Nissan to sell 150 billion yen convertible bonds for recovery

[TOKYO] Nissan Motor plans to sell 150 billion yen (S$1.3 billion) of convertible bonds to help fund new chief executive officer Ivan Espinosa’s turnaround of the ailing automaker.

The proceeds will be used for investment in new products and technologies such as electrification and software-defined vehicles, the Japanese carmaker said on Monday (Jul 7).

The company, which is facing a huge loan repayment wall next year, is seeking to raise more than one trillion yen from debt and asset sales to keep operations on track, Bloomberg News reported in May.

The stock fell the most in almost three months after the convertible bond sale was announced. The shares fell as much as 5.2 per cent in Tokyo, before paring some of the losses to be down around 3 per cent at 1.04 pm local time. The stock has tumbled about 40 per cent in the past 12 months.

Nissan has sufficient capital of about 2.2 trillion yen in cash on hand and credit to last the next 12 to 18 months, Espinosa told Bloomberg TV in May.

The new CEO has announced plans to eliminate 20,000 jobs and close seven of Nissan’s 17 plants by March 2028 after the company reported a 671 billion yen net loss for the most recent fiscal year. The measures follow the collapse of talks earlier this year to join forces with Honda Motor. Those discussions ended in part due to disagreements about Nissan’s willingness to make deeper cuts to production and personnel. BLOOMBERG