Toyota profits jump 28% in quarter

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. reported a 28 percent surge in its net profit last quarter, helped by growing sales in Europe, Asia and the Americas, and raised its earnings forecast for the full year.

The top Japanese automaker said Tuesday that its July-September profit totaled $5.2 billion, up from about $4.8 billion the year before. Quarterly sales rose 2 percent to $64.7 billion.

The manufacturer of the Camry sedan, Prius hybrid and Corolla subcompact forecast a $20 billion profit for the fiscal year through March. That exceeds its earlier forecast for $19 billion, but is down nearly 8 percent from a nearly $22 billion net profit in the previous fiscal year.

Toyota sold 2.183 million vehicles in July-September, up from 2.175 million ve-

hicles the same period a year earlier.

Vehicle sales slipped in the U.S. and Japan but improved in Europe, the rest of Asia, and Central and South America. The company stuck to its full-year forecast for selling 8.9 million vehicles globally for the year through March 2019.

Cost reductions and marketing efforts helped the results for the latest quarter though an unfavorable exchange rate hurt, according

to Toyota.

“We are steadily making progress toward achieving our challenge-level target,” Senior Managing Officer Masayoshi Shirayanagi said in a statement of cost cutting efforts.

Toyota is often seen as an icon of Japanese-style manufacturing. It has been shifting its focus to leading technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, car-sharing services and other new applications to keep up with changes in the industry.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda, a member of the

company’s founding family, has repeatedly said Toyota’s business needs to change from merely making various vehicles to addressing all kinds of mobility needs.

For the fiscal first half, Toyota’s sales rose to a record $130 billion, up 3 percent from the previous year.

Toyota’s sales projection for the year through March at $261 billion, if realized, will also mark a record for the company.

Toyota’s stock price jumped after the upbeat results were released and closed 2.1 percent higher Tuesday.

AP file photo People look at the cars in a Toyota showroom in Tokyo last year. Sales fell in Japan and the U.S. in the automaker’s most recent quarter, but the company saw gains in other parts of the world.