Toyota said yesterday net profit in the nine months to December quadrupled while it also lifted its full-year earnings outlook, reflecting the car giant’s recovery from Japan’s 2011 quake-tsunami.
The world’s number-one automaker credited a sales boost in debt-struck Europe as well as the US and Asia for the rise, and a weaker yen.
Toyota did not release its latest figures for China, the world’s biggest vehicle market, where a diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing sparked a consumer boycott of Japanese goods late last year.
But senior managing officer Takahiko Ijichi said that September and October China sales tumbled by about half, although he added: “By December, (sales) recovered to a 20% decline from a year earlier.”
Toyota previously said it expects to sell 200,000 fewer vehicles in China in the second half of its fiscal year to March and take a ¥30bn ($325mn) hit to its bottom line. It sold 900,000 vehicles in China in 2011.
The results come after Japan’s three biggest automakers — Toyota, Nissan and Honda — last month posted record sales for 2012, confirming Toyota had recaptured the title of the world’s biggest automaker from US giant General Motors. The Japanese company lost the title in 2011.
Yesterday, Toyota said it earned ¥648.2bn from April to December, up from ¥162.5bn a year earlier, when automakers were pounded by the twin natural disasters which devastated Japan’s northeast coast.
The automaker pointed to a weakening yen and cost-cutting for its improved results and upgraded forecast, with operating income soaring to ¥818.5bn from ¥117.1bn a year earlier.
The boost “reflects our increased vehicle sales and the progress we are making with our profit-improvement activities”, Ijichi said.
Sales in the period jumped 26% to ¥16.2tn, he said.
The firm also hiked its net profit forecast for the fiscal year through March to ¥860bn from an earlier estimate of ¥780bn, on projected revenue of ¥21.8tn.
Global vehicle sales in the year were on track to hit 8.85mn units, up from an earlier forecast of 8.75mn units, the automaker said, citing stronger demand in the North American market.
Toyota’s results for the three months to December saw net profit rise by nearly one-quarter although the figure fell short of some analysts’ expectations. Vehicle sales in Europe and Japan slipped in the quarter.
Diamond Offshore
Diamond Offshore Drilling, the world’s fourth-biggest offshore driller by market value, reported a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit as contract drilling expenses fell.
The company, controlled by hotels, energy and financial services conglomerate Loews Corp, also said yesterday it had won a three-year $439mn contract from Royal Dutch Shell for work in the North Sea.
The $400,500 per day contract for the Ocean Patriot demonstrates the ongoing strength in the North Sea market, Diamond Chief Executive Larry Dickerson said.
Contract drilling expenses at the Houston-based company fell 7% to about $378mn in the fourth quarter.
Diamond said fourth-quarter net income fell to $156mn, or $1.12 per share, from $188mn, or $1.36 per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose less than 1% to $751mn.
Analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.10 per share on revenue of $740mn, according to Thomson Reuters.
Shares of Diamond Offshore, which has a market value of about $10.6bn, closed at $76.48 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.
UBS
Swiss banking giant UBS said yesterday it suffered a crushing loss last year, as massive fines from the Libor rate-fixing scandal weighed especially heavily on its results.
Switzerland’s biggest bank said it last year incurred a net loss of 2.5bn Swiss francs (€2bn, $2.7bn), compared to a net profit of 4.1bn francs a year earlier.
In the fourth quarter alone, as the bank was slapped with a whopping $1.5bn in fines connected to the Libor scandal, UBS posted a net loss of 1.8bn francs.
That result was less than what had been expected by analysts polled by Swiss financial news agency AWP, who on average expected the bank to turn in a quarterly loss of 2.2bn francs.
Despite the 2012 loss, UBS said it had made progress in executing its strategy to focus on wealth management and reduce its higher risk investment banking operations, which has been the source of numerous scandals and burdened it with catastrophic losses during the 2008 subprime crisis.
It also said it would recommend increasing its dividend by 50% to 0.15 francs per share.
In the fourth quarter of 2012 UBS’s investment banking unit suffered a pre-tax net loss of 557mn francs, down from a loss of 2.8bn francs in the previous quarter.
The wealth management unit, meanwhile, posted a pre-tax profit of 398mn francs in the fourth quarter, down from 582mn francs in the third quarter.
The bank’s net new money inflows at the same time slowed considerably during the quarter to just 2.4bn francs, down from 7.7bn in the previous three-month period, as accelerating outflows from Western European clients offset cash influxes from Asia.
UBS meanwhile said it had introduced a new compensation system, slashing performance-linked bonuses by 7.0% from 2011 to 2.5bn francs — coincidentally equal to the bank’s annual loss.
It is the bank’s lowest bonus pool since the financial crisis began and a full 42% drop from 2010, it said in a statement.
Petrobras
Brazil’s state-run energy giant Petrobras said yesterday its net earnings fell 36% in 2012 from the year before — the lowest result since 2004.
Net earnings amounted to 21bn reais, or $10.86bn based on the average exchange rate for 2012, Petrobas said in a statement released after markets closed.
It cited the depreciation of the real, higher fuel imports and operational costs as the reason for the drop in full-year net earnings. The local consultancy Economatica said it was the lowest profit figure since 2004.
