The Toyota Motor Company booked its first annual net loss in six decades Friday and warned that it would plunge even deeper into the red this year, a stunning reversal for an automaker whose breakneck expansion and record profits seemed unstoppable just 12 months ago. The automaker said it lost 765.8 billion yen, or $7.7 billion, in the first three months of the year - even more than the $5.9 billion lost by its American rival, General Motors, in the same period. The devastating numbers from the final quarter of the fiscal year contributed to a worse-than-expected net loss of 436.9 billion yen, or $4.4 billion, for the year that ended in March. It was Toyota's first annual net loss since 1950. The automaker warned it would lose another 550 billion yen, or $5.5 billion, this fiscal year. It cut its annual dividend by nearly 30 percent, its first cut to the dividend in at least 15 years. Toyota attributed its woes to the slump in global demand and a strong yen, which makes exports from Japan more expensive. “It will take more time before the financial markets in the US and Europe normalize and the global economy recovers,” Toyota's president, Katsuki Watanabe, said Friday. The deep loss marks a stark turnabout from the record profit of 1.72 trillion yen that Toyota booked the previous year. Annual sales slumped 22 percent, to 20.529 trillion yen. The loss also caps a roller-coaster year for Toyota, which in 2008 dethroned GM in terms of vehicles sold worldwide, a post the Detroit-based automaker had held for 77 years. Analysts say Toyota has strong cash reserves, and is far from the bankruptcy that has asserted the American carmaker Chrysler and that threatens General Motors. Despite a $15.4 billion infusion in United States government loans, General Motors burned through about $10 billion in the first quarter, driving its cash reserves down to a bare minimum and putting it on the brink of financial collapse.
