TOKYO (AP) — Toyota's profit fell 19% in the last fiscal year from a year earlier, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs bit into earnings at Japan’s top automaker.
Toyota Motor Corp. reported a 3.85 trillion yen ($25 billion) profit for the fiscal year ended in March, down from nearly 4.8 trillion yen the previous fiscal year.
The maker of the Camry sedan, Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models said Friday that Trump’s tariff policies erased some 1.4 trillion yen ($9 billion) from its annual operating income.
Unfavorable trends in exchange rates also hit its profit margins, said Toyota, which is headquartered in Toyota city, central Japan.
Still it said it had held up relatively well, selling nearly 9.6 million vehicles around the world, up from about 9.4 million the year before.
The value of those sales rose 5.5% to 50.7 trillion yen ($323 billion) from 48 trillion yen the year before.
On a quarterly basis, Toyota’s profit jumped 23% to 817 billion yen ($5.2 billion) from 664 billion yen. January-March sales rose nearly 2% to 12.6 trillion yen ($80 billion).
Toyota expects to sell 9.6 million vehicles in the current fiscal year through March 2027. It’s keeping a relatively modest forecast for fiscal year profit at 3 trillion yen ($19 billion), citing potential impact from developments in the Middle East.
Toyota said it expects supply-chain disruptions due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively blocked because of the Iran war. Toyota’s vehicle sales in the Middle East also have dropped.
Japan imports almost all its oil, much of it from the Middle East. The war has boosted the price of oil and many other materials. Using longer shipping routes to skirt the route through the strait is adding to costs for many companies.
Toyota reiterated its vision of transforming into “a mobility company,” meaning it hopes to add boats and planes to its lineup. It also promised to continue innovating as it expands its reach outside the auto industry to other types of gadgetry like robotic arms that restack store shelves and devices to transport medical equipment.
The company said it would grow leaner, reorganizing its models and increasing local procurement, while cutting costs.
Toyota stocks fell 2.2% after its earnings were announced.
Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
FILE -Toyota dealership, Thursday, April 30, 2026, in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
LONDON (AP) — The BBC is hosting a party for David Attenborough at the Royal Albert Hall. Cinemas are playing his nature films. Friends have spent weeks lavishing praise on the man and his work.
But the world’s most famous wildlife presenter is likely to be uncomfortable with all the attention as he celebrates his 100th birthday on Friday, said Alastair Fothergill, the producer of some of Attenborough’s most well-known documentaries.
“He’s always been very clear to all of us that work with him: ‘Remember, the animals are the stars, I’m not,’’’ Fothergill told The Associated Press. “So, yes, surprisingly for one of the most famous men on the planet, he doesn’t like being famous at all.”
But Attenborough has had to accept the accolades this week as scientists, politicians and conservationists celebrated the man who has brought frolicking gorillas, breaching whales and tiny poisonous frogs into living rooms around the world for more than 70 years.
Through BBC programs such as Life on Earth, The Private Life of Plants and The Blue Planet, Attenborough has illuminated the beauty, ferocity and sometimes downright weirdness of nature in a hushed melodic voice that conveys his own awe at what he is witnessing.
Viewers who might never leave their hometowns were transported to the Himalayas, the Amazon and the unexplored forests of Papua New Guinea. But behind the stunning images was an attention to scientific accuracy that helped teach people about complex subjects like evolution, animal behavior and biodiversity.
And as the evidence mounted, he began to sound the alarm about climate change, ocean plastic and other human-caused threats to the planet.
That helped people understand not only how life evolved but, more importantly, why we have to protect it, said Professor Ben Garrod, an evolutionary biologist at the University of East Anglia and himself a broadcaster who has worked alongside Attenborough.
Attenborough, Garrod believes, initially saw himself as a neutral observer but was compelled to speak out when he saw that politicians, business leaders and the public weren’t taking the emergency seriously.
“He is showing you the majesty, the ferocity, the fragility of the natural world. He shouldn’t have ever had to have turned to policymaking and advocacy,” Garrod said.
“I think it’s very easy for a lot of people to say, ‘He should have done it sooner. Why didn’t he act 20 years, 30 years, 40 years ago?’” Garrod then asked: “Why didn’t we?''
