Covid-19 outbreak has been hitting Adient as well. In the second quarter of the year, revenues from sales gained by the American group, which is one of the top players in the automotive industry, amounted to 3.511 billion US dollars. Last year, in the same period, the group’s earnings reached 4.228 billion US dollars. Revenues have therefore vertically dropped by 717 million dollars, mostly owing, apparently, to the detrimental effects of the epidemic on international markets.
Covid-19 hits Adient as well
“The pandemic, brought about by Covid-19 outbreak, has made such unprecedented global crisis even worse. In fact, both our American and European buyers have suspended production of vehicles, whereas manufacturing activities in China have slowly started again”, pointed out the company in a press release. Reportedly, all this accounted, in terms of income loss, for around 530 million dollars, out of 717 million dollars overall. On March 31, Adient announced they have issued 600 million dollars of bonds to upscale their own financial standing. Furthermore, the company publicly stated they have reopened the whole of their work activities in China. They also emphasized that in the Asian country car manufacturing industry “keeps growing and enjoying a positive trend”.
Cutting costs
Adient have been addressing the problem while focusing their efforts, most of all, on the safeguard of employees’ health: they limited the number of working hours in the factory and implemented, at the same time, all mandatory health protocols. On top of that, they also paid close attention to costs. For example, they decided to reduce some of the chief managers’ wages. As reported by crainsdetroit.com, they cut salaries by 20%: for the records, the company also applied such wage cut to Chief Executive Officer Doug Del Grosso and the other members of the board of directors. “Although we are about to go through much instability – continued Adient – comforting messages from China have positively reassured us: here, in fact, all of Adient’s 79 JV plants have reopened”. In the last few weeks, the company has been setting some protocols for the reopening of activities: manufacturing plants are now ready to run at full speed again, even boosting production if needs be.
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