Toyota’s Cash Pile Grows to Record $36.6 Billion After Dumping Securities

(Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp.'s cash pile expanded to a record 3.98 trillion yen ($36.6 billion) by the end of September after Japan's biggest company scaled back its investments in securities.

Cash and equivalents increased by 405.1 billion yen in the first six months of the fiscal year, or 11% above the end of last fiscal year, the automaker said in its earnings statement Thursday. Time deposits jumped 18% to 1.33 trillion yen.

Read more on Toyota's earnings

Toyota's investments in securities shrank by a combined 510 billion yen, or 5.9%. About half of those were short-term marketable securities, which tumbled 22% to a 10-year low of 876.4 billion yen.

While overall liquidity was little changed — total liquid assets, which the company often cites as the best measure of its cash on hand, fell 0.03% — the figures indicate Toyota is putting its money in safer bank accounts instead of riskier securities. It's also the latest signal that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's years-long push to stamp out cash hoarding isn't working.

Read more about Japan Inc.‘s growing cash pile

Toyota isn't the only company sitting on a lot of money. Apple Inc. reported it had $48.8 billion in cash and equivalents in the latest quarter, while Germany's Volkswagen AG had 31 billion euros ($34 billion).

To contact the reporter on this story: Young-Sam Cho in Hong Kong at ycho2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net, Will Davies, Reed Stevenson

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