Toyota Motor Corp (TM) is ahead of its rivals General Motors Co (GM) and Volkswagen AG this year, as shown by the January-September global sales figures. The Japanese automaker is on track to post a record yearly profit, reports Reuters.
U.S. sales impressive
Total sales for Toyota came around 7.412 million units, which was an increase of 0.1 percent from the corresponding period a year ago. Impressive sales in the United States compensated the gloomy picture in Thailand and China.
Toyota’s monthly group wide sales of vehicles, for September, zoomed 6.3 percent from a year earlier to 832,000 vehicles.
Toyota said its exports to the United States for September increased 9 percent from a year ago to around 53,130 vehicles owing to strong demand for RAV4 and Lexus IS. Thailand, Toyota’s biggest market in South Asia, has seen low sales due to government’s first car initiative. Sales for September decreased around 33 percent yearly to 31,000 vehicles, July-September quarterly sales dropped 30 percent to 96,000 vehicles.
Toyota regaining lost glory
General Motors sold 7.25 million vehicles in the period January to September, which is up 4.6 percent year after year, Volkswagen sales zoomed 4.8 percent to 7.03 million vehicles. Volkswagen’s sales do not include Scania and MAN brands. Scania had a sale of 56,220 vehicles upto September. Scania and MAN brands combined sales generally comes to 200,000 vehicles in a year.
Toyota won back the top slot in terms of sales in 2012, after getting a third place behind GM and Volkswagen in 2011, due to natural disasters in Japan and Thailand.
Quarterly, yearly estimates
 For the year ending on March, 2014, analysts expect Toyota to announce 2.4 trillion yen ($24.7 billion) in operating profit, which is more than the record of 2.27 trillion yen in the year March, 2008, owing to weaker yeans making exports profitable.
For the full year, along with Daihatsu and Hino, Toyota is expected to sell 9.96 million vehicles, an increase of 2 percent from 2012.
Toyota, on November 6, will be declaring its July-September results, and is expected to post an operating profit of 616.5 billion yen, which is 2 times of what it declared a year earlier.
