Toyota Posts Surprising $242 Million Profit

Ford isn’t the only automaker to display a surprisingly strong performance recently. Toyota Motor Corporation posted a surprise profit this week, and said it would be able to cut its predicted losses for the remainder of the fiscal year in half.

Toyota managed to post an operating profit of 58 billion yen, along with a net profit of nearly ¥21.8 billion ($242 million). Although both figures are down considerably from last year’s numbers, they mark what may be a turnaround for Toyota, which incurred massive losses in the last three fiscal quarters.

After seeing a sales growth in China (vehicle sales jumped 39 percent in the quarter), Toyota is also revising its production forecast yet again. Although it had adjusted its expectations earlier this year to 6.7 million cars, Toyota now feels it is on pace to build and sell nearly 7 million units.

Still, Toyota isn’t exactly in the clear, citing uncertainty in the U.S. market, along with the value of the yen as possible stumbling blocks. The automaker has worked to cut unnecessary costs (deeming its F1 operations as such), and now expects lose ¥350 billion ($3.8 billion) -- not the ¥750 billion ($8.3 billion) originally predicted -- by the end of the fiscal year.

Source: Ward's Auto