Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn with the maker's new Altima sedan.
Nissan Motor Co., the Japanese automaker generally credited with staging the fastest recovery from last year’s earthquake and tsunami has underscored its rapid turnaround by reporting record sales for the 2011 fiscal year.
The maker reached an all-time record selling 4.8 million vehicles in 2011, with profits for the fiscal year that ended March 31 gaining 7%, to 341.1 billion yen. But the big jump occurred during the final quarter of the 2011 fiscal year, Nissan profits more than doubling, to 75.3 billion yen, or $943 million, up from 30.8 billion yen a year ago.
With production back to full speed after the disaster-led cuts of last year, Nissan is nothing but optimistic about the future, the maker forecasting further earnings gains on worldwide sales it expects to reach yet another record of 5.3 million for the 2012 fiscal year, which began on April 1. And it is predicting a 28% increase in earnings.
“As we start the new year, Nissan stands as a company re-tooled and ready to accelerate its growth,” said Carlos Ghosn, who serves as CEO of both Nissan and its global alliance partner Renault.
Ghosn remained surprisingly upbeat, even while Nissan was struggling to overcome the impact of last year’s Japanese disaster – and the subsequent flooding in Thailand that further hurt production. He laid out a six-year growth plan last year, dubbed Nissan Power 88, that projected boosting global market share to 8%, with an 8% operating profit margin by March 2017.
And during today’s news conference in Tokyo, Ghosn stressed that Nissan remains on track, declaring that, “Together with a stronger brand, investments in products, technologies and global capacity, we have the tools to achieve Nissan Power 88 and beyond.”
The maker is particularly upbeat about the current fiscal year which brings the launch of several key new products, including the midsize Altima and Sentra models.
Nissan is also making aggressive moves to boost sales in the key China market – both with its own Nissan brand and the new Venucia brand it is launching with Chinese partner Dongfeng. It is preparing to re-launch the classic Datsun marque in Russia and several other emerging markets, and it recently inked a joint venture to acquire a majority stake – in partnership with Renault – of Russia’s Avtovaz. It is also preparing for expanded production and sales in both Brazil and Mexico.
The latest quarter suggests that Nissan’s momentum is increasing, even though the operating profit for the January to March quarter, at 118.1 billion was slightly under analysts’ consensus forecast of 120 billion.
Ghosn forecast an operating profit of 700 billion yen for the current fiscal year, which would be the best for Nissan since the global automotive meltdown began in 2008. That is actually a conservative figure, with the industry consensus at a slightly higher 710 billion. Net earnings are forecast by the maker to reach 400 billion.
Nissan’s earnings were released two days after arch-rival Toyota announced it had quadrupled its own net profit for the 2011 fiscal year. (Click Herefor that story.)
Like its rival, Nissan has some significant headwinds to face, including the strong yen. It is rapidly expanding production outside Japanese to minimize the impact, however.
Looking back over the tsunami of challenges his company faced in 2011, Ghosn was clearly pleased. “It is an even more encouraging performance,” he said, “given the headwinds created by natural disasters, an over-valued yen and uncertain global economic conditions.”