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In the past year, Nissan has lowered its revenue target twice. First, it reduced its operating profit margin from 8% to 6% in 2022; and then set its revenue target to 14.5 trillion yen, which is lower than The previous 16.5 trillion yen. Just a week ago, Nissan Motor announced for the third time that it had lowered its fiscal 2019 consolidated financial report forecast. It is expected that the first net loss in this year or 11 years will be met.

Under the new strategy, Nissan will make every effort to avoid losses, and the Chinese market may become the starting point for its Jedi counterattack.

Will China be the bottom card?

The source said that the key to Nissan ’s new plan is “we are rationalizing the business, reprioritizing the business, refocusing the business, and laying the foundation for future development.”

The new business focus, China will undoubtedly be the key link.

According to the plan, Nissan will strive to cater to the Chinese market in terms of products and marketing, and tailor new models for Chinese consumers. The Qichen brand will also be repositioned to better cope with the competition of many local brands.

In 2019, Nissan’s cumulative sales in China exceeded 1.54 million units, and although it fell 1.1% year-on-year, it still outperformed the market. Among them, Dongfeng Nissan set the best annual sales record, with sales of more than 1.17 million units, an increase of 0.3% year-on-year; Infiniti sold a total of 33,000 units, an increase of 18.1% year-on-year.

The data looks pretty good, but it is difficult to conceal the fact that Nissan is gradually lagging behind in the “Three Japanese Heroes”. In the previous ten years, NissanIt is the champion of Japanese car sales in China, but in 2019, Toyota was overshadowed by 1.6207 million annual sales and a 9% year-on-year growth rate. Compared with Toyota’s vigorous advancement, Nissan has staggered ahead, and the best performing Dongfeng Nissan has grown only by one of the main models of Xuanyi (sales accounted for up to 50%); high-end brand Infiniti has a global scope including the Chinese market All have experienced weak sales growth. Due to the lack of sales support, the introduction of new cars has been slower.

Previously, Nissan’s head of China, Yamazaki Shohe mentioned that after 2020, the company will focus on expanding market share and improving sales quality. Earlier this year, Nissan China steadily set its annual sales target at 1.6 million vehicles, which was slightly higher than the same period last year. However, at the end of the first quarter, this target was less than 13% completed.

In order to maintain China ’s position, Nissan has made a series of efforts: to promote the collaborative work of the two brands of Dongfeng Infiniti and Dongfeng Nissan. Five pure electric models have been launched in China within two years. By the end of December 2019, there were 140 Ten thousand Nissan and Qichen brand models have achieved intelligent networking.

Even the new crown epidemic did not allow Nissan to dare to stop for a long time. On February 17, the Guangzhou Huadu plant was fully resumed; three days later, the Dalian plant resumed production; the Zhengzhou plant resumed production on March 15. The Hubei Xiangyang plant, which was most severely affected by the epidemic, also resumed production in late March.

With various efforts, Nissan’s sales volume finally recovered in April, with terminal sales exceeding 82,000 units, a positive year-on-year growth. Earlier, according to Reuters, Nissan will cut Japanese production by 70% in May and 43% in June. In contrast, Nissan announced at the same time that it would increase production in China in May.

The question now is, will Chinese consumers pay after increasing production?

Nissan self-help

In fact, before brewing a new strategic plan, Nissan has launched multiple rounds of self-help: In 2019, Nissan announced that it will lay off 125,000 people worldwide, and plans to 8 factories worldwide, involving Infiniti and Nissan The product line of a total of 60 models of the three Datsang brands was streamlined. It is expected to reduce production capacity by 10% by 2023 to control costs. At the general meeting of shareholders in February this year, Nissan CEO Uchida also made a “warrant”, which told angry shareholders that if he could not improve Nissan’s profitability, shareholders were asked to expel him immediately.

Before, Uchida often talked with employees about the new “Nissan method”. He said that in the era of Ghosn, the company has been actively pursuing higher market share and sales for many years, but now Nissan has shifted its focus to profitability.

All this seems to be in another endless loop: In order to regain competitiveness, in GeAfter that, Nissan increased its investment in research and development of new technologies, which led to a decline in the company ’s net profit. It takes time for technological upgrading and mass production, but consumers do not buy its upgraded brand positioning.

A person familiar with the matter said that over the years, everything has been based on sales growth. “We turned our focus to sales quality and completed the switch overnight. The action was too fast and affected the business.”

Now, according to the new three-year strategic plan, Nissan plans to continue to scale down or reduce its annual sales target by 1 million units. The new development strategy will be announced on May 28, but from the currently disclosed trends, Nissan may need to answer the following questions first:

How to properly handle the relationship with other alliance partners? Earlier, due to the Ghosn incident, the relationship between Nissan and Renault was on the verge of collapse. According to the plan, Nissan will expand cooperation with Mitsubishi and Renault to promote Mitsubishi’s plug-in hybrid vehicles in Asia except China and Japan, and use Renault’s electric vehicle technology in Europe to reduce the three. Competition. If you want to use the other party’s technology, rebuilding the relationship may be a prerequisite.

Second, how to streamline the bloated global business? Nissan’s thinking is to focus on increasing the speed of introducing new models and expanding the targeted model lineup in the core market. In addition to focusing on the three core markets of China, the United States and Japan, in Asia, the company also plans to expand its operations in Thailand and the Philippines. In addition, its new plan will also adjust factory production lines in countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, focusing on market segment advantages.

On April 1, at the beginning of the new fiscal year 2020/21, Uchida said in a letter to employees: “We will have to endure a period of time Inconvenience and uncertainty. We can certainly survive this storm. “It is just how long the storm will last under adverse circumstances. Whether it can survive the storm is still unknown.

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