Toyota, which has been criticized for its slow layout of pure electric vehicles, once again responded to the outside world's pessimism with strong financial data.
On May 8, Toyota Motor released its financial report for fiscal year 2023 (April 2023 to March 2024).
The financial report shows that Toyota's sales in fiscal 2023 increased by 21.4% to 45.10 trillion yen; net profit attributable to shareholders increased by 101.7% to 4.94 trillion yen; operating profit, representing the company's main business income, was 5.35 trillion yen, a year-on-year increase of 96.4%, setting a new record high.
At the same time, Toyota became the first Japanese listed company in recorded history to have operating profits exceeding 5 trillion yen.
Toyota's stock price has almost doubled in the past year, leaving its German, American and Japanese rivals far behind.
On May 8, 2024, local time, in Tokyo, Japan, Toyota Motor Corporation President Tsuneharu Sato announced at a press conference the company's operating profit for the previous fiscal year.
The financial report shows that Toyota's global sales in fiscal 2023 will be 9.44 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 7.0%. Sales in fiscal 2024 are expected to be 9.5 million vehicles. Sales growth is expected to be mainly concentrated in North America, Asia and other regions.
There are two main reasons for Toyota's profit surge in fiscal 2023. First, hybrid vehicle sales continue to rise in major global markets, while pure electric vehicle sales are sluggish, which happens to be an area where Toyota is not good at.
According to financial reports, pure electric vehicles accounted for only 1% of Toyota's global sales in fiscal 2013.
Second, the depreciation of the yen will generate a lot of "extra" profits for Toyota, whose sales come mostly from overseas markets, when foreign currencies are eventually settled into yen.
Thanks to this, Toyota's operating profit in the first quarter of 2024 (or the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023) was 1.1 trillion yen, a year-on-year increase of 78%.
The industry trend of the resurgence of hybrid vehicles seems to be quite favorable to Toyota, but Toyota expects its operating profit for fiscal 2024 to be only 4.3 trillion yen, a decrease of about one-fifth from fiscal 2023.
Toyota's forecast is not without reason. On the one hand, the "gains" brought about by the depreciation of the yen are unstable factors, which will be eliminated after the exchange rate rebounds.
On the other hand, new energy vehicles in China, one of Toyota's important regional markets, are further expanding their market share, which will put further pressure on Toyota, which mainly produces fuel vehicles and hybrid vehicles (also classified as fuel vehicles).
With Toyota bringing two pure electric vehicles, bZ3C and Bozhi 3X, to the Beijing Auto Show, the Japanese automaker's bZ pure electric series models in the Chinese market have reached four.
Given the lukewarm response to the previously launched bZ4X and bZ3, Toyota has put more effort into the two new models this time. They are said to be equipped with Toyota's latest autonomous driving technology and smart cockpit, and are truly "localized" by its Shanghai R&D center.
At the same time, Toyota announced that it will mass-produce all-solid-state batteries in 2027. This battery technology, which is said to be able to "rewrite the industry landscape", will become an opportunity for Japanese automakers including Toyota to catch up with the pure electric process.
But the day when all-solid-state batteries come into use may be the day when hybrid vehicles will accelerate their demise.
Although its profitability is temporarily "far ahead", Toyota, which relies on the hot sales of hybrid vehicles to maintain considerable profits, must choose between revolutionizing itself or being revolutionized by its competitors.
