Toyota Projecting Loss, Monitoring Plant Construction

Toyota Motor Corp. says it will see its first-ever operating loss in its 70-year history.

After calling for an operating profit of ¥600 billion ($6.68 billion) in early November, Japan's No.1 auto maker says it will see a loss for its fiscal year, ending March 31, of ¥150 billion ($1.67 billion).

“We are facing an unprecedented emergency,” Reuters quotes Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe as saying at the auto maker's year-end press conference. “This is a crisis unlike the crises of the past.”

A Japanese financial analyst tells Reuters Toyota possibly could fall into negative territory in the coming fiscal year as well.

“This is very, very, very bad,” Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments, tells the wire service. “This is also not just a problem for Toyota. What is good for Toyota is good for the Japanese economy.”

Toyota also revises its net profit forecast downward from early November by @500 billion ($5.57 billion) to ¥50 billion ($557 million) and slashes its calendar 2008 global vehicle sales expectations to 7.99 million units, down 5% from 2007.

Including the Daihatsu and Hino units, Toyota projects its calendar 2008 sales to fall 4% below year-ago to 8.96 million units.

Meanwhile, Toyota will revisit “at some point” in 2009 its decision to indefinitely suspend construction of the auto maker's nearly completed plant in Blue Springs, MS, a spokesman says.

The site was scheduled to produce next-generation versions of the auto maker's popular Toyota Prius hybrid sedan.

The site is 90% complete, Toyota's Mike Goss says. But no tooling has been installed.

The move will not affect the planned 2010 introduction of the new Prius, nor its debut at the 2009 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.