Toyota Profit Gain Too Slow for Upgrade, Moody’s Says

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest carmaker, will have insufficient profit to warrant an upgrade of its credit rating this fiscal year, according to Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg reported. Toyota, which Moody’s rates the highest among global carmakers at Aa2, needs an annual operating profit of 1 trillion yen ($11 billion), more than triple its outlook for this year, before it can be considered for a higher rating, Tadashi Usui, senior analyst at the credit rating company, said in an interview in Tokyo. It also needs an operating margin of 5 percent, he said. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s began cutting Toyota’s rating last year after the carmaker posted the first of three straight quarterly losses. Usui said recalls of more than 8 million Toyota vehicles worldwide in the past year have damaged the company’s reputation, threatening to slow an earnings rebound. “I cannot say confidently that Toyota’s operating profit will recover smoothly,” Usui said. Toyota fell 1.9 percent to 3,300 yen as of the 12:50 p.m. trading break in Tokyo, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 3.1 percent. The automaker has declined 15 percent so far this year. Operating profit may increase 90 percent this fiscal year to 280 billion yen, from 147.5 billion yen in the 12 months ended March 31, the carmaker said May 11. The forecast is almost 90 percent smaller than the record 2.27 trillion yen Toyota posted in the year that ended in March 2008. Moody’s downgraded Toyota’s credit rating last month to Aa2, its third highest level, with a negative outlook, from Aa1. The automaker lost its top Aaa rating in February 2009.