ct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest automaker, is “grasping for salvation” as it predicts a second straight annual loss, said President Akio Toyoda.
“The salvation for the company isn’t me,” Toyoda, the grandson of the carmaker’s founder, said today. “We have to listen to our customers and make better cars.” Toyoda, 53, became president in June.
The automaker is one step away from “capitulation to irrelevance or death,” Toyoda said in a speech to journalists, citing a study of how companies fail. Toyota has forecast a record loss of 450 billion yen ($5 billion) in the year ending March after the worldwide recession pummeled car demand.
Toyota has gone through the phases of “hubris born of success,” “undisciplined pursuit of more” and “denial of risk and peril,” according to Toyoda, who cited Jim Collins, the author of “How the Mighty Fail.”
The company will sell about 7.3 million vehicles this year, Toyoda said, compared with 8.97 million in 2008. Toyota’s sales have plunged 28 percent in the first nine months of this year in the U.S., traditionally its most profitable market. The yen’s 7.4 percent gain against the dollar in the third quarter is also eroding earnings from exports.
“The yen is at a very severe level and just by increasing sales won’t make Toyota profitable,” Toyoda said.
Toyota shares fell 3.7 percent to 3,380 yen at the close of trading in Tokyo.
PRETTY SOON WE MIGHT ALL BE GRASPING FOR SALVATION. |
