BREAKINGVIEWS-Nissan’s sales goal emulates its Chinese rivals

By Katrina Hamlin

HONG KONG, April 14 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Nissan Motor’s 7201.T new sales strategy looks rather Chinese. The $8 billion automaker is a year into its latest turnaround plan. Now CEO Ivan Espinosa wants to ramp up car sales across the U.S., China and Japan, the company's home market. His targets could prove too ambitious but behaving more like the $135 billion BYD 002594.SZ brings benefits either way.

Espinosa is shooting for annual deliveries of 1 million vehicles in each of the U.S. and China markets by the financial year 2030, and 550,000 in Japan, the company said in a strategy update on Tuesday. The China number includes exports. Overall that amounts to a nearly 30% increase over those three markets, compared with 2025.

The Nissan boss can focus on sales as his turnaround gains traction. Fixed cost savings exceeded 160 billion yen, about $1 billion, as of the end of last year, ahead of schedule. The auto unit’s operating losses likely bottomed out in the year to March, according to analyst estimates from Visible Alpha.

The targets are nonetheless ambitious. To shift 550,000 cars at home, Nissan must increase deliveries by more than a third compared with 2025 in a shrinking market. Meanwhile in China, where Nissan sold only around 650,000 cars last year, raising deliveries to 1 million is a leap, even though the target includes exports to other regions.

The company has struggled to maintain, let alone grow, its overall sales in recent years. Its goals look lofty compared to industry forecasts too. A basket of peers on average will increase global deliveries by around 11% between 2025 and 2030, per Visible Alpha. Nissan’s new performance indicators look closer to those expected from more aggressive upstarts from China: BYD will boost sales by two-thirds by 2030, while Leapmotor 9863.HK could nearly triple shipments, forecasts suggest.

Top line growth is also harder to control than cost cuts. That's especially true given global uncertainty arising from events like the Washington-led tariff war and now the U.S. war against Iran. Both drive up the cost of owning and operating petrol-fuelled cars like those Nissan mostly makes. That might explain why its shares traded flat following its briefing.

But Nissan's update shows the group is emulating its fiercest Chinese rivals in other ways too. The company estimates changes made in the first year of its turnaround plan have reduced the time it takes to bring a new vehicle to market by 40% to 30 months, for instance. Even if Espinosa doesn’t deliver on his racy sales targets, they help to raise expectations for a new, nimbler Nissan.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Nissan Motor on April 14 said it aims to reach annual sales of 1 million vehicles in both the U.S. and China by the 2030 financial year and grow its annual sales volume in Japan to 550,000 cars over the same period. The China sales target includes exports. The company laid out targets in a strategy update.

Nissan shares rose 0.66% to 349.1 yen on April 14 following the announcement.