Nissan ARIYA on the EV test track at the New York International Auto Show on March 28, 2024.
Danielle DeVries | CNBC
Japanese car sharing Nissan tumbled as much as 10.12%, the day after the company posted a downbeat quarterly result and said it would reduce global production capacity by 20%.
Shares in the company – which also announced plans to cut up to 9,000 staff – hit a four-year low of 368.5 yen on Friday, the weakest since September 2020.
Nissan released results for the second quarter ended in September, which showed a net loss of 9.3 billion yen (about $62 million), a reversal from a net profit of 190.7 billion yen in the same quarter last year.
Operating profit in the second quarter fell nearly 85% year-on-year to 31.9 billion yen, while revenue fell 5% to 2.99 trillion yen.
Nissan also lowered its full-year outlook, cutting its revenue projection to 12.7 trillion yen from 14 trillion yen, and also cutting its operating profit forecast to 150 billion yen from 500 billion yen.
The company’s board voted not to pay an interim dividend, and also scrapped the year-end dividend forecast.
Nissan said the company was “facing a difficult situation” and would take “immediate steps to turn around its performance.”
The measures include headcount reduction, other cost cuts as well as plans to “align the asset portfolio, and prioritize capital expenditures and investments in research and development.”
The goal is to reduce fixed costs by 300 billion yen and variable costs by 100 billion yen, compared to the 2024 financial year.
The company said it will also adopt a structure that will allow it to be profitable and generate cash in fiscal year 2026, despite annual sales of 3.5 million units.
Sales volume for the first half of the fiscal year stood at 1.6 million units, down 1.6% compared to the same period a year ago.
Nissan added that CEO Makoto Uchida will voluntarily waive 50% of his monthly compensation starting in November, while other members of the executive committee will also voluntarily take pay cuts.
