New Mazdas Loiter in Ports As Company Reports Profit Dive

The fiscal year that wrapped up at the end of March was not a good one for Mazda, the company claims, with profit cut almost in half amid fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, Mazda revealed a full-year operating profit of just $408 million — its lowest showing in 8 years.

Smaller than its Japanese rivals and heavily dependent on the North American consumer, Mazda was hit hard by lockdown orders that dried up sales in the U.S. and Canada in March.

This, after a 2019 spent struggling to regain its footing in the market. The launch of the somewhat upscale current-generation Mazda 3 didn’t go off exactly as planned, though the company’s CX-5 crossover remains popular. Last year also brought the introduction of the CX-30 small crossover, a model that bridges the gap between the tiny, slow-selling CX-3 and the CX-5.

While the first two months of the calendar year did bring an improvement in U.S. sales, March wiped out those gains. Volume fell 41.8 percent that month, year over year, as dealerships closed and residents battened down the hatches. April wasn’t any better, with sales down 44.5 percent.

With operating profit down 47 percent (from last year’s $769 million), the automaker declined to release a forecast for the current fiscal year. All it would say is that the business environment is “expected to remain highly uncertain due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.”

Hampering Mazda’s return to full production in Japan is a backlog of undelivered vehicles clogging U.S. ports. Burning cash, the automaker has tapped three Japanese banks and other lenders for sizable loans, Reuters reports.

Globally, the automaker’s sales fell 9.1 percent in the year ended March, with North American volume down 5.8 percent. The U.S.’s share of that decline was 4.1 percent, though the overall cratering of the market in March meant that Mazda’s market share didn’t drop.

[Image: Mazda]