Toyota's Rosy but Risky Forecast

The New York Times reports that Toyota admitted it had problems with brakes on its Prius. The potential costs of repairs and lost sales due to the Prius issue are apparently not included in Toyota's forecasts.
The obvious question about Toyota's projections is whether they are based on a view of the company's future that's much too optimistic. The firm cannot even begin to guess the impact of product-liability suits and lost sales due to the remarkably severe damage that Toyota's reputation has suffered.
Sales of Toyota vehicles are dropping already, and could stay down for months. The company's U.S. sales for January were off nearly 16%, and its recall announcements came at the very end of the period. Sales could easily drop much further than that in February, and there's no reason to believe that they'ill recover quickly, as other large car companies work to pick up sales that would normally go to the Japanese firm.
Toyota's second-largest market is Japan, and its sales are rapidly expanding in China, totaling more than 700,000 last year. Sales in those regions and the big European markets could also fall and stay down for a period that's impossible to predict.
Toyota's fourth-quarter 2009 profit could be its last for a long time, no matter what the company has forecast.