Fourth quarter net profit however soared 39% over the previous quarter and 53% year-on-year to 7.74bn reais, mainly due to financial gains from the sale of government bonds and higher tax benefits.
The company said it produced an average of 1.98mn barrels of crude oil per day in 2012, down 2% from the previous year.
Production from deep-water offshore fields known as “pre-salt” reached a record of 214,000 barrels a day on December 27, although this represents only seven% of the average annual crude output in Brazil.
The pre-salt reserves, which were discovered in 2007, could hold more than 100bn barrels of high-quality recoverable crude, according to estimates from Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency.
Petrobras hopes to double its oil output by 2020, based on a plan to invest $236.5bn between now and 2016.
But since 2003, Petrobras has failed to meet its annual production targets and its projects are running behind schedule.
Last year, company head Maria das Gracas Foster revised down production estimates for 2020 from 4.9mn barrels per day to 4.2mn bpd.
GS Yuasa Corp
GS Yuasa Corp, the firm whose products are the focus of US and Japanese investigations into what caused battery problems on Boeing Co’s 787 Dreamliner, said it did not expect the issue to hurt either its earnings or its reputation.
Kyoto-based GS Yuasa, valued at around $1.5bn, said it did not expect the airplane battery problems to impact orders from automakers for its lithium-ion batteries, and it kept its forecast for full-year operating profit of ¥10bn ($108mn) — which would be more than a third below last year.
GS Yuasa said operating profit in April-December — before the recent 787 problems — dropped 28% to ¥6.46bn ($69.7mn) on revenue that fell 4.6% to ¥196bn, as automakers placed fewer orders for lithium-ion batteries and sales were sluggish in Southeast Asia and Europe.
The company, created in 2004 from the merger of Japan Storage Battery and Yuasa, employs around 12,400 people making batteries for cars, motorcycles - with 27% market share, it is a global leader — and a range of industrial customers. In November, the company, led by president Makoto Yoda, won an order to supply lithium-ion batteries for the International Space Station.
Baidu
China’s leading Internet search engine Baidu said its net profit for last year grew 57.5% despite a growth slowdown in the world’s second largest economy.
Baidu is the dominant search engine in China, holding 79% of the total market in the fourth quarter last year, according to Beijing-based Internet consultancy Analysys International.
The company has benefited from US search giant Google’s decision to partially move out of the massive Chinese market in 2010 after a public spat with Beijing over censorship.
Baidu’s profits reached $1.68bn last year, but profit growth slowed from 88.3% in 2011, Baidu said in a statement released late on Monday. Revenue jumped 53.8% to $3.58bn, it added.
Baidu’s net profit for the fourth quarter of last year rose 36.1% year-on-year to $448.7mn, while revenue for the three months jumped 41.6% from the same period in 2011 to $1.02bn.
The company said last September that it plans to invest more than 10bn yuan ($1.6bn) in cloud computing to help profitability.
Kellogg
Kellogg reported a narrower quarterly loss yesterday helped by improvements in Latin America and stood by its full-year forecast.
The world’s largest cereal company posted a net loss of $32mn, or 9¢ per share, compared with a loss of $195mn, or 54¢ per share, a year earlier.
Excluding a mark-to-market accounting change, earnings were 65¢ per share, down from 71¢ per share a year earlier.
The company, whose brands include Corn Flakes, Eggo waffles and Keebler cookies, stood by its 2013 outlook, which calls for earnings-per-share growth of 5% to 7% and sales growth of about 7%.
Net sales rose to $3.56bn from $3.02bn a year earlier.
BP
British energy giant BP said yesterday that net profits slumped by more than half in 2012, as the group was rocked by fines and asset sales linked to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, ahead of a US trial later this month.
Earnings after taxation tumbled 54% to $11.582bn (€8.6bn) in 2012, compared with $25.7bn in 2011, BP said in a results statement.
Adjusted net profit, stripping out fluctuations in the value of inventories, plunged by almost 50% to $11.993bn.
The London-listed group took a pre-tax charge of $4.1bn for the fourth quarter in relation to the Gulf of Mexico disaster, taking its total clean-up bill to $42.2bn.
Profits were also hit by divestments, including the sale of BP’s 50% stake in the troubled Russian joint venture TNK-BP to the main Russian oil producer Rosneft.
BP added it was still assessing the impact of the deadly attack at its joint venture in the In Amenas gas site in Algeria last month, but remained committed to the country.
The energy major also revealed it had reached its target to sell $38bn of assets a year earlier than originally planned, as it sought to meet the bill for the oil spill costs.
However, the sell-offs pushed annual production lower. Output sank more than 5% to 2.319mn barrels of oil equivalent per day, excluding TNK-BP’s output. The results were issued one week after a US judge approved a $4.5bn deal in which BP pleaded guilty to criminal charges from the 2010 oil spill.
It must also still resolve a civil case on environmental fines which could amount to as much as $18bn if gross negligence is found. BP also remains on the hook for billions in economic damages, including the cost of environmental rehabilitation.
Despite plunging profits, chief executive Bob Dudley argued that the group was well positioned for long-term growth.