After the March 11 earthquakes devastated Japan, Toyota faced a mountain of difficulties getting its plants and suppliers restarted. Now we know how difficult it was.
Toyota reported a loss of $1.4 billion (108 billion yen) today in part because of recovery efforts. A heightened worldwide marketing effort ate up $3.6 billion (280 billion yen), and currency fluctuations from a strengthened yen versus a weaker dollar accounted for an additional $650 million (50 billion yen) loss.
“In Japan and North America where the effects of the earthquake were particularly serious, vehicle sales declined substantially. In the Asia region, despite the impact of the earthquake, we were able to maintain a similar level of vehicle sales as the previous year in countries led by Indonesia,” said Toyota’s Senior Managing Officer Takahiko Ijichi in a statement.
Over the last quarter, which ended in June, Toyota sold around half as many cars in North America as it had during the same quarter in 2010, largely because of hampered production. Sales dropped off from 526,000 cars in 2010 to just 276,000 during the time period from April through June. Worldwide, Toyota sold 1.2 million vehicles, a 599,000-unit year-over-year decrease.
Although Toyota lost money worldwide, the Japanese automaker managed to make $425 million (32.8 billion yen) in North America last quarter, still a profit but less than half of what it had made the year earlier.
Source: Toyota
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