Toyota’s fourth-quarter profit falls 77%, lowest in six quarters

May 11, 2011May 27, 2012 Omar Rana

Toyota Motor Corp., which built 45 percent of its cars in Japan last fiscal year, said that fourth-quarter profit fell a whopping 77 percent to the lowest in six quarters after Japan’s record earthquake disrupted production and crimped domestic sales.

Toyota reported net income of 25.4 billion yen ($314 million) for the three months ended March 31. Sales fell 12 percent to 4.64 trillion yen, Toyota said.

“We finished the fiscal year to March 31, 2011 with improved operating income of 468.2 billion yen as a result of our efforts on marketing and cost reduction despite a negative impact of around 100 billion yen from the Great East Japan Earthquake,” said TMC President Akio Toyoda. “Our business environment continued to be challenging due to Yen appreciation among others. Nevertheless, we managed to improve our profit structure even further thanks to the support from all our stakeholders, in particular our customers.”

The output disruptions in Japan may cause Toyota to fall behind General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG in global sales this year.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Toyota, Bloomberg