Tata Motors posted a Street-beating performance in the fourth quarter thanks to a sterling showing by Jaguar Land Rover. Cutting down on standalone losses also helped.
Tata Motors posted a 37 per cent dip in the consolidated profit for the quarter ended March 31, 2013 at Rs 3,945 crore against Rs 6,234 crore in the corresponding previous period. The profit figures are, however, not comparable as an usual tax credit of Rs 1,800 crore boosted the previous period’s bottomline. The company’s operating margins improved to 14.9 per cent (14.1 per cent).
A jump in sales by its UK-based subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) helped the company offset the poor India showing and also beat analysts’ estimate of a net profit of Rs 2,734 crore.
Standalone Tata Motors (without JLR) posted a net loss of Rs 312.15 crore for the fourth quartercompared to a net profit of Rs. 565.26 crore for the previous period. The total Income dipped to Rs 11,157.81 crore (Rs 16,525 crore). Sales of commercial and passenger vehicles, including the Nano, have been dipping the last six months on slowdown and higher interest rates.
“The fall is mainly due to bad market conditions in India and higher tax accounting in Jaguar Land Rover this year, compared with a year ago,” Tata Motors Chief Financial Officer C. Ramakrishnan said, adding a one-off tax gain contributed to a higher net profit in the year-ago quarter.
During the quarter under review, the Tata Group firm’s revenues on a consolidated basis rose to Rs 56,001.64 crore (from Rs 50,907.90 crore). For the full year, the consolidated net profit was Rs 9,893 crore (Rs 13,517 crore) on revenues of Rs 1,88,818 crore (Rs 1,65,654 crore).
The company is looking at rolling out a number of new models and variants this year, its Managing Director Karl Slym said.
Tata Motors, which is already in Thailand, will start selling cars in Indonesia in this year. “We are evaluating rolling out both passenger and commercial vehicles,” Ravindra Pisharody, Executive Director, Commercial Vehicles Business Unit, said.
JLR’s performance
JLR’s fourth quarter net profit fell 46 per cent to £378 million (£696 million), while revenues rose 25 per cent to £5 billion (£4 billion). JLR sold 116,340 vehicles during the quarter ended March 31, 2013, an 18.7 per cent rise over the corresponding period of last year, helped by new product launches.
On Wednesday, Tata Motors’ shares closed up 2.69 per cent at Rs 303.80 on the BSE, before the results were released.