AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/23 Report--

Nissan's global headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, and its main research and development center in Kanagawa Prefecture will be closed for 16 days in response to the COVID-19 epidemic and are expected to reopen on May 10, Reuters reported.

A Nissan spokesman said that in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, Nissan will use Japan's Golden week holiday to temporarily close some of its facilities in Japan, including Nissan's Yokohama headquarters and non-production facilities in Hougi, Chuibin and Lekki areas. The shutdown could affect 15000 employees who will receive most of their full wages during this period. After that, Nissan will decide whether to postpone the resumption of work according to the development of the epidemic.

Before that, Nissan had closed most of its factories around the world. Since mid-March, Nissan has suspended production at factories in Europe, North America, South Africa, Egypt and Japan. According to foreign media reports, Nissan announced on the 16th that it would stop production at its US plant until mid-May. In addition, Nissan will cut jobs, with about 10, 000 jobs at three factories in the US, about 6000 in the UK and about 3000 in Barcelona, Spain.

The epidemic led to production stoppage, falling demand and parts procurement and other problems, making the already troubled Japanese car company even worse. The company reported revenue of 7.5073 trillion yen in the first three quarters (March-December 2019), down 12.5% from a year earlier, and net profit of 39.3 billion yen, down 87.6% from a year earlier. It is worth mentioning that this is Nissan's first quarterly loss since March 2009. Subsequently, Nissan cut its net profit for fiscal year 2019 to 85 billion yen from 150 billion yen, while net profit fell to 65 billion yen from 110 billion yen.

Although Nissan has encountered difficulties in overseas markets, many of its factories in the Chinese market have begun to recover. Its business departments and factories in Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Dalian, Xiangyang and Shiyan resumed work on February 17, and Dongfeng Co., Ltd., headquartered in Wuhan, officially resumed work on March 30.

According to previous figures released by Nissan, sales in China in the first quarter of this year were 206600, down 39.9 per cent from the same period last year. As the largest single market of Nissan, the restart of the Chinese market plays an important role for Nissan because the overseas epidemic situation is still not under effective control.

However, Nissan's recovery plan has not been affected by the outbreak, and the company will announce a new recovery plan next month. Nissan's new CEO, Makoto Uchida, has said that he is willing to accept the fate of being fired if he cannot reverse the decline of Nissan.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat