Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today announced financial results for the three months to June 30, 2014.
Operating profit rose to 122.6 billion yen for the first quarter of the 2014 fiscal year, representing a 5% margin on net revenues that climbed 10.4% to 2.47 trillion yen for the period.
"Nissan continued to make progress in the first three months of the fiscal year as encouraging demand for new products, benefits from recent plant investments, and improving market conditions in North America, China and Europe combined to lift both revenues and profits," said Carlos Ghosn, president and chief executive officer. "Nissan is well placed to deliver on its outlook given our continued product offensive along with measures to enhance competitiveness, build market share and the ongoing benefits of our Alliance strategy."
The improvement reflected particularly strong unit sales growth in the key markets of the U.S. and China, up 14.1% and 21.1% respectively. The company also benefited from rising demand for award-winning products including the Qashqai, Rogue and X-Trail, all derived from the Common Module Family developed within the Renault-Nissan Alliance.
During the first quarter of FY14 Nissan sold 1,240,000 vehicles globally, a 6.0% rise year-on-year.
The company continued to expand its zero-emissions leadership. Total sales since launch of the all-electric Nissan LEAF have passed 124,000 units and it continues to be the best-selling EV in history. Nissan took zero-emissions into the light commercial vehicle segment with the June launch of e-NV200, which offers versatility and class-leading running costs.
Nissan also provided a financial update on a management pro forma basis which includes the proportionate consolidation of the results of the joint venture in China. Pro forma results for the first quarter show that net revenue increased to 2.69 trillion yen, up 7.2% year-on-year. Operating profit was up 32.3% versus the same period last year, to 155.8 billion yen, resulting in a 5.8% operating profit margin, an increase of 1.1 percentage points.
FY2014 Outlook
Nissan reaffirmed its global sales forecast for fiscal 2014. The company expects to sell 5.65 million units this fiscal year, up 8.9%. New plant capacity will come on-stream in markets such as Mexico and Brazil. Full-year sales of new models including Nissan Qashqai and Rogue, Datsun GO and Infiniti Q50, will contribute to the momentum.
Based on this sales outlook, Nissan maintained forecasts first issued to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in May 2014. Calculated under the equity accounting method for our China joint venture for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015.
