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发帖数: 940 | 1 Japan’s lowest auto sales in three years is reviving concerns that
manufacturing will hollow out in Asia’s second-largest economy.
Such rhetoric was tossed around regularly as recently as 2012 by car
executives as the stronger yen forced production to shift out of Japan.
While favorable currency rates since then paused such talk -- Toyota Motor
Corp. (7203) is headed for a second straight year of record profits -- the
country’s first sales-tax increase in 17 years has led to a slump in
consumption and carmakers have resumed scaling back output in the country.
Sales in August tumbled 9.1 percent, the steepest drop in 14 months, serving
as the latest sign of the trouble ahead for Asia’s second-largest auto
market. Japan’s main association for car dealers warned yesterday that
further declines loom in the months ahead.
“Demand in Japan continues to decline, and as long as that’s the case,
many of the companies will continue to reduce their capacity in Japan,”
said Koji Endo, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at Advanced Research Japan.
Automakers delivered 333,471 vehicles last month, the lowest since August
2011, according to industry figures released yesterday. Sales of minicars,
which had helped cushion demand earlier this year, paced declines by
plunging 15 percent.
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
An employee inspects the paint finish of a red Toyota Motor Corp. Lexus NX
crossover... Read More
Most automakers reported declines for the month, with Mitsubishi Motors Corp
. (7211) seeing the steepest decline at 37 percent. Toyota, the world’s
largest automaker, saw deliveries fall 12 percent, while Nissan Motor Co. (
7201)’s sales dropped 15 percent. Honda Motor Co. (7267) was among the few
to see an increase as sales climbed 11 percent thanks to the popularity of
its Fit vehicles.
Deteriorating Outlook
“Looking at current dealer orders, it’s difficult to see sales rising even
after September,” Yoshitaka Hayashi, a director at the Japan Automobile
Dealers Association, said yesterday.
Few countries are in Japan’s league in terms of the deteriorating outlook
for car manufacturing. Automakers will add 22 million units of global auto
production by 2021, according to IHS Automotive estimates. By comparison,
Japanese annual output is poised to shrink by more than 1.6 million vehicles
in the coming decade, the researcher estimates.
“Structurally, Japan is a slowly declining market,” said Tatsuo Yoshida, a
Tokyo-based automotive analyst for Barclays Plc. “The outlook for exports
is not promising either. Japanese car companies, particularly those big
Japanese companies like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, they are already committed to
making cars where the demand is.” Toyota has pledged to keep annual
production of 3 million vehicles in Japan, while Nissan has committed 1
million.
‘Hollow Out’
Vehicle production in Japan shrank by almost one-quarter in a matter of five
years, tumbling to 7.9 million units in 2009, when the worldwide auto
industry slumped amid the global recession. Output stayed weak in the
following years as executives including Nissan Chief Executive Officer
Carlos Ghosn warned that the industry would “hollow out” if the yen
remained strong.
Those concerns dissipated as economic policies pushed by Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe helped weaken the currency. Should the hollowing out of the
industry resume, it would be a blow to his efforts to revive the economy,
which last quarter contracted the most since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Abe’s government raised the consumption tax to 8 percent from 5 percent in
April to counter the world’s biggest national debt burden. The effect on
monthly sales was softened temporarily by backorders for minicar models such
as Daihatsu Motor Co. (7262)’s Tanto and Suzuki Motor Corp. (7269)’s
Spacia.
Order Backlog
With that backlog of orders cleared, minicars are poised to continue to post
declines until early next year, said Endo, the analyst at Advanced Research
Japan. Demand may recover ahead of a 50 percent increase in the tax
consumers pay when registering a minicar, to 10,800 yen per year, he said.
Auto sales fell for 21 straight months in the country the last time the
consumption tax was raised, in 1997. This year’s tax increase may have a
smaller effect, Fumihiko Ike, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers
Association, said in May.
Sluggish domestic demand is expected to weigh on earnings at Japanese
automakers including Toyota, which reported record profit last fiscal year
as a weaker yen boosted the value of overseas earnings.
Toyota’s net income will probably increase 8.8 percent to a record 1.98
trillion yen ($19 billion) this fiscal year, which ends in March, according
to the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. |
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