Toyota see China sales up

Here’s an interesting scenario for last month’s sales figures of two global manufacturers. Japan’s Toyota and Honda had entirely opposite results. Toyota Motor Corp and the two Chinese joint ventures it operates had sales of around 91,100 cars last month in the world’s largest single auto market.

In a statement sighted by BusinessDay, the automaker said September sales were up 26.1 year-over-year, following Augusts’ 8.9% rise and a surprising 1.1% dip in July.

Japan’s largest automaker and the biggest in the world had nine-month sales of around 710,300 autos in China, an increase of 11.5% over 2013’s figure.

A Beijing-based company spokesman, Takanori Yokoi, said Toyota is on track to achieve its 2014 goal of selling more than 1.1 million vehicles for the first time – a goal originally set for 2010.

On the other hand, Honda and its two Chinese joint ventures saw a decline in deliveries for the third consecutive month – with sales falling 23.1% as buyers wait for new model introductions coming later this year from the Japanese brand.

China sales in September reached 56,880 units, according to Honda, as dealers were busy axing inventories to make room for the upcoming new models – the Vezel and the Spirior  by next month and the XR-V later on. Nine-month sales total reached 502,352 cars, up 1% from 2013.

Meanwhile, Toyota increased its full-year profit target to $9.7 billion, despite the loss in sales in the Chinese market. Toyota and its joint ventures in China saw their sales almost cut in half in the country last month and October due to violent protests which began after Japan purchased the disputed islands in East China Sea.

Honda also saw its sales down more than half and Nissan fell 41%. In 2011 Toyota sold about 900,000 cars in China and it said that the loss in China will make it lose 30 billion yen from the full-year profit.

Last week Honda had to cut its target for this year by a fifth due to the damage in China, while Nissan is expected to do the same on November 6th when it will report the July-September results.

Toyota was able to increase its full-year profit target as the Chinese market accounts for only 12% of the automaker’s sales, compared with Honda’s 20% and Nissan’s 27%.

The profit target for the year ending March 2013, increased to 780 billion yen, up 2.6% and the full-year operating profit is expected to be 1.05 trillion yen, up from the previous forecast of 1 trillion yen.

MIKE OCHONMA