Toyota reports second-highest annual sales figure ever

Toyota Motor announced results of its recently ended fiscal year, and the carmaker topped its sales target, which is a positive sign ahead of the carmaker’s earnings announcement next month. This comes despite a potentially challenging year ahead. Toyota sold 903,031 vehicles in March, bringing the total to 9.51 million units for the business year through March, achieving its second-highest annual figure ever.

The figures are above the company’s most recent goal to sell 9.4 million vehicles. During the period, Toyota produced 8.57 million vehicles, which is broadly in line with its 8.5 million-unit forecast.

Over the past year, the automaker saw soaring demand for cars with strong sales in Asia and North America of models such as the RAV 4 SUV. This led Toyota to finish out the 2021 calendar year as the world’s top-selling automaker.

However, the bigger challenge for the carmaker has been keeping its production steady due to supply-related obstacles that have beleaguered global automakers over the past year. In addition to this, Toyota also dealt with fallout from factory stoppages in China in recent months and supply disruptions caused by an earthquake and cyberattack in Japan.

The demand has remained robust though, with record prices and profit in March constrained only by lack of inventory, according to research firm JD Power. Further, the analysts are also predicting that a weakened yen will help boost Toyota and other Japanese automakers’ profits in the near term. The company's shares are up about 3% this year and were little changed on Wednesday ahead of its production and sales announcement.

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