Nissan is having a "performance crisis."
That's what the Japanese automaker's president, Carlos Ghosn, said on Friday after Nissan slashed its annual forecast and reported a 22 percent slump in earnings from October through December.
"We have today a performance crisis and we need to fix it as soon as possible," president and chief executive Ghosn told reporters in Tokyo in a conference call from Paris. "We don't take this lightly ... it's really an interrogation for us, about our management ways."
Japan's No. 3 automaker by global vehicle production, said net income fell to 104.5 billion yen ($870.8 million) in the fiscal third quarter, compared with 135 billion yen a year earlier.
The drop forced the Tokyo-based company to cut its profit forecast for the fiscal year through March by 12 percent to 460 billion ($3.83 billion). If realized, it would be Nissan's first annual profit decline in seven years.
Sales climbed a meager 1.8 percent from a year earlier to 2.34 trillion yen ($19.5 billion) on a 3 percent fall in unit sales to 795,000. The company also warned that it is falling behind its full-year sales target of 3.7 million vehicles.
Read Article