Even with supply chain problems, Toyota managed to lift its quarterly profits.
For the July through September period, Japan’s largest automaker still pulled out a net income of 626.6 billion yen ($5.61 billion). That was a record for its second fiscal quarter, as their financial year runs through March 2022, and a 33% improvement over this period in 2020, when automakers grappled with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Toyota still managed to pull that off, despite suffering interruptions in their supply chain and hampered production due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage. The company’s CFO, Kenta Kon, put the results down to cost control brought about by limited inventory and curbing incentives, as well as favorable currency exchange rates for the Japanese yen. In November, Toyota still expects a lower production figure between 850,000 and 900,000 vehicles globally, against earlier plans set in August to produce over a million vehicles.
“Production volume declined globally, but our suppliers, plants and dealers made great efforts to supply as many cars as possible,” said Kon. Over time, though, “The [supply chain] risk is becoming significantly smaller.” From December onward, the company’s outlook was more optimistic about a recovery, according to an Automotive News report. However, Kon still mentioned that it was too soon to rule out any more interruptions as the industry tries to move back toward normal production.
On the whole, Toyota was able to meet the chip shortage better than others, despite slower sales. In two months’ time, we’ll have to see how the brand’s quarterly sales shift as inventory levels (hopefully) start to recover.
The automaker was also at this year’s SEMA show — check out some of their builds below:
