Toyota sees operating profit tripling this year

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, Japan's top automaker, said quarterly operating profit jumped more than five-fold to $3 billion and would treble in the current year as vehicle production roars back from post-disaster lows.

January-March operating profit increased to 238.5 billion yen beating a consensus estimate of 223 billion yen in a survey of 23 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Fourth-quarter net profit jumped to 121 billion yen from 25.4 billion yen a year ago.

For the year to next March, Toyota forecast operating profit would rise to 1 trillion yen ($12.54 billion), its highest since the global financial crisis. Consensus forecasts have been for a full-year profit of 990 billion yen.

Toyota shares have gained more than a third since the broad market trough in late-November, outperforming local rivals Nissan <7201.T> and Honda <7267.T>, U.S. competitors General Motors and Ford and Volkswagen , but lagging BMW's 41 percent jump. The main Topix share index <.TOPX> is up by a tenth over the same period.

($1 = 79.7750 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)