TOKYO – Toyota Motor on Wednesday revised its full-year net revenue forecast through March to 1.9 trillion yen ($ 18.1 billion), up 33.8% from its last forecast in the year. November and down 6.7% from the previous year., as the Japanese car giant expands its strong sales trend following COVID-19 despite the industry being shaken by a semiconductor shortage.
Toyota expects sales revenue to reach 26.5 trillion yen, up 1.9% from the previous forecast, as new models launched earlier this fiscal year boost sales, in particular in China and the USA
The company also said the group expects to sell 9.73 million vehicles through March, up 310,000 units from the November forecast.
While Toyota acknowledged that the chip peel casts uncertainty over its appearance, the company has denied that the case would delay production in the short term, unlike Honda Motor or Nissan Motor.
“We’re also facing the global crunch, but that doesn’t mean we’re reducing productivity,” Kenta Kon, Toyota’s chief financial officer, said at an online employment conference Wednesday.
“It’s still a risk, so we monitor the situation by communicating on a daily or weekly basis with not only suppliers but also with chip manufacturers,” he said. adds that the clutch could be settled earlier than this summer.
Toyota CFO Kenta Kon will speak at an online press conference on Wednesday.
Kon said there are a number of factors that help the company handle chip crushing. Not only did Toyota hold enough semifinal investments for one to four months of production, but even in normal times it had frequent communication as well.suppliers, to which it discloses production plans for up to three years.
“Our procurement department held telephone conferences with suppliers approximately 10 times a day to discuss the latest situation,” Kon said.
Many suppliers “say Toyota orders are secure, and this has become the baseline of our relationship with suppliers even in difficult times,” Kon said. The company’s system from the global financial crisis of 2008, when its supply chain was disrupted, to check for future production risks through multiple tiers of suppliers also serves well , he said.
Their peers are getting a burden with the recent chip crush even when they come out of the turmoil caused by the pandemic.
Honda announced Tuesday that car sales for this fiscal year are expected to fall by about 100,000 units from what it had expected in November, when it increased its forecast. Nissan also said the same day that it forecasts lower revenue for this fiscal year.
Kon believed that chip prices could “moderately rise” due to increased demand from non-mobile businesses. While many consumer electronics use different types of chips, he said, “it depends on communication whether chips are distributed to us.”
Toyota unit sales have exceeded last year’s levels since September, spurred by economic reversals. Its North American plants resumed operations ahead of their US competitors, in response to growing consumer demand. In China, their monthly sales have risen above the previous year’s levels since April, and had higher sales in January, led by models including the Corolla and RAV4.
The company, which posted an increase in operating income in all global regions for the fourth October-December, plans to extend this recovery to growth in the next fiscal year beginning from April, as they plan to produce 9.2 million units for January-December 2021, Nikkei has learned.