A showroom attendant cleans a Tata Nano car at their flagship showroom in Mumbai yesterday.
MUMBAI: India’s top automaker Tata Motors saw its net profit in the fourth fiscal quarter fall 36.7 percent, but still managed to beat forecasts amid shrinking domestic demand, the firm said yesterday.
Consolidated net profit for Tata Motors, including its Jaguar and Land Rover brands, slipped to Rs39.45bn ($704m) for the three-month period ending in March from Rs62.34bn in the same period in 2012.
The company still recorded profits higher than the consensus market forecasts of Rs28bn.
Revenues of Tata Motors, part of the giant steel-to-software Tata Group now controlled by new chairman Cyrus Mistry, rose ten percent to Rs560bn during the quarter.
This was despite a “weak operating environment in the standalone (India) business, which was more than offset by strong demand and growth in volumes” at Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR), the company said in a statement.
Net revenue for the JLR brands rose nearly 22 percent to £5.05bn ($7.61bn) for the quarter, but net profit nearly halved to £378bn ($569m), from levels a year earlier.
Tata Motors, which is also the maker of the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co in 2008 for $2.3bn as part of plans to expand its reach beyond Asia.
The deal vaulted Tata Motors from a commercial vehicle and small-car maker into a global player with luxury brands in its range of offerings.
Tata Motors’ business in India showed a loss of Rs3.12bn for the past quarter, from a profit of Rs5.65bn a year earlier.
Demand for new cars is slowing rapidly in India, with April sales marking the longest ever stretch of monthly declines for the country’s once red-hot car market.
Domestic passenger car sales — a reflection of overall economic health — fell by 10.43 percent to 150,789 vehicles in April from the same month a year ago.
High borrowing costs, worries over a sharp slowdown in the economy and costly fuel prices have kept buyers out of showrooms.
AFP
