Posted Feb 14 2020 at 9:33 a.m.
Hangover for Nissan at the Tokyo Stock Exchange this Friday. The Japanese automaker, which released its disappointing quarterly results on Thursday marked by a drop in sales and the lowering of its annual forecasts , was sanctioned immediately by the investors. At the close of the Tokyo market, the stock sank 9.64% to 513.70 yen.
And for good reason. In the past three months, the group – which was just beginning to recover from the hubbub created by the Ghosn affair – has posted a net loss of 26.1 billion yen, or 220 million euros. A year earlier, at the same period, the group still made a profit of 70 billion yen.
To explain this new deterioration in accounts, Makoto Uchida, the new CEO of Nissan, pointed to a decline in sales faster than expected in all markets. With the notable exception of China, where results were still almost stable at the end of 2019 before the health crisis .
No dividend
The ally of French Renault has also revised down sharply its annual forecast of annual operating profit, from 150 to 85 billion yen (between 1.26 billion and 710 million euros), and more slightly that of its annual turnover, revised to 10,200 billion yen (85,7 billion euros) against 10,600 billion yen (89,1 billion euros) previously.
Nissan, which had already drastically reduced its annual forecasts last November, also gave up on Thursday paying a dividend at the end of its annual exercise. Its shareholders will have to settle for a meager interim dividend of 10 yen per share. These forecasts “do not include the potential impact of new coronavirus “Also warned general manager Makoto Uchida at a press conference at the group’s headquarters in Yokohama (southwest of Tokyo).
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