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Toyota Reports 4.8% Hike in Global Production in January

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Toyota Motor Corporation (TM - Free Report) increased its total worldwide production by 4.8% year over year to 840,083 units in Jan 2017. With this, the automaker reported an increase in worldwide production for the third consecutive month. The increase resulted from a 1.6% rise in production in Japan to 329,935 units, along with a 7% increase in production outside Japan to 510,148 units. The production figure includes passenger cars, trucks and buses manufactured by Toyota as well as its subsidiaries Hino Motors, Ltd. and Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd.

Total sales in Japan increased 3.3% to 170,830 units on a 12% rise in sales of Hino vehicles and a 4.5% hike in sales of Toyota vehicles, marginally offset by 0.1% decline in Daihatsu vehicle sales. The combined market share of Toyota, Hino and Daihatsu decreased 0.6 percentage points to 42.5%.

Sales of Toyota mini-vehicles in Japan went up 14.9% year over year to 2,200 units in January. The market share of Toyota in Japan dropped 0.1 percentage point to 29.4%, including mini-vehicles, and declined 1.8 percentage points to 45%, excluding mini-vehicles.

Meanwhile, exports went down 12.2% year over year to 126,701 units due to a 12.5% decline in Toyota’s exports and a 4.1% plunge in Hino’s exports. Decrease in export of Toyota’s vehicles was due to decline in exports to North America, Europe, Asia and Middle East. Hino’s exports suffered due to decreased exports to North America, the Middle East and Africa.
 

Price Performance

Toyota underperformed the Zacks categorized Auto Manufacturers-Foreign industry over the last three months. Share price of the company decreased 3.4% while the industry saw a 1.8% decline. Weak guidance for fiscal 2017, frequent product recalls and large settlement on a U.S truck lawsuit remain concerns for Toyota.


Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Toyota currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Better-ranked companies in the auto space include Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (HMC - Free Report) , American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc. (AXL - Free Report) and General Motors Company (GM - Free Report) . Honda and American Axle sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) while General Motors carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

For the current year, Honda, American Axle and General Motors expect earnings growth of around 27%, 8.1% and 9.4%, respectively.  

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