Things have not been going well for automaker Nissan (NSANY) of late. But it is fighting back as hard as it can, even if some of its tactics are not resonating with shareholders. Nissan announced plans to cut a huge quantity of its upper management, but investors did not approve, sending shares sliding modestly in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
The arrival of new CEO Ivan Espinosa, which sent shares ramping up last week, will be greeted with perhaps the darkest fanfare imaginable: the firing of one in five top managers. This is not mere decimation, if decimation can be called mere. This is double that; instead of one in 10, we are seeing a full 20% of top management be part of a workforce reduction, reports noted.
Nissan noted that the plan was to create “…a more streamlined and borderless organization.” This will apparently be done by having a lot fewer people at the top, which is not such a bad idea. While Nissan did not actually say how many jobs would be lost, we do know the 20% number stands, and we also know that Nissan has over 133,500 employees total. Thus, the total job loss cannot be over 27,000, and will likely be significantly less than that.
A New Battery Deal
But Nissan is not just firing; it already has plans for the cash it will save not paying out top management salaries any longer. It has a deal valued at $661 million, reports note, going into Canton, Missouri, to supply batteries for an upcoming electric vehicle program.
The new deal calls for Nissan to work with SK On, one of the biggest names in batteries around, to supply said batteries for the electric vehicles to be produced in Canton. Most believe that the batteries will come from the SK On plant in Commerce, Georgia, though an official announcement has not yet been made. And with Nissan poised to land around 100 GWh worth of batteries from 2028 to 2033, that likely means quite a few battery-powered cars coming over the next 10 years or so.
Is Nissan Stock a Buy or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, no analysts currently carry a rating on NSANY, so we turn to the last five days of trading instead. Thanks mostly to today’s movement, shares are down 3.47% over the interval. Shares were mostly flat for three days ahead of the 19th, when shares took a sudden, significant leg down. A bit of recovery started up with today, but was lost shortly after it started.
See more NSANY analyst ratings
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