Featured Toyota shareholders protest EV stance with votes to oust longtime leader from the board

wow! i thought he just took over from the old man.

'several investors' meaning, how many out of how many?

most just want to see an roi, whether it be stock price or dividend.

it's pointless to compare them to tesla, but fair to compare with other legacy makers. the question is, are the other makers making a profit on ev's?

 

Yep, Nokia is a good example of where Toyota is heading... Also PalmOS... Of course the irony of these comparisons is electric cars are software based, not engine based and Toyota is so far behind on being a software company, let alone an EV battery manufacture its ridiculous!

And yes, I agree with your analysis that Toyoda's role on the board is making it easy for him to undermine new leadership and needs to step down.

 

the nature of the complaining shareholders is telling. not that i disagree with them, but will be interesting to see where this goes.

 

The major shareholders are just pushing for more Toyota EV sales soon. In any negotiation, you ask for more to achieve a compromise that meets your goals. Toyota's 2026 goals are already exceeded by Tesla today. Tesla has the engineering and battery technology that Toyota still needs to develop. The shareholders know industry leaders in a given segment can and have missed trends and lose their position. Will Toyota become the next GE or DuPont and fall to mid pack in their segment? Toyota shareholders are concerned.

 

or will they maximize profits by limiting ev sales until the supply chain improves and costs come down?

 

Toyota is already making as many vehicles as they ever have. But very few plugins and almost no evs. The economy is booming and pent up demand is not being met. If Toyota had the 1.5 million evs this year they would sell them all including their normal production. Which would make Toyota Corp much more and is a significant shareholder concern with earlier management decisions. The current high market adjustments and excessive add-ons are enriching the US based distributors like Gulf States and particularly the dealers.

 

making more unprofitable ev's will reduce the number of profitable gassers they can sell, unless they open separate factories.
adding a drop dead date for 100% ev's won't change anything, but the clifornia and new york liberals will be happy

 

There are Teslas all over Texas and Florida as well.

 

are their state retirement boards protesting toyotas lack of ev deadline?

i dare say rhonda santis would have them all fired

 

The EVs are unprofitable now because Toyota didn't make the investments to make a competitive product. They were more worried about those ICE profits. Even now, other traditional car companies have taken more steps to have profitable EVs in future. When there will be smaller markets for those ICEs. Remember, Toyota's lack of investment is the reason why they are struggling to meet their PHEV demand.

The shareholders don't care about a 100% date, they just want a stronger commitment to investing in any EVs than Toyota has shown so far. A date is just a signal for that.

They'll complain if the investment return on Toyota drops

No mention of ESG. They'll remain oblivious to the situation.

 

Toyota doesn't need institutional investors. Go it alone!

Bob Wilson

 

Does the Japanese/EU public agree with that Toyota is going too slow to electric BEV? We keep accusing Toyota of crimes against humanity for not sucking up more to USA liberal preferred direction.

 

Only thing more dangerous than activist shareholders taking out board members who are obliviously tanking company stock with their long term plan, is all the oligarchs who are starting to short-shell Toyota stock so they get incredibly rich when Toyota's stock crashes. And there's already close to a million shares of Toyota stock that have been used in a short-sell position. May well be how it all ends...

And most people don't know it, but short-selling stock used to be illegal, but Reagan administration deregulated it so Milken, and all the junk bonds and S&L criminals could get away with way more crimes than they used to get away with.

 

we can't predict the future of profitable ev's for legacy carmakers, likely some will and some won't. and we don't yet know which side of the ledger toyota will fall on

 

When was it made illegal?

I read a bio of Cornelius Vanderbilt that might have been a lot less entertaining with short-selling off the table.

 

"Shareholders including the New York City comptrollers office, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and several European asset managers said they have voted or plan to vote to oust several Toyota directors including Toyoda from their board seats at the meeting Wednesday."
- OP article

Europe is buying more EVs than the US.

The lack of domestic EV choices in Japan has lead to the foreign portion of that segment rising to something like 30% from the 10% for the rest of new car sales. This was likely contributed to Toyoda stepping down as CEO.

We know Tesla is profitable. Those other legacy car makers are adopting what Tesla has done, at least in part. Toyota has made statements about doing the same, but the shareholders that without an announced date for EV shift, and Toyoda still on the board, they are worried that the statements are just lip service, leaving Toyota in a poor position in the future..

 

Stock buybacks were illegal before Reagan deregulation too. That one was far more egregious because in past decade every major funding effort to help our economy from an economically wounded moment got mostly spent on stock buy backs to make CEO's rich rather than to support the greater economic recovery.

But specific to shorts sells:

"Short selling is an investment strategy that speculates on the decline in a stock or other securities price. The SEC adopted Rule 10a-1 in 1937, which stated market participants could legally sell short shares of stock only if it occurred on a price uptick from the previous sale." https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/110614/why-short-selling-legal-brief-history.asp

 

Trouble in automaker's board rooms is likely a good preliminary indication of which of them will fail... A revolving door at the top is the same: Why Leaders Lose Their Way - HBS Working Knowledge