Toyota announced this Wednesday a net profit of 6,800 million dollars between October and December, improving expectations despite the global lack of chips and other components that weighed down production.
The Japanese auto giant, which remained the top vehicle seller in 2021, posted a profit of 791.7 billion yen ($6.8 billion) in the quarter, beating a forecast of 619.2 billion by Bloomberg experts.
Even so, Toyota It maintains its growth forecast for the whole of the fiscal year, which in Japan ends in March, but slightly lowered its sales target.
In the first nine months of the fiscal year, the firm obtained a profit of 2.3 trillion yen (20,000 million dollars), improving by 57.8% the results of the same period of 2020.
In the same time, sales grew 19.2% to a value of 23.26 billion yen ($201 billion).
“Despite negative factors such as supply strains due to semiconductor shortages and the spread of Covid-19, as well as rising raw material costs, we posted higher sales and profits in the first nine months of the fiscal year” , He said Toyota it’s a statement.
The firm cites the pandemic and chip shortages as reasons for slightly lowering its production forecast from 9 million to 8.5 million units. In November it had already lowered it from 9.3 million.
Still, they maintain their annual profit estimate at 2.49 trillion yen ($21.6 billion) because of the devaluation of the yen.
Toyota remained the leader in the automobile market in 2021, with 10.5 million vehicles sold (+10% year-on-year), and increased its margin over the German volkswagenwith 8.9 million vehicles (-4.5%).