High-profile recalls? A PR nightmare? Millions of dollars in fines? What are you talking about? Toyota Motor Corp just posted a $1.2 billion profit for the quarter.
“This profit comes despite the fact that Toyota reports expenditures related to the recall mess at a little over a billion dollars (or, 100 billion yen) and surely took a monetary hit compared to previous years due to the unprecedented spate of incentives to keep sales rolling,” writes Autoblog. Now that’s impressive.
According to the Detroit Free Press: “The figures illustrate just how powerful the world’s largest automaker remains despite months of turmoil over sudden acceleration cases and several probes by U.S. auto safety regulators, including a new one launched Monday into a 2005 recall. Despite the recall’s cost and lost sales, Toyota expects its next full-year profit to rise 48% to $3.3 billion.”
The Wall Street Journal quotes Toyota President Akio Toyoda, "We are still in the storm, but even in the same storm, we see the sky starting to clear up in the distance."
