It's not often that Toyota Motor disappoints. Indeed, turbocharged growth has been a feature of Katsuaki Watanabe's presidency at Toyota since he took over from Fujio Cho in 2005. During that time the company has closed within touching distance of General Motors as the world's biggest automaker. At its annual results announcement in Tokyo on May 8, the company said it had another year of record sales and earnings through March, 2008. Sales increased 9.8% to $252.7 billion, while operating income edged up 1.4% to $21.8 billion and net earnings rose 4.5% to $16.5 billion.
Yet, despite the record-breaking figures, Toyota actually missed its full-year operating profit target by $285 million, after a disappointing final quarter during which operating earnings slipped 31% to $3.81 billion. More important, Watanabe also signaled a projected slowdown in earnings and sales in 2008 that was worse than many Toyota watchers expected. Watanabe said Toyota's sales in the year ending March, 2009 will dip 4.9% to $240 billion, while operating income will drop 29.5% to $15.4 billion. The latter was $3.8 billion below the average result of an earlier survey of 19 analysts by Reuters.
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