This is to report trends in Toyota Motor Corporation's sales and earnings, recovering on a full scale, mainly based on the CY2012 results forecast and CY2013 plans for vehicle sales and production released in December 2012 and the financial results for the April-September FY2012 period and a full fiscal year results forecast released in November 2012.

 Due to the economic downturn after Lehman's fall, Toyota's unit sales plunged in 2008 and 2009, and concurrently the yen had been appreciating. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Thai flooding in 2011 also slowed down sales and earnings. In CY2012, however, the Group's global unit sales totaled 9.7 million units, up 1.75 million units. Toyota Group seems to be back to the global No. 1 in vehicle unit sales, over General Motors and Volkswagen AG. CY2013 global unit sales target is 9.91 million units.

 Toyota expects its FY2012 consolidated operating income to be almost tripled to 1.05 trillion yen from 355.6 billion yen of FY2011, according to its announcement in November 2012. It is mainly because Toyota's unconsolidated operating deficit, for its operations in Japan including exports, which resulted in over 400 billion yen in FY 2010 and FY2011, is predicted as of November 2012 to diminish to 20 billion yen. By region, Toyota anticipates a fall in sales in China and Europe, which should be supplemented by growth in North America and Southeast Asia. The consolidated global unit sales in the October 2012-March 2013 period, however, is forecast to fall by 2.1% y/y.

 Yen to U.S. dollar rate in the April-September FY2012 period for Toyota's financial results was 79 yen and its October-March period forecasts are based on the exchange rate of 78 yen to the dollar. If weak yen against dollar continues as in late December, further profit expansion can be predicted.

 Although Toyota's earnings have largely been recovering as explained above, it plans to seek for further efficiency when making capital expenditure decisions so that it should flexibly respond to demand fluctuations. Especially for the coming three years, it will not construct new plants as a rule, except for already decided Thailand and Indonesia plants, limit investment in production expansion to existing plants, keep fixed costs down to lower the break-even point, according to media reports in January 2013.

Reference:
Toyota's earnings improvement plans for development, procurement and production (Jun. 12, 2012)