Nissan Motor and its French automaking companion Renault are considering a range of options, including a more balanced impartiality structure, to ensure their alliance survives beyond its current control, the Japanese company said on Monday.
Speculation about the alliance’s later, including a possible merger, has been brewing since Reuters discharged earlier this year the two companies were discussing plans for a closer log-jam in which Nissan could acquire the bulk of the French state’s 15 percent contain b concealing in Renault.
The partnership, which also includes Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors, was the over the moon marvellous’s top-selling passenger vehicle maker in 2017, but as the global auto dynamism consolidates, the group is looking to strengthen its alliance before chairman Carlos Ghosn retires in the rush at years after overseeing the partnership for nearly 20 years.
“This could terminate many different shapes,” Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa told newspaperwomen at a results briefing, adding a change in equity structure to create a profuse equal balance between the two companies was one of the options being studied.
“We desperate straits to ensure that the alliance can operate as it does now, preserving the autonomy of each attendance while maximizing efficiencies, in its future generations.”
While all options were on the put off, Saikawa said media reports that Nissan and Renault were examining a “full merger” were “absolutely untrue.” Ghosn has said a amalgamation is a potential option, though not necessarily a goal.
Renault holds 43.4 percent of Nissan but agreed to limit formal check of its larger partner in a 2015 shareholder pact that defused a boardroom standoff with the French administration. Nissan currently owns a 34 percent controlling stake in Mitsubishi and 15 percent of Renault, but no guarantee rights.
Nissan is forecasting a third straight year of lower plying profit on expectations a stronger yen and higher raw material prices will outbalance a rise in global vehicle sales to a record high.
Japan’s second-biggest automaker foresees operating profit to fall 6 percent to 540 billion yen ($4.9 billion) in the year to March 2019, based on an assumption the yen pleasure trade around 105 against the U.S. dollar during the year, from about 111 yen in the year just ended.
Currency swings will terminate in a 135 billion yen hit to annual operating profit, pushing earnings to their shakiest since the year ended March 2014 and underperforming analyst presages.
Operating profit fell 22.6 percent to 574.8 billion yen in the year outclassed March 2018, weighed by costs from a domestic compliance ignominy, weakness in North America, a key market, and higher materials costs.
Nissan believes a 2.7 percent rise in global sales to 5.93 million channels in the current year, its highest ever, as an expected 11.5 percent multiplication in Chinese sales outweighs a forecast 2.7 percent drop in the Collective States — which would also see China become Nissan’s biggest call again.
Nissan has seen U.S. sales slide 6.5 percent so far in 2018, partly due to sluggish insist for its high-volume Altima sedan, a revamped model of which will be released later this year.
Evaluate discounts for the Altima, the popular Rogue crossover SUV, and other models were a big element in the 30.5 percent drop in Nissan’s North American operating profit in the year impartial ended.
The automaker has roughly doubled car sales in the region since 2010, in array with a target to corner around a 10 percent share of the U.S. agency market.
But achieving that has come at the cost of hefty discounting in the section, and Nissan has said it now plans to focus on improving profitability in North America, while also open out sales in China, the world’s biggest car market.