Tokyo (awp/afp) – Japanese carmaker Nissan on Thursday reported a decline in profits in the first quarter of its 2022/23 fiscal year that started on April 1, marked by many headwinds, but confirmed its annual targets.
Its net profit for the period totaled 47.1 billion yen (330 million Swiss francs), a fall of 59% year on year.
But the very sharp drop in this net result is mainly due to an unfavorable base effect, compared to Nissan’s net profit, boosted a year earlier by a large exceptional gain from the sale of its shares in the German Daimler .
The fall in its operating profit over the past quarter was thus more limited (-14.2% to 64.9 billion yen) and its turnover increased by 6.4% to 2,137.3 billion yen, despite a sharp drop in sales volume (-21.8% over one year).
Nissan explained in a press release that it suffered from an “extremely difficult market environment”, between the confinements in Shanghai, the persistent shortage of semiconductors and the soaring prices of raw materials and logistics costs.
“The market environment remained more difficult than expected” and it will remain “uncertain” in the coming months, commented the general manager of Nissan Makoto Uchida, quoted in the press release.
But Nissan is also better prepared than in the past to withstand external shocks, according to Uchida.
The group believes it has succeeded in mitigating headwinds by continuing to improve the “quality of its sales” – that is, by selling its vehicles at a higher price – as well as by remaining “focused on financial discipline”. and controlling its fixed costs, according to its press release.
Nissan says it has also benefited from a favorable currency effect linked to the fall of the yen in recent months, which has artificially inflated its revenue generated abroad.
The ally of the French Renault continues to target a net profit of 150 billion yen over its entire 2022/23 financial year (which would be a drop of 30% over one year), for an operating profit almost stable at 250 billion yen and annual revenue up 18.7% to 10,000 billion yen.
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