Toyota's quarterly profit rises 10 pct on cheap yen, cost cuts, despite fewer vehicle sales

TOKYO – Toyota's profit for April-June rose 10 percent on the perks of a cheap yen and cost reduction efforts that offset lower vehicle sales.

Toyota Motor Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal first quarter profit of 646.3 billion yen ($5.2 billion), up from $587.7 billion a year earlier.

Quarterly sales increased by 9 percent to 6.98 trillion yen ($56.3 billion).

But it sold about 127,000 fewer vehicles compared to last year, at 2.1 million vehicles during the quarter.

Toyota, the world's top automaker for the last three years, was outpaced by Volkswagen AG of Germany in global vehicle sales for the first half of this year.

The Japanese automaker left its profit forecast unchanged at 2.25 trillion yen ($18 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2016.