Toyota predicts 22 per cent sales slump

Toyota Motor Corporation announced its financial results for Japanese Financial Year 2019-20 today, May 12 2020, and according to the company’s executive team, things weren’t as bad as they’re going to be.

The company saw a drop of 18,372 units compared to the previous fiscal year, to a tally of 8,958,423 vehicles sold globally. The company reported 1.0 per cent drop on net revenues for the period, too.

But for the current, COVID-19 affected 2020-2021 fiscal year, the company has predicted a volume drop of 21.9 per cent in sales volumes, with an expected 7,000,000 units to be sold over the period April 1 2020 to March 31 2021.

Toyota chief financial officer, Kenta Kon, admitted to media in an online press conference that the company is struggling to forecast the situation over the current fiscal year.

“It is difficult to foresee the future, and the situation,” said Mr Kon. “With the COVID-19 impact, we have seen a drop in volume, and we have seen a drop in revenue and also profit.

“This is an opportunity to review any areas that need reviewing. What we need to stop, what we need to change, but what we need to continue to do… investments for the future, and this is all reflected in our forecast,” said Mr Kon.

“It is going to be very difficult to foresee the sales volume and also the financial results. It is very difficult to see, it is very invisible,” said Mr Kon, but he also stated that the company expects “sales will recover to 2019 levels by year end of next year”.

Mr Kon said that the 2019-20 result was bolstered by a broad adoption of hybrid models in key markets around the world. While Australia wasn’t specifically called out, the hybrid success story in Australia is well documented.

“Those new models have been accepted by our customers in a positive way, I think that is part of the reason [for our strong result],” he said.


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