Nissan extends sales target period

Nissan does not expect to hit its global sales target of 4.2 million vehicles by the end of March 2009, and has given itself another year to hit that goal, news reports said Sunday.

Nissan was forced to extend the target deadline because demand for its cars in Japan and the US has fallen short of expectations, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

The company now aims to achieve 4.2 million vehicle sales by the end of March 2010, the report said.

Japan's No 3 car maker has not missed a sales target in its seven years under Carlos Ghosn, chief executive at Nissan and Renault, who is expected to announce the revised plan later this month, the Nikkei business daily said.

The target was initially set in 2005 as part of a three-year plan, in which Ghosn promised to maintain hefty profit margins and boost annual sales by 820,000 in about four years.

Nissan warned in February that it might not achieve its full-year sales target of 3.7 million vehicles, the Yomiuri said.

The woes at Nissan, which is 44 per cent owned by Renault SA of France, underlined the diverging fortunes of the automaker and its arch-rivals Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co, which have both notched up record earnings and boosted market share in the US and elsewhere.

Nissan recently ceded its spot as Japan's second-largest automaker to Honda, and has struggled to boost profits amid sagging sales. A lack of new models hurt US sales and compounded wider problems such as tough competition and spiraling commodity costs.

Source: AAP 2007

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