3 - 6 - 5, Toyota takes a break

Yes having 117 days of inventory on hand sounds bad until you learn that that is better than this time last year.

Seeking Alpha is an interesting site. It seems to have lots of transcripts of internal conference calls. I'm curious how they get these transcripts as they often contain information that a company wouldn't want to be made public.

I've found some interesting Toyota calls on seeking alpha too. I found specifically interesting the sales call in which a Toyota VP specifically said that Toyota's profit margin was down in the 2Q08 BECAUSE of the surge in Prius sales.

 

i find very little to be alarmed about here by the downturn in Toyota's fortunes here. sure its slow right now. we all knew that. so what does that mean??

will Toyota ignore the downturn in their product lines like some other manufacturers we know (hopefully knew) about? they had a bigger decline in sales percentage simply because they had great sales previously when the big 3's sales year for 2007 was nothing to brag about in the first place.

sure, things will change and Toyota i am sure, will adjust to fit as they always have. and that change i fully expect will be immediate in a way to disrupt their ability to create new products in a minimal way.

will they be like GM and run out of money before they can produce the product they hope will save them? that would be unlikely i think.

and correct me if i am wrong, but it seems like the total shutdown time is not nearly as much as is reported by other manufacturers?? 6 days when GM and Chrysler were doing over a month?

 

Are you forgetting that Toyota shut down their Tundra plant in Texas for 3 months last fall?

 

They are making adjustments to the car/truck mix. 25% is far too low. Toyota's inventory level will be over 110 days as of Jan 1st vs less than 50 days a year ago.