January 2015 Sales Conference Notes

January 2015 Sales Conference Call
Tuesday, February 3, 2015

January 2015 Sales Conference Call (Audio Clip)

Good morning and thank you for joining us to review Toyota’s January sales.

Speaking today will be:

Bill Fay, Group Vice President and General Manager of the Toyota Division
And Jeff Bracken, Group Vice President and General Manager of Lexus

Following the call, our communications team will be available to field any additional questions you may have.

A recording of the call will be available at www.pressroom.toyota.com about one hour after its conclusion and of course our communications team also is available to field any additional questions you may have at (310) 468-5297.

Now I’d like to turn it over to Bill for a look at the January sales results.

Toyota Division Group Vice President and General Manager Bill Fay:
Thank you Scott and welcome to the team.

Good morning everyone.

2015 is off to an excellent start

As January industry sales should come in at 1,150,000
An increase of about 13 ½ percent from last year

As a result

The Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate
Looks to be about 16.6 million vehicles
Nearly 1.5 million vehicles ahead of last January’s pace
And the best rate since 2006 when the industry started at a 17.6 clip

Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealers

Outperformed the industry for the month
With sales up 15.6%
To 169,194
For our best start in seven years
We saw across the board growth
- As light trucks were up 18 ½ percent
  - And set a new January record of more than 80,000
- And passenger car sales were up 13%
Lexus also set a January record
- Its third consecutive new monthly mark
And Toyota was the #1 retail manufacturer in January

For the Toyota Division

Three of our core models
- Corolla, RAV4 and Highlander
Set January records
And two others – Camry and Tacoma
- Posted double-digit gains
As total sales of more than 146,000
Were up 13.5%
The Toyota Division also started 2015 as it ended 2014
- As the best-selling retail brand in America

The new January record for RAV4

Of nearly 20,000 vehicles
Was up 17 ½ percent from last year
And was the 10th consecutive new monthly record for the RAV4
As the compact sport utility market obviously remains red hot

4Runner sales were up 75.5%

And along with 16% increases
For Tacoma and Sienna
Pushed Toyota Division light truck sales to a new January record of 70,000
Topping the previous mark set in 2008

On the passenger car side

Corolla’s record month
Saw sales increase 20%
To more than 27,350 vehicles

While Camry also had a big month

Up nearly 15%
To 26,750
As we continue to build inventory of the new 2015 model
And while all the numbers aren’t in yet
It looks like Corolla and Camry will finish one-two atop the passenger car sales chart
Avalon was up 12%
While Prius was on a par with last year’s results

Looking ahead

The encouraging January results
On top of positive economic news including a seven year high in consumer confidence
Bodes well for the months ahead as we approach President’s Day and the first hint of the spring selling season we’ll continue to support the launch of the new Camry
- And you may have seen a couple new spots during the Super Bowl
We also introduced the new Tacoma to excellent reviews last month at the Detroit Auto and while it won’t go on sale until later this year we continue to have good inventories of the current model

Now I’d like to turn it over to Jeff for a look at the Lexus record results.

Lexus Group Vice President and General Manager Jeff Bracken:
Thank you Bill and good morning everyone.

As Bill mentioned

Lexus dealers had their best January ever
With total sales of 23,131 vehicles
Up 31% from last year
The industry’s biggest increase for the month and topping our previous January mark by more than 1,000 vehicles set back in 2007

That comes on the heels of our all-time

Best-ever month in December and we have now set a new sales record in four of the past six months

The results are a good indication

That our two all-new models
- The NX compact luxury utility vehicles
- And RC sport coupes
Are off to fast starts
But we also showed strong growth across the board
With the IS, GS, RX and GX all posting double-digit gains

NX sales topped 2,800 for the month

And while we don’t have anything to compare that to
That’s nearly 30% more than we planned for at the start of the month

The rest of the luxury utility lineup also performed well

RX sales rose 17% to 6,500
While the GX was up 25%
Bringing the total for the month to 11,477
Up 55%
And breaking a January record dating back to 2005

Our passenger car sales were up 14% in total

As the GS was up 30%
- The GS, by the way, will get an added boost later this year with the arrival of the GS-F which debuted last month at the Detroit Auto Show
The IS was 11% in January
The ES 3%
And the RC added 850 to our total

The marketing launch

for the RC and NX will continue to gather speed in February and you may have noticed ads for both vehicles during the Super Bowl…
In fact, according to Kelley Blue Book the RC commercial generated the most new-car searches of any model advertised on the Super Bowl

And since I mentioned KBB