Toyota adjusts earnings forecast: $1.7B loss

[Bruce Nunnally]

[bloomberg]

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s second-largest automaker, forecast its first operating loss in 71 years on plummeting demand, prompting Moody’s Investors Service to consider downgrading the company’s top-rated credit.

The carmaker will post a 150 billion yen ($1.7 billion) loss in the year through March, it said in a statement today, scrapping a previous forecast of a 600 billion yen profit.

“The environment we’re in is extremely tough,” President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters today in Nagoya. “We’re facing an unprecedented emergency situation. Unfortunately, we can’t see the bottom.”