RobJohnson
12-22-2008, 09:14 AM
NAGOYA, Japan — Toyota Motor Corp. slashed its earnings forecast today, projecting that it would report its first annual operating loss for the fiscal year through March — its first such loss since it began reporting results in 1941.
Battered by falling demand from consumers around the world and a surging yen, Toyota and other Japanese automakers have been reducing earnings outlooks and cutting workers.
"The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years," President Katsuaki Watanabe said at the company's Nagoya office. The drop in vehicle sales over the last month was "far faster, wider and deeper than expected."
Toyota forecast an operating loss of $1.66 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2009. Toyota has never reported an operating loss since it began disclosing such figures in 1941. But it did have an operating loss in unofficial, internal calculations for the year ending March 1938, a year after the company was founded
1.66 Billion Loss (http://www.freep.com/article/20081222/BUSINESS01/81222005/1014)
Battered by falling demand from consumers around the world and a surging yen, Toyota and other Japanese automakers have been reducing earnings outlooks and cutting workers.
"The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years," President Katsuaki Watanabe said at the company's Nagoya office. The drop in vehicle sales over the last month was "far faster, wider and deeper than expected."
Toyota forecast an operating loss of $1.66 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2009. Toyota has never reported an operating loss since it began disclosing such figures in 1941. But it did have an operating loss in unofficial, internal calculations for the year ending March 1938, a year after the company was founded
1.66 Billion Loss (http://www.freep.com/article/20081222/BUSINESS01/81222005/1014)