Toyota raises sales plan as quarterly profit zooms

TOKYO (AP) ? Toyota raised its sales target for this year to 9.76 million vehicles and reported a strong recovery in quarterly profit Friday, underlining its bounce back from a disaster plagued 2011.

Toyota Motor Corp. said April-June profit zoomed to 290.3 billion yen ($3.7 billion) from 1.1 billion yen the year before. Its new sales target would represent a 23 percent increase from the 7.95 million vehicles sold in 2011, and is 180,000 vehicles more than what Toyota Motor Corp. gave in February.

The car maker's quarterly sales soared nearly 60 percent to 5.5 trillion yen ($70.5 billion), rebounding from a sales crash that all Japanese automakers suffered after the earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan in March last year.

Toyota said quarterly vehicle sales nearly doubled from the year before to 2.3 million vehicles as sales rose in regions including North America, Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia. The regaining of U.S. market share is crucial for Toyota as that is where it makes the bulk of its profits.

Toyota, which makes the Camry sedan, Lexus luxury model and Prius hybrid, has had hard times in the past several years, including recalls of more than 14 million vehicles that began three years ago and came amid faltering global demand from the financial crisis.

The March 11 disasters in Japan, followed by the floods in Thailand, added to Toyota's hardships.

But Toyota has been recovering. For the first half of this year, it regained its spot as the world's top automaker in global vehicle sales, beating U.S. rival General Motors Co., although Toyota officials have played down the importance of being No. 1.

Toyota said it carried out cost cuts totaling 70 billion yen ($897 million) for the quarter, offsetting the negative effect of a strong yen, which erased 40 billion yen ($513 million) from operating income. A strong currency hurts Japanese exporters such as Toyota by eroding the value of overseas earnings.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/toyota-raises-sales-plan-quarterly-profit-zooms-071748518--finance.html

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