Nissan, in the face of slowing sales and management instability following the arrest of former chairman Carlos Ghosn, has seen its shares fall to a decade low after it slashed its full-year profit outlook and scrapped year-end dividend payout, Bloomberg reports.
Its shares fell 9.6% last Friday, with a market capitalisation of 2.17 trillion yen (RM81.8 billion), behind Subaru, Suzuki, Honda, and Toyota. In fact, Nissan’s stock is down 19% since the start of the year, after a 28% decline in 2019 and 22% in 2018. The company also revised its full-year operating profit forecast to 85 billion yen (RM3.2 billion), down from an initial estimate of 150 billion yen (RM5.65 billion).
To further combat plummeting profits, Nissan will cut 12,500 jobs globally in a bid to free up cash for investment in its next-generation technology. It hopes to stay competitive in areas such as electric vehicles and self-driving cars.
Company CEO Makoto Uchida said at a press conference: “Unfortunately, our business performance has worsened more than we anticipated, and there’s no letting up on investing in the future. In order to invest in growth, we ended up with this dividend.” Uchida took over the role as CEO in December 2019, and promised to unveil a new midterm plan this May for Nissan and its two-decade alliance with Renault.
Meanwhile, in the latest three-month period, Nissan posted an operating profit of 23 billion yen (RM867 million), falling short of analysts’ average estimate of 59 billion yen (RM2.2 billion). Quarterly sales fell by 18% to 2.5 trillion yen (RM94.26 billion), missing analysts’ prediction of 2.7 trillion yen (RM101.8 billion).
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tatsuo Yoshida said: “There’s no magic potion. They’re going to have to make bold cutbacks in production.” Nissan’s core sales regions, which include China and North America, are slowing down. Profits in the latter fell by over 25% compared to a year ago.
Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta said he knows “exactly what the problem is,” and is confident that the US market will rebound. The company has planned to introduce eight new models US over the next two years, including replacements for the ageing Qashqai and X-Trail SUVs.
In China, Nissan had shut three of its factories due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. At least one of the factories have been reopened today, while the remaining two facilities will resume operations on February 20. Those plants have been closed since late January as part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration, and the extended closure is expected to have some impact on income and revenue in the current quarter.
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Business has ups and downs.
Its normal.
But A country cannot.
ironically there current management is over-confidence and over-dependence on USA market…
Sold fgv shares. Buy low, sell high…
More like a nisan than nissan now. Li Shufu, do you read this?
And this is why you don’t upset your godsent saviour. Padan muka another of Ghosn prediction is coming true. This is the start to the breakup of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance and soon the end of Nissan themselves.
Nissan is so ungrateful. When they were down, when they were practically bankrupt, they went to Renault begging on their knees for help.
And Renault was so generous to send in their best A Team and their best CEO and tons of money to save them. And save them they did, all thanks to Ghosn whose achievements are like Messiah. And what the japanese did, they backstabbed him and paraded him around to be shame just like Messiah. They were about to sacrifice him just like Messiah but he was smart to run in the end. Japan didn’t syukur for him coming to save them but instead wanted to end him. And there are many examples like these japanese that never syukur for being saved.
These japanese and others like them don’t deserve leaders such as Ghosn & Najib & Mesiah that only appears once in 2000 years, willing to put everything they had into saving their company/country/souls, but see what those got saved do to them? Jailed, spat at, publicly humiliated, willing to sacrifice them w/o thinking what they had done to save them.
The world and its people and history doesn’t deserve such luminaries.
lol najib is and always will be a crook
The Romans also said Messiah was a crook but history proved them wrong. Again history will prove you wrong in time.
Proverbs: Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.
Hail! There is karma in this world after all!
Bad people in Nissan Japan cares about millions & lost their multi billions.. stupid bad people..?
Your saviour then became no 1 enemy, crime most wanted, lock him for bath and communication.
How he could be charged for underpaid reporting when the boards approved with signed documents. A trap.. set-up.
That why 2 years no case to the court and if there is then 5 to 10 years to finish..
Saikawa did same thing, he promised to pay back. No crime charge or force lock up..
Bad people..
Serves Nissan right. Still haven’t shaken off their WW2-era racism and xenophobia, still doing the dishonorable Japanese backstab-and-sabotage tricks against a foreigner.. biting the hand that saved them. This is their come-uppance.
No worries Nissan, Can always JV with P1 or P2. In Malaysia, we have the unlimited money, technology, govt-undying support and all the time in the world….
FYI, we also have flying car in the pipe line.
Are you impressed oredi, Nissan?
But the big question, whether proton or perodua will willing to partner with nissan? Sure perodua is the likely one as they had been decades subservient to whatever trash thrown at them from daihatsu & toyota rejects. But proton i don’t think so as they had broken from their bonds of unfair slave servitude to mitsubishi.