Mumbai: India’s top vehicle maker Tata Motors said on Thursday that quarterly net profit rose 12.2 per cent helped by strong sales of British brands Jaguar and Land Rover, but missed forecasts.
The auto giant reported consolidated net profit of Rs22.44 billion (Dh1.49 billion, $408 million) for the three months to June, up from Rs20 billion a year earlier.
The company, part of the salt-to-steel Tata conglomerate, undershot analysts’ expectations of profit of around Rs27 billion.
Revenues for the first financial quarter climbed 30 per cent to Rs431.7 billion, the company said.
Tata Motors, which also makes utility vehicles and the low-cost Nano car, said it suffered a foreign-exchange loss of Rs4.41 billion in the quarter, around eight times more than the size of its currency loss of Rs570 million a year earlier.
Net revenue for the Jaguar and Land Rover brands rose 34.6 per cent to £3.63 billion pounds (Dh21.05 billion, $5.68 billion) and net profit jumped to £236 million.
Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor in 2008 for $2.3 billion 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.
Jaguar and Land Rover sold 83,452 units in the last quarter, a jump of 34.4 per cent from a year earlier.
