Samurai, 1867. Japan's elite.
"Toyota tracking 2 trillion yen net profit
NAGOYA -- Toyota Motor expects to reap a net profit of 2 trillion yen ($17 billion) for the year ending March 2015, a first for a publicly traded Japanese company.
The automaker upgraded its earnings forecasts for the full year when releasing results for the April-September half on Wednesday. It had previously projected a 2% decline in net profit to 1.78 trillion yen for the fiscal year, but now anticipates a 10% increase...."
[Cost-cutting and a weaker yen are seen as key ingredients in the profit pie.]
Asia Nikkei: Japanese-corporate-profits-up-10-powered-by-few-winners
"We are the 1%
But a closer look reveals a widening disparity between winners and losers. The top 10 companies reporting the largest profit gains raked in a huge portion of the country's corporate profit growth. SoftBank, Toyota, Nissan, Hitachi and six others together booked a combined gain of 1.1 trillion yen, suggesting that just 1% of companies generated around 80% of all profit increases for the half.
SoftBank, which logged the biggest rise of 367.4 billion yen, or 58% on the year, reported huge capital gains on shareholdings in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in September.
Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Honda ranked second, third, fifth and 10th. These carmakers together enjoyed a 100 billion yen boost from the weaker yen on top of the fruits of restructuring and streamlining efforts."
Betsy's question--where are the voices from those who labor in silence as Toyota's Tier 3 and Tier 4 suppliers? They will have to wait before the pressure comes off of their prices, if it ever does.
Betsy's question--where are the voices from those who labor in silence as Toyota's Tier 3 and Tier 4 suppliers? They will have to wait before the pressure comes off of their prices, if it ever does.