Nissan's profit falls after stalling sales in US
The car maker is betting that the latest version of its high-volume Altima sedan will boost overall US sales and help trim incentive spending following its launch in October
Yokohama — Nissan says it has more work to do to rein in US vehicle discounts to improve profit in its key market, after it took a surprisingly big profit hit from sluggish sales as well as currency moves in the second quarter. Japan's second-biggest vehicle maker and domestic rivals including Toyota have struggled with low profit in North America for the past two years as they expanded discounts in an increasingly competitive US market, where vehicle sales have plateaued near record highs. "Unfortunately we can't say that we've been able to lower incentives significantly," CFO Hiroshi Karube told reporters at an earnings briefing. During the July-September quarter, the car maker eked out only a one percentage point improvement in incentives as a proportion of vehicle sales revenue, he added. "We're still not there yet," Karube said. "We have a lot of work to do in the third and fourth quarters." But Nissan was making progress in reducing stock of older models, he said, which would ...
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