AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/04 Report--

The epidemic continues to have an impact on the automobile industry, and Nissan, which is in trouble, is unable to reverse the decline.

Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said the company's performance is still deteriorating as a result of the epidemic and the company will further cut fixed costs, according to Bloomberg.

The outbreak led to a shortage of spare parts. Nissan closed some of its production lines in Kyushu in southwestern Japan on February 14 and 17, and some of Nissan's production in Japan was suspended on February 23. Affected by the epidemic, Nissan will further close production at factories in Malaysia, the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Mexico, Russia and Spain. Although the final scale of the outbreak remains to be seen, Nissan's future business plan will continue to have an impact on Nissan's future, making it difficult for Nissan to achieve a substantial recovery in 2020, Uchida said.

Nissan's current performance has also hit rock bottom, with its first quarterly loss since March 2009. In the first three quarters of fiscal year 2019, Nissan's total revenue was 7.5073 trillion yen, down 12.5% from a year earlier; operating profit was 54.3 billion yen, down 82.7% from a year earlier; and net profit was 39.3 billion yen (about 2.479 billion yuan), down 87.6% from a year earlier. In terms of sales, Nissan sold 5.176 million vehicles worldwide in 2019, down 8.4 per cent from a year earlier. Among them, there have been varying degrees of decline in the Chinese market, the American market, the European market and the Japanese market.

In addition, the Ghosn incident has also affected Nissan's profits, but also led to the confusion of the company's internal structure and the deterioration of the alliance. Japan's Financial Agency fined Nissan 2.42 billion yen (157 million yuan) for years of underreporting the income of former chairman Carlos Ghosn and a number of executives, and Nissan said it would be punished "sincerely" on the same day.

"if we fail to reverse the decline of Nissan, we are willing to accept the fate of being fired," Uchida said to shareholders on February 18. "

To save troubled Nissan, Mr. Uchida will come up with a plan by May to help the company recover from falling profits and business restructuring. Uchida must prove to the company that he can alleviate many of the problems in Nissan's operations and promote and repair the partnership with Renault.

Nissan has already announced that it will cut 12500 jobs worldwide by March 31, 2023, and plans to streamline its product line, involving a total of 60 models from Infiniti, Nissan and Datsan.

In addition, in early February, Nissan reached a new framework agreement with Renault and Mitsubishi to further strengthen its business model and organizational structure, and will take measures to promote resource sharing and help the three companies achieve effective improvement in competitiveness and performance. The medium-term strategic plans of the three member companies will be announced at the same time in May 2020.

Since the Ghosn incident, there have been many problems in the relationship between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi. In the current depressed automobile market, the loosening of the alliance is likely to hinder the development of the alliance. "We are struggling and our partners are struggling, but I believe we can strengthen the alliance, which is what I have to do and what I promise to do," Uchida said. "

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