Quake razes Toyota Q1, yen drags it down further

Tokyo: Toyota Motor reported its first quarterly loss in two years on Tuesday as Japan’s biggest earthquake on record hammered production and the yen’s rise hit profitability on exports. The company raised its annual forecast. [caption id=“attachment_52391” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The company has raised its annual forecast. Toru Hanai/Reuters”]  [/caption] The world’s biggest automaker made an operating loss of 108 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in the April-June quarter, compared to a 211.7 billion yen profit a year earlier. The result was better than the average loss estimate of 190 billion yen in a survey of six analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The maker of the Prius and Camry sedans posted a net profit of 1.2 billion yen compared to a 190.5 billion yen net profit the previous year. Revenue fell 29.4 percent to 3.44 trillion yen. For the full year to March 2012, Toyota raised its forecast for operating profit, which excludes earnings from China, to 450 billion yen. A poll of 20 analysts produced a forecast of 529.7 billion yen. Shares in Toyota are down 1.9 percent in the year-to-date, underperforming a 3.8 percent drop in the benchmark Nikkei average. Reuters