Toyota’s sales mark worst drop in eight years

Thursday, December 25, 2008 at 2:12 am

In more bad news for Toyota, Japan’s No 1 automaker said its global vehicle sales plunged 21.8
percent in November, its biggest drop in eight years.

The news comes just days after the company predicted that this fiscal year it would report its first operating loss in 70 years.

Toyota Motor Corp, running neck-and-neck against industry leader General Motors Corp in global vehicle sales, sold 618,000 automobiles in November, down 21.8 percent from last November.

That’s the biggest year-on-year slide since Toyota began tracking comparable data in January 2000. Such declines never reached 20 percent in the past, the company said.

For the January-November period, Toyota sold 8.356 million vehicles around the world. Detroit-based GM has not released such figures.

Japanese automakers, which boast a reputation for fuel-efficient models, had avoided some of the serious problems of their American rivals. But shrinking demand in the US after the financial crisis hit earlier this year has battered their sales and profit.

Toyota said Monday that it expects to report an operating loss of USD 1.66 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2009, its first such annual loss since 1938, the year after the company was founded.

It also lowered its net profit forecast which gives a fuller picture by including income taxes and various other expenses to just USD 555 million for the year through March 2009 a tiny fraction of the 1.7 trillion yen it earned last year.

(With inputs from agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

Toyota’s sales mark worst drop in eight years

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