Nissan shares slide after profit falls 70%, forecasts slashed

Nissan stock sank Wednesday after it reported a 70% plunge in profit and lowered its forecasts for the year.

Shares in Japan’s second largest automaker slid as much as 4.3% in early trading in Tokyo. It recovered some of those losses by mid-morning and was last down about 1.4%.

So far this year, Nissan shares have tumbled 20%.

Japan’s benchmark index Nikkei 225 dropped 0.8% on Wednesday morning.

Nissan said after Tuesday’s market close that its operating profit fell 70% to 30 billion yen ($275 million) for the three months that ended in September, well below the estimated 47.5 billion yen from a Refinitiv poll of analysts.

The automaker cut its sales forecast, expecting to sell 5.2 million cars for the fiscal year that ends in March 2020 — 5.4% less than what it initially anticipated. It also slashed the forecast of its full-year operating profit by 35%.

Elsewhere in the region, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index declined nearly 2%. The index has fallen 4% since the beginning of this week, weighed by the escalating violence in the city during protests.

South Korea’s Kospi Index lost 0.9%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index dropped 0.5%.

US stock futures also retreated. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all edged more than 0.2% lower.