China Sales Boost Helps Jaguar Land Rover To Report A Strong Quarter


10/28/2019



A steady and large growth in demand and sale of its vehicles in China has propelled the Indian owned British car making firm Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to report a profit for the latest quarter. In the three months to 30 September, the British company that is now owned by India’s Tata Motors, reported making a pre-tