Toyota Motor raised its operating profit forecast for the financial year ending in March 2014 by 7.8 percent on Friday as the weakening yen makes its export business more profitable and as it posted strong sales in its biggest market, the United States.
The world's best-selling carmaker now expects to book 1.94 trillion yen ($19.55 billion) in annual operating profit, up from its previous forecast of 1.8 trillion yen. That is lower than the 2.27 trillion yen estimated by 26 analysts.
Toyota posted an 87.9 percent rise in operating profit to 663.4 billion yen for its April-June first quarter, roughly in line with the average estimate of 649 billion yen in a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S survey of four analysts.
(Read more: Toyota leads gains in strong July for automakers)
Toyota, the third biggest carmaker in the United States, sold 1.3 million vehicles there in January-July, up 8 percent from a year ago. In the month of July, sales rose 17 percent, outselling Ford on a monthly basis for the first time in three years, as it posted strong sales of the Avalon and RAV4.