Born in London on May 8, 1926, the same year as the late Queen Elizabeth II, Attenborough was raised on the grounds of what is now the University of Leicester, where his father was a senior leader.
His fascination with nature developed when he was a young boy, riding his bicycle into the surrounding countryside where he collected treasures such as abandoned birds’ nests, the shed skin of a snake and, most importantly, fossils.
“I’d find a fossil and show it to my father and he’d say ‘Good, good, tell me all about it.’ So I responded and became my own expert,” Attenborough told Smithsonian Magazine in 1981.
He went on to study geology and zoology at the University of Cambridge.
In 1952, Attenborough joined the BBC, working behind the scenes on “everything from ballet to short stories.” After he'd been there about two months, the capture of a “living fossil” off the coast of East Africa caused an international stir, and he was asked to produce a short piece about the coelacanth.
That story was told in the studio by Professor Julian Huxley, an evolutionary biologist, who used pickled wildlife specimens and a photograph of a coelacanth to explain the fish’s significance.
But Attenborough thought television could do more.
“I’d always wanted to do films on animals around the world,” he recalled in a 1985 interview with The Associated Press. “But the attitude was, ‘We’ve got TV cameras in the studio. What’s this about spending money abroad?’”
In 1954, he finally persuaded the BBC to let him accompany a London Zoo team that traveled to West Africa to collect specimens. That began a decade as host and producer of “Zoo Quest,” kick-starting his career in the field.
One of the most famous moments of that long career came during the 1979 series “Life on Earth,” when Attenborough encountered a family of mountain gorillas in a forest on the border of Rwanda and what was then Zaire (now Congo).
During that scene, voted one of Britain's top TV moments of all time, a young gorilla lies across his body while several babies try to remove his shoes. Attenborough grins, laughs and is speechless with delight.
“I honestly don’t know how long it was,’’ Attenborough later told the BBC. “I suspect it was about 10 minutes, or even a quarter of an hour. I was simply transported.”
“Extraordinary, really,’’ he reflected. “It was one of the most privileged moments of my life.”
Attenborough has combined his knowledge of television, an understanding of his audience and his commitment to science to create a character who could deliver complicated issues surrounding wildlife, conservation and natural history to a mass audience, said Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, a professor of science communication at University College London.
“Basically he gave wildlife television a figure, a front of the house person … which has come to embody television discourse about nature,” Gouyon said.
And on this, his centenary, his fans made a point of finding him. In a recorded audio message he said he thought he would mark the day quietly. As if.
“I’ve been completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings from preschool groups to care home residents and countless individuals and families of all ages,'' he said. “I simply can’t reply to each of you all separately, but I would like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages.”
And he isn’t planning to stop now, Fothergill said.
“He said to me recently he feels unbelievably privileged that a man in his late 90s is still being asked to work. And, you know, he will go on forever. He will die in his safari shorts.”
Hilary Fox contributed.
FILE - Head of creative enterprise, Maddie Hall, watches hundreds of television screens with broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough's face, from when he was a young broadcaster, projected on a 360 degree screen inside the dome within the Market Hall ahead of a public release of an immersive film to mark his 100th birthday on May 8, at Real Ideas in Devonport, Plymouth, England, May 6, 2026. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP, File)
FILE - David Attenborough holds 'Inti', an armadillo from Edinburgh Zoo, before receiving a cheque from the People's Postcode Lottery for the charity Fauna and Flora International of which he is Vice-President, at Prestonfield House, Edinburgh, Jan. 24, 2017. (Jane Barlow/PA via AP, File)
FILE - Three year old Susan and her father David Attenborough pose for a photo with a sulphur-crested cockatoo Georgie, Dec. 7, 1957. (PA via AP)
FILE - David Attenborough, watched by zoo staff, reaches out to a kangaroo during his visit to Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 14, 2003. (AP Photo/Dan Peled, File)
FILE - Butterfly Conservation President Sir David Attenborough poses for a photo with a south east Asian Great Mormon Butterfly on his nose, as he launches the Big Butterfly count at London Zoo, July 11, 2012. (John Stillwell/PA via AP, File)
