Dubai: Its Saudi operations punched in all the right numbers during the January to March time frame to help Nissan past the 185,000 units mark in the 12 months ended March 31, 2015, which is the company’s financial year. In doing so, Saudi Arabia has again become the Japanese carmaker’s top Gulf market, by accounting for 61,800 units against the 61,000 achieved in the UAE. It is also the first time since the mid-1980s that Saudi Arabia has been the front-runner for Nissan.
“We have done a lot to ramp up to our actual potential in Saudi Arabia,” said Samir Cherfan, regional Managing Director at Nissan M.E. “In fact, we had a 9.5 per cent marketshare in Saudi Arabia during January to March as against the 7.2 per cent in the previous three quarters.
“This places us to go past 100,000 units in the Kingdom by FY2016.., we are projecting volumes of 85,000 units in the current one.”
In the last two years, the carmaker went in for a complete revamp of its Saudi presence. There was a new dealership, more showrooms in as many strategic locations as possible, and ensuring ample spare parts and after-service support.
For the UAE, the expectations are for a further 4,000-5,000 unit gain in the current financial year, consolidating around the 15.4 per cent marketshare.
“There has been a slowing down in overall automobile sales across the market during December-February, while March and April were OK,” said Cherfan.
“This is where the higher Saudi volumes in our fourth quarter clearly proved so decisive. Those gains consolidated all that we had tried to change in Saudi Arabia earlier.
“But our international projections are that the overall market can grow at 4 per cent year-on-year provided oil prices are around the $65[Dh239] [a barrel mark] and the yen-dollar is at 120.
“We are definitely not going to place ourselves in a situation to make ad hoc decisions over the currency. Also, Nissan M.E. sources from eight manufacturing plants worldwide and not from Japan exclusively. That means a stable currency basket which we monitor monthly and make changes only where it absolutely necessary.”
