Toyota predicts better profits for 2012 but “uncertainty” over China-Japan islands spat weighs on sales

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A link from Agence France-Press

Japan’s biggest automaker, Toyota, reported quarterly profits of ¥257.9 billion ($3.2 billion), triple what they were the same period a year earlier. Still, the results aren’t a huge boost for Toyota, still recovering from last year’s tsunami, which caused major supply shortages. Toyota has also seen its sales in China for the month of September nearly halve compared to a year earlier as a result of territorial disputes over islands in the East China Sea. The company announced it had slightly upgraded its expected profits for the fiscal year to ¥780 billion, from an earlier forecast of ¥760 billion but mostly because of cost-cutting measures. Toyota also predicted sales for the year would be ¥21.3 trillion, down slightly from a previous estimate of ¥22.0 trillion. The company said in a statement that the revision was “due to uncertainties in the Chinese and European market environments.”