Breaking: Nissan Surprises With Strong Profits And Speedy Recovery. Will Own Zero Emission Market Until 2015

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn treated reporters to his trademark Gallic body language and quick-witted repartees during the presentation of the fiscal year 2010 results today at Nissan’s swank waterfront headquarters in Yokohama. Ghosn delighted stockholders and analysts with the news that Japan’s #2 automaker made a net profit of 319.2 billion yen (US $3.72 billion) on net revenues of 8.7731 trillion yen (US $102.37 billion). Operating profit was 537.5 billion yen (US $6.27 billion). Ghosn created much happiness by announcing that the last quarter of the fiscal year, which ended on March 31, resulted in an operating profit of 88.6 billion yen ($1.1 billion), also exceeding expectations.

Like at Toyota yesterday, no guidance for this year’s performance was given.

Other than at Toyota yesterday, Ghosn did not threaten to pack up and leave if the yen won’t get weaker. He reaffirmed his commitment to producing a million cars in Japan. Easy for him to say: In the past fiscal, Nissan made only 28 percent of its cars in Japan, the bulk was made elsewhere. As Nissan grows, this percentage shrinks.

Nissan took a relatively sedate charge of 39.6 billion yen ($488 million) against earthquake losses. Nissan lost five people during the March 11 disaster. Two plants near the epicenter were hard hit. Nevertheless, Nissan plans to be back to normal in October.

Ghosn praised the first mover advantage of the Leaf: “By the time other manufacturers have their own production versions of electric cars ready for mass marketing, the Leaf will have accumulated years of real world experience. The Nissan Leaf and other electric models coming to Nissan and Renault will face very few zero emission competitors until at least 2015.”

More as I have worked through my notes.