French carmaker Renault SA should return to net profit by 2011, its chief executive told the annual shareholders' meeting in Paris on Friday.
Like its peers, the carmaker has been hit by the industry crisis, and while government incentive programs to boost demand for cars have helped in recent months, these are now running out.
CEO Carlos Ghosn said the group should return to net profit by 2011 "at the latest."
For 2010, the group has set a target of achieving positive free cash flow. Ghosn told reporters after the meeting that Renault would announce a new medium-term plan at the end of the year.
It was forced to drop an earlier, ambitious margin target when the crisis hit.
"We will announce a medium-term plan at the end of 2010 because we think the crisis which touched the automobile industry should definitively be part of the past," he said.
He did not give details on what would be in the plan, but he mentioned that synergies with alliance partner Nissan Motor Co Ltd (7201.T) and with Germany's Daimler AG, with which it has just signed a cooperation agreement, would be featured.
Plans for emerging markets and electric cars, which Renault and Nissan are pushing heavily, would also be prominent, he said.
Ghosn also said he did not see the Greek debt crisis derailing economic recovery.
"We must be attentive to everything that is happening with sovereign debt, and state deficits," Ghosn said.
"Personally I don't think that it (Greece) will threaten the recovery, but it risks slowing it down. That is, perhaps the growth rates that we could have hoped for in the coming years risk being a little lower given the uncertainty."
Renault will also discuss with larger rival PSA Peugeot Citroen the timing of repayment of the 3 billion euros in loans each carmaker received from the government last year to weather the crisis, Ghosn said, without giving details.
Earlier in the week Renault posted forecast-beating first quarter sales and confirmed its positive free cash flow objective, while warning that the difficult economic environment would continue.
Renault shares were down 0.3 percent at the market close on Friday, against a CAC-40 index .FCHI fall of 0.6 percent.
