, the automaker says it’s now expecting a fiscal-year profit of 860 billion yen ($9.3 billion U.S.) up from previous projections of 780 billion yen ($8.5 billion U.S.).
With sales having shown increasing strength through last year, Toyota has also boosted its sales forecast. The company says that through March, it expects to earn 21.8 trillion yen ($237 billion U.S.) based on sales of 8.85 million vehicles worldwide. Making the future appear even brighter for the automaker are recent changes in exchange rates.
The yen is finally started to weaken, due to policies of monetary easing and and aggressive fiscal spending announced by Japan’s new prime minister Shinzo Abe, who took up office in December. In the last few years, the yen has continued to strengthen against the U.S. dollar and other currencies, eroding Japan’s competitiveness and eating into profits of manufacturers based in the Home Islands. In order to help offset the impact of the yen, Japanese automakers have been moving (and/or investing) in more production overseas, particularly in North America and Southeast Asia.
