Nissan had faced large losses in the past three years. From the financial ratios, we could see that almost all of the profitability ratios were appeared as the negative percentage. Which means that the effectiveness of the firm’s management of profit in relation to both sales and investment were low. Also, it had decreasing by each year.
Nissan seems to misread or ignored the consumers trends in the both Japan and the United States’ markets. The weakest points, and the issues that Nissan lack of are the brand identity and the product planning. Even though, Nissan had tried to build up the models- Maxima to compete with Toyota’s Camry, and Honda’s Accord, but failed to make an impact because it lacked a strong product identity it’s vehicles cannot have the same equipments and horsepower as other competitive vehicles. The reason for that is because Nissan afford the large amount of money in the vehicle’s investments. “Nissan cannot maintaining its market share, and had decreased down from 30% of hold to 20% in the Japanese market. Also, decreased down from 5.6% to only 4% in the United States’ market.” (Nissan: Automaker struggling, p.10) The other big problem came with it is overcapacity and shrinking sales. If the products cannot meet the customers’ need, there will happen overcapacity. Moreover, the company’s debts estimated at nearly $30 billion, an amount roughly equal to its annual sales.
Compare with other competitors Nissan still have pretty good amount of the sales, not the best one, but also not the worst one. That means the problem for Nissan is not the product itself. The problem they face should be the organization problem. Last year 1999, the Asia economic recession had affect to many of the businesses in the Asia market, especially the motor businesses. The Japanese companies, Toyota and Honda were both suffered steep losses because of the economic recession. However, the economy problem had also affected in Nissan, but that was not the main problem for Nissan. For the GM and Ford companies that are not the Japanese companies were not having this problem. From the ratios, we could see that they did not have as much as profit compare to the Japanese motors, but they are more stable than others. One possible solution to solve Nissan’s problem is to find a strong oversea partner to support Nissan’s investments that oversea.
Although Nissan, Japan’s second-largest automotive assembler, can make vehicles cheaply, not enough people want to buy them, and the huge capital investments Nissan made during the 1980s do not appear to be generating a return that would allow the group to pay down its colossal debts. Nissan’s net debt is equivalent to 66 per cent of Japan’s annual defense spending. Nissan’s debt would not be a problem if it were generating the cash necessary to cover interest and pay down its obligations. Nissan has been cutting its capital expenditure, a decision that is partly to blame for its lackluster product line-up and poor sales in Japan. In the US, profits were hit by aggressive discounting and worse than expected residual values on leased vehicles. Only in Europe is Nissan profitable.
