Activist investment group Elliott Investment Management is raising the pressure on Toyota Motor by increasing its investment in a company that the Japanese automaker is attempting to take private.
Toyota Industries was founded in 1926 to manufacture and sell automatic looms. Today, it manufactures everything from air jet looms, diesel engines, and turbocharger starters to forklifts, batteries, and converters.
By 1995, the company’s lift truck production reached 1 million units. The company sold over 300,000 forklifts in 2024. Toyota Industries accounts for about 14% of the global lift truck market share.
That same year, Toyota Industrial Equipment S.A. launched as a joint venture with Toyota Motor and another company. As of last September, Toyota Motor owned about 24% of Toyota Industries.
However, in June, Toyota announced its intention to take the publicly traded Toyota Industries Corp. private.
Toyota said it would take the company private in a $26 billion deal that the company indicated would help accelerate its transition into a “mobility company.”
“Through this privatization, Toyota Industries intends to deepen collaboration within Toyota Group, dynamically and swiftly advance these activities, and lead the way in the mobility sector with respect to ‘goods’ for the transformation of Toyota Group,” the company said at the time.
A Toyota Industries forklift is helping assemble a Toyota Motor vehicle.
Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images
Toyota Motor faces pressure from Elliott Management over Industries’ privatization
Toyota’s announcement wasn’t a groundbreaking development for the company’s U.S. investors, as the stock tumbled sharply following the announcement. While Toyota shares are up about 4% since that time, the move has come with some scrutiny.
Toyota Motors’ $26 billion offer was more than 60% lower than previous media value estimates of about $42 billion, CNBC reported. According to Reuters, companies have come under increased scrutiny from the Financial Services Agency that regulates Japanese markets.
Related: Toyota plans major US investment following strong output, sales
On Dec. 10, Elliott Management increased its stake in Toyota Industries to 5.01%, according to a regulatory filing, which puts additional pressure on Toyota Motors, as the company needs shareholder approval for the deal.
The U.S.-based activist investor issued the filing in Japan.
Last month, the firm confirmed in a statement that it had made a “significant investment” in Toyota Industries and had been “sharing its views” with the company’s management.
The $76 billion investment firm is critical of the deal, which features an unlisted real estate company chaired by Akio Toyoda, who is also chairman of Toyota Motor.
Toyota Fudosan offered 16,300 yen (about $104 USD) per share in the deal, which was significantly below the stock’s closing price at the time, 18,400 yen (about $117 USD). Toyota Motor will also buy back its own shares from Toyota Industries once the deal closes.
“Elliott believes the proposed transaction very significantly undervalues Toyota Industries and reflects a process that has lacked transparency and has fallen short of proper governance practices,” Elliott said.
Elliott’s stake makes it one of the company’s largest shareholders, but it is behind Toyota Motor’s 25% stake and Toyota Fudosan’s 5.42% stake.
Toyota invests big in U.S. manufacturing
Toyota Industries’ engines are already on U.S. roads as they are used in many popular models, Mecanica Inteligente reported.
Toyota sold 207,910 vehicles in the U.S. in October, after selling 185,748 Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the U.S. in September, a 14.2% year-over-year increase in volume for the third quarter.
Of the 2.4 million vehicles Toyota sold worldwide in the first quarter of FY 2026, nearly 800,000 of those sales came from North America, making it Toyota’s most important region by far.
However, Toyota’s operating income in North America fell by $1.1 billion from a profit a year ago to a net loss of $438 million due to tariffs.
To increase its U.S. manufacturing footprint, as part of the company’s $10 billion U.S. manufacturing commitment over the next five years, Toyota announced in November a plan to invest $912 million in building hybrid capacity across five manufacturing plants.
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