Toyota Motor Corp (TYO:7203) announced last week that it sold off its stake in Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) with commendable gains. Toyota is the second company after the Mercedes maker, Daimler AG (USA) (OTCMKTS:DDAIF), reported selling off its stake in the electric car company.
The Japanese carmaker released a statement saying that the sale underwent
“as part of our process of regularly reviewing our investment portfolio. We have a good relationship with Tesla, and will evaluate the feasibility of working together on future projects.”
The carmaker reported 2.4% stake in Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) in March with market evaluation of $690 million.
Toyota Motor Corp (TYO:7203) didn’t disclose the number of shares it disposed during the deal. On the contrary, Daimler AG (USA) (OTCMKTS:DDAIF) reported to sell its entire 4% stake in the electric car company for $780 million against its $50 million investment years ago. Some experts even speculate that both the companies are selling off its stake because of the huge capital gains and increasing competition from Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s Model S sedan, which sells for $71,000.
Earlier this year both Toyota Motor Corp (TYO:7203) and Tesla Motors criticized each other under which, Toyota favored Hydrogen-Fuel cell cars over their electric counterparts and Tesla did the opposite. Tesla further announced the closure of the settlement to supply electric batteries to the Japanese carmaker.
Earlier, Toyota came up as the most successful car-seller during the first nine months of 2014 with 7.615 cars sold during this period as compared to 7.4 million cars sold by Volkswagen AG (ADR) (OTCMKTS:VLKAY) and 7.372 sold by General Motors Company (NYSE:GM). Toyota ended 2013 with net sales of 9.98 million during the fiscal and is projected to sell up to 10.2 million vehicles this year. The Japanese automaker became the largest car-seller in 2008 after taking out General Motors Company (NYSE:GM).
This article has been written by Prakash Pandey.
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