Interview with José Román, President of Nissan Mexico.

Well, look, it's a very interesting topic from a managerial perspective. Obviously, it's a mobile situation that we are living through, but I tell you, I think none of us were taught in business how to face a pandemic. No, but really we have been involved in issues of exchange rate, rollover, or perhaps I once had a volcano issue, but they were situations of each country. But never a situation of this characteristic where obviously it is global, so I think it's the center of everything. I think we need to listen to a crisis management expert who said that from every crisis you have to extract something purposeful and learning, and this is very important now. I think it is a complex situation, yes, it is a situation where companies are going to emerge not without more blows. Obviously, this is a situation affecting sales not only in the automotive sector but in the entire economic world, I would say. But there are interesting topics that are going to change. One of the points I think we are seeing is that the digital topic, the sale of transactions on the internet and all this world, and we saw it as if it was walking but not so strong. Now it is going to be a fact, so I think there will be a lot of change, a lot of learning that we will all have to experience from companies and markets.

That type of change, mentality, no, I think I think that this is that that is not for anyone, that this issue of transactions is going to happen more and more, but the digital issue does not mean that the client is going to put their credit card on the site and buy a car for 500 thousand pesos or a million pesos. That is not the idea. The digital issue is much simpler. The digital issue, in my concept, is to facilitate the client's life, if they have, because normally a client what they do is approve a credit. A bank with our financial company in any case, what we do is facilitate the client's life, all transactions that we used to do physically, and those transactions can perfectly be done online. The credit approval, the bank or our financial company can go to the client's house and take all their data, etc. So there no longer has to be that client transfer. Another clear example is the post-sale issue. I lived in Japan for three years, and the dealer, the distributor would go to my house and take the car from my house and return it to me in the afternoon with the maintenance done. That is another thing that we can facilitate now for the distributors and the officials. So it's not an astronaut technique, what we are looking for are techniques or things that help the client's life.

Well, in Latin America that is not so, the client needs to approve a credit in the vast majority, so it is a process. If you go to the USA, the car purchase process is with leasing, so there the card is passed automatically. Here it is still not an issue that I have seen in all countries and lived in Brazil, also know your land and basically it is a process that is taken but what can be done is to facilitate the client's life and have much faster results and with less bother for the client. So today we are implementing starting a digital sales system through the internet, we have call centers inclusive, so the idea is the purchase process is made easier and it is working because the client is liking it. We have almost six weeks with this process and we see that it works quite well. Also the post-sale issue is working quite well, incredible. So I think it is a path of no return, it will improve little by little, it is not perfect but if you look well the vehicle sales process of the last 100 years has not changed majorly and always the client going to the distributor, the instructor doing the process and there the client taking their car. I think this is going to change very strongly.

If I tell you that we have been talking with AMIA which is our institution that supports us in all this with all the brands, I am very happy with all the presidents of the other competitor brands and obviously the automotive sector is an important sector. Just so you know, we are more than a million people depending on the automotive sector, it is a very large community. Just Nissan in general, just Nissan and the factories we are 15,000 people plus all the distributors, dealers, suppliers, it is giant. So the automotive issue is key for the economy. We have had conversations with the government and the government also sees that this is important, so we are waiting for something from the government to open the factories initially. I think what is going to open on the export issue and the local market, we will be seeing when it reopens for obvious reasons, the pandemic issue is critical that we are going to have two more weeks of peak, so I think initially with many precautions because we have to take, I think also what you say, life is going to be a bit different now. In manufacturing, if we bring employees for example to the factories by bus, then they are no longer going to be sitting side by side, we are going to be interleaved to have more distance. In the dining room, for example, the table is going to be shared with fewer people, so that type of thing is going to change us, working is going to be a bit stricter but we have to do it to care for people.

In favor of the community now, for the 92 issue, well, first the first action we took is very simple and they say that well-understood charity starts at home, right? And the first thing we did was protect our internal community, our employees, so we sent the team to work virtually from March 25th and it has worked. I tell you why, this working on the internet, I am not a millennial but I am learning this and it works. The other day I had a conference with the entire Nissan team, a conference of a thousand people via video, so I think it is interesting. Second point, we are protecting the current client, the current client we are offering, in the case that they have a payment problem with the financial company, we are offering help, they have to call our call center and if they want to delay the payment of their credit, well delighted to help them, obviously analyzing case by case. And the third, for future clients, what we are doing is obviously giving a bit of tranquility and if they want to buy a car or if we offer options for them to pay in October, November, December, so that is an issue we are supporting. Obviously being part of a community like the Mexican community and having 60 years of history, I think we have an obligation to give back a little to the city, to the cities, and we have a lot as you know, we have a factory in Cuernavaca and in Aguascalientes, and we have destined 12 institutions, the DIF and the AHLYC, a donation we made of more than 30,000 units of various issues like gowns, masks, and several topics we are supporting, and I think what we think is that it is a punctual contribution and we make it to institutions that can handle it directly, I think that is what we have chosen and supporting the institutions in the localities where we are part of the community is the most important. And also already smaller, obviously we started from the factory the production of these transparent masks that are used, we have some 3D printers, very good technology and we use them for production and for other things, but we destine these printers to produce these these and these masks so that people use them in the hospitals, it is not much that can be produced because they are for large volume but in any case I think it does not matter if it is or not exact, if it is about 100,000, the important thing is to support the community, so this is the grain of sand that we are today just starting this, we started on Friday last and we are going to continue with campaigns and obviously with support to the community. I think the world is going to change a lot and inclusive we have tomorrow I have a meeting with or day after tomorrow with our officials and we are going to start a donation campaign which is important also if the company supports but we as an internal community can also support with our grain of sand.

If something I have learned in these years that I have been in my career, I have worked many years in Latin America, which were in South America, say that it is a market a bit different from the Mexican because the Mexican market is more similar to the USA than to Latin America and I worked in very varied markets, very variable, even when one is in this situation of a impact as big as a crisis like the one we live, it is not so important the for cash of the year, the important thing is that you see in the next three months if you are correcting and walking, so what I see is that there is going to be an industry that is going to be affected during the next six months. This month of April and May we are going to be very low, think from 30 to 40 thousand units, what is sold as an industry when probably we sell like 100 thousand, and then it will grow the next six, eight months until reaching a number in another month that is very similar to what we had in January or February of this year. If you tell me a number, I am not a guru of numbers but I think it is more a bet, I think it can be between 900,000 and a million cars because there is much I think that later there will be a boom a bit more advanced, so initially if there is a crisis but then there may be a recovery. Now this magic number, the truth does not matter much now, the important thing is to return to walk as quickly as possible and you can start exporting also which is something important for us as a company because we are an important producer, we have an installed capacity of more or less a million cars, so the local market is key but the export market is important also for us, even the information of parts that are in their books can assume produce if this is a that is what I was telling you that we have talked with AMIA very, very, very strongly and we are all brands trying to reactivate, so we expect the goal of the government that is very open. And it is our suppliers, we are the factories and obviously the markets to which we do not know our products, so it is very interesting the automotive industry of Mexico is a large serious industry of world quality and we do not compete only between the brands here, we the brands compete against other markets, against China, against USA, against Thailand, India, etc. are an important market.

But it is not the only one, we also have others. I am confirming that we have several things around there, if a launch is mentioned and Luciana is going to kill me, so I want to keep my drink. So the only thing I can tell you is that we will have 60% of the line renewed in the next 18 months and we are coming with very good pieces, yes 60, 60. So good things are coming for us, the important thing I tell you is not so much romanticism but to be positive because from this crisis we are going to come out and we have to think a little positive and in the future obviously it is going to be a new normal, it is not going to be what we were used to but we have to work with the teams.

No, I don't think, I don't think, I think the product line we have is quite solid, I don't see it so much in Mexico but you give me a good idea. This one I do see, I don't think she wants, she perhaps is a year one but some interesting actors are arriving in the segment and you know them very well, I don't know from the brands here while I talk to you, you know and I send a big greeting to my colleagues from the competition. And the other is Titan, not the market, I think it is a fairly reduced market, we have analyzed, I myself have done the business cases, at this moment we would not enter this segment.

Thank you very much, I follow you on your channel, the test on Twitter and well a pleasure to be on your program, thank you very much. A solution to the goby's hawsers goodbye, well thanks with toy, no equals god.