AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/30 Report--

Infiniti, Nissan's high-end luxury brand, will relocate its headquarters from Hong Kong to Yokohama in the middle of next year and continue to push for business streamlining. Infiniti has been committed to building its brand into an international brand since Infiniti set up its first store in Hong Kong seven years ago.

Infiniti said the move would help better coordinate with Nissan's parent company. Most of Infiniti's R & D, product development and design work has never left Japan.

Infiniti's return to Japan will overturn the decision of former chairman Carlos Carlos Ghosn to play down the brand's Japanese ancestry in order to establish a more global image. However, the move is crucial for Nissan to promote the electrification strategy of the Infiniti brand. Every high-end model Infiniti plans to launch from 2021 will be an all-electric or hybrid.

Nissan, the parent company, has been tightening cost controls at a time when Infiniti's profits have fallen sharply. In fiscal year 2018, Nissan's revenue was 11.57 trillion yen, down 3.2% from a year earlier; operating profit was 318.2 billion yen, down 44.6% from a year earlier, a decade low; net profit reached 319.1 billion yen, down 57.3% from a year earlier; and operating profit margin was 2.7%, down 2.1 percentage points from 4.8% in fiscal year 2017.

In fiscal 2019, Nissan expects operating profit to fall another 28 per cent compared with fiscal 2018, while net profit nearly halved by 47 per cent. Operating margins will fall to 2.0 per cent from 2.7 per cent in fiscal 2018.

Infiniti is facing a decline in sales in the United States, its biggest market. Last year, Infiniti sales in the US fell 2.7 per cent to 149280, while global sales fell 5.2 per cent to 233445. Infiniti is also having a hard time in China, where total sales in 2018 were just 44407, down 8 per cent from a year earlier, as there are only two domestic models, the Q50L and the QX50. Ranked 58th among all brands. Among them, the top three were Q50L, with sales of 17930 vehicles, ranking first, down 14% from the previous year. QX50 and Q70 ranked second and third, respectively, with sales of 9813 and 6418, respectively.

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