Toyota Takes 1st Quarter Hit: Giant automaker loses $7.1 billion

Toyota Motor Corporation may have stockpiled a war chest over its 71 years, but a chunk of that treasure has slipped away during the current world auto industry crisis. Reporting its operating results for the first quarter and the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009, the Japanese giant suffered a $7.1 billion first quarter hit and an annual loss of $4.4 billion.

With the company still sound fundamentally, Toyota's president Katsuaki Watanabe laid the declines in both revenues and profits on the moribund world auto market and the sudden appreciation of the yen against the U.S. dollar and the euro. With no immediate relief in sight, Toyota's consolidated financial forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010 is a record $5.5 billion loss.

"It appears to take some more time before the financial markets in the U.S. and Europe normalize," said Watanabe, "and the global economy recovers. However, in the 2010 fiscal year, we plan to accelerate our profit improvement activities including the expansion of our hybrid vehicle line-up such as the next generation Prius in May and the Lexus HS250h in July. All totaled, we plan to launch four hybrid models in Japan and three models overseas within this fiscal year."

Watanabe said that Toyota will further accelerate commercialization of next-generation technologies in the areas of environment, energy and safety including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, next-generation batteries, bio fuels and fuel cell vehicles.

The company continues to trim manufacturing costs and has laid off thousands of temporary workers worldwide. Construction of a new plant in Mississippi had been postponed indefinitely.