Nissan shows sign of recovery with FY2020 financial results

Nissan is gearing up for a strong 2021

Things haven’t been great at Nissan in the past few years. It started with the Carlos Ghosn issue, which drove the brand’s sales figures down. Afterward, the world experienced a pandemic, causing them to drop even further. Fortunately for Nissan, it seems like they’re ready to bounce back. The Japanese automaker recently released its FY2020 financial results, and so far, things appear to be going great

While the pandemic and subsequent chip shortage have affected their performance in FY2020 compared to FY2019, Nissan still managed to sell a total of 4,052,000 units globally. According to the numbers, the automaker experienced a 17.8% decrease in units sold in FY2020 compared to FY2019. As a result, net revenue was down to JPY 7.86 trillion, resulting in an operating loss of JPY 150.7 billion.

Despite that, the automaker managed to improve its total net income by cutting costs. In FY2019, Nissan recorded a net loss of JPY 671.2 billion and a net loss of JPY 448.7 billion in FY2020. As a result, net loss improved by JPY 222.5 billion from the prior fiscal year. In Q4 of 2020, Nissan even managed to improve revenue and lower net loss compared to the same period in 2019.

On paper, Nissan is quickly on the road to recovery. No doubt the introduction of 13 new cars helped the automaker get back on its feet. They even managed to do so before their original schedule of 18 months, rolling out the new lineup of vehicles in under a year. So far, the Rogue and the new Note e-Power have been the brand’s two hottest-selling models in the US and Japan, respectively.

By 2021, Nissan expects to increase unit sales by 8.6% from 2020 to 4,400,000 units. However, the automaker notes the possibility of supply shortages due to the lack of semiconductor supply. Factoring these into account, Nissan has a set operating profit forecast at plus or minus zero and net loss at JPY 60 billion. Still negative, but at least it’s not as bad as 2019 and 2020. Hopefully, it’s smooth sailing for Nissan from here, and they can continue sustaining the momentum into 2021.