Toyota Annual Net Income Falls 21.6%

Japanese auto giant Toyota Motor Corp. said its profit fell 21.6% for the fiscal year ended March 31, to $2.8 billion from record earnings in the previous year, as weak sales at home and the cost of building more factories overseas offset sales gains in Europe and the United States. Toyota said group net income fell to $2.8 billion, or 74 cents a share, matching analysts’ forecasts, on a 9.2% increase in total sales to $100 billion. Price cuts for vehicles such as the Camry also hurt results. Toyota cut U.S. prices by as much as $1,500 for the Camry, America’s best-selling car for the last two years. Sales at Daihatsu Motor Corp., which Toyota made a subsidiary last year, rose 8.9% in the year to 424,511 vehicles. That wasn’t enough to overcome a 9.3% decrease at Toyota to 1.67 million vehicles. Separately, Toyota said the top management at Toyota Motor Sales USA will change. Among other shifts, Yoshio Ishizaka, president and chief executive of the division since mid-1996, was promoted to senior managing director of Toyota Motor Corp. He will be succeeded by Yoshimi Inaba. Toyota also said it will move the listing of its stock to the New York Stock Exchange from the Nasdaq Stock Market this year and will list its shares in London.