Strong sales of cars and light trucks propelled earnings for Japan-based Nissan Motor Co. to $2.17 billion (238.8 billion yen) on 12.7% higher revenues of $36.5 billion (4.008 trillion yen) for the first six months of fiscal 2005 – an increase of 0.5% from the same period in fiscal 2004.
“Many of the external risks we forecast at the beginning of the year have materialized, including higher incentives, commodity prices and interest rates,” said Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “Despite this challenging environment, we still achieved strong results for the first half due to robust sales in the U.S. and continuous improvement in our European operations.”
Worldwide, Nissan said it sold over of 1.59 million vehicles in the first half of fiscal 2005 year, an increase of 8.8% compared with fiscal 2004. Though sales fell 4.9% to 368,000 units in Japan, in the U.S., sales grew 16.6% to 489,000 units, while European sales rose 6.6% to 285,000 units in the same period.
“The business climate in the second half is likely to remain severe as the risks are expected to continue,” said Ghosn. "Despite this outlook, we are maintaining our full-year forecast – net revenue of 8.176 trillion yen ($77.1 billion) and net profit of 510 billion yen ($4.81 billion).”