The global economic and financial crises continues to make it’s presence known on the worl’d main automakers. As
recent numbers show, the Big Three automakers of the united States are not the only manufactures to feel the impact in a
major way. Unfortunately, the Renault company today posted an almost eight percent drop (79%) in full-year net profit because of the severe fall in demand for vehicles and did not offer a specific financial forecast for this year. The French giant is targeting positive free cash flow by slashing inventories, temporary eliminating the dividend and several other key measures. In addition, they will be attempting to get more out of their alliance with Nissan.
All in all, the CEO gave a bearish forecast regarding worldwide sales for the coming year.
When in Hawaii I have noticed the local Hawaii Nissan dealership has been a bit bare of customers lately.
The Hawaii Nissan is generally a thriving operation here too. This is very perplexing to me:
The Nissan CEO won widespread kudos way back in 1999 for bailing Nissan out of near bankruptcy,
but his image has taken a bit of a hit lately as ther sales have been steadily decreasing.
As has been previously reported, Nissan has announced job cuts in the vicinity of twenty thousand positions worldwide. I am not yet sure how Hawaii will be affected by this downsizing wave. As the saying goes, may you live in iteresting times. I would say that we in fact are.
I just got back from Hawaii and wanted to get posting some news: The Nissan Renault Alliance has officially stated sales of 6,090,304 automobiles globally last year, which is a 1.1% fall from the 6,160,625 automobiles moved the year previous.
All in all, this downspike was due to a 4.1% decrease in sales at the Renault Group overall. Specifically,
Nissan Motor Co announced that it expects to post a group operating loss of JPY 180 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31st 2009. It is the second downward revision of the group’s profit projection for fiscal 2008.
the yearly loss will be Nissan’s initial one since Carlos Ghosn became the chief operating officer back in 1999, when the Renault Nissan alliance was initially established.
All of this comes at a point in time when French auto manufacturers will recieve government assistance and also at a time when there has generally been more operational cooperation
between Renault and Nissan, respectively. By the way if you ever visit Hawaii and want to check out a Hawaii Nissan dealer You can go here if you would like to reserve a vehicle at a Hawaii Nissan.
Meanwhile, in related news directly out of Japan, it was reported that shares shares of Nissan rose yesterday, just a day after they officially announced a majore restructuring
plan which includes cutting about twenty thousand or so positions overall within the outfit. This is obviously not great news for employment crises but pretty welcome news for many investors.
Nissan has already carried out a substantial amount of restructuring back in 1999, when they initially partnered with their French counterpart Renault. Because of that, there is not a lot of excess weight left to cut at this time.
While some experts are predicting a sharp dip in the Hawaii commercial real estate market for 2009,
last year was really a surprisingly good year for some sectors of commercial real estate.
As a whole, commercial real estate encompasses offices, industrial as well as various retail outlets.
Last year saw some significant new developments which gave a spark to the state commercial sector,
although some local markets, such as Kauai real estate in Kauai county had at least one major project canceled which does not bode well for the current year.
While most of the large downtown city properties (such as malls) are doing fine at this point in time,
those particular properties which are not in premium areas are suffering. This may be why relative backwaters such as the Big Island and Kauai real estate are suffering while Honolulu is healthy.
As the cliche goes, location is everything in real estate. Of course a big issue is the overall gloomy economic outlook, and particularly the financial sector meltdown which has created a crippling credit market crunch of sorts, sadly enouph for both buyers and sellers.
All in all, as long as the credit markets remain tight, I think that the experts are justified in their pessimism. For instance, if a person wanted to open up a business in say, Lihue, Kauai, yet was unable to secure an adequate credit line, then that individual could obviously not get the required inventory and would not stay open long. That is the reason that it is apparent that the commercial space is very likely to stay vacant for a while, regardless if ist is Mauai, Molokai, Lanai or Kauai real estate we are talking about. So the clear forecast is for an additional slowing down of the commercial real estate market in Hawaii this year. However, if you are looking to purchase commercial real estate it is a great time, particularly if you can secure your own funding source independent of the mainstream financial sector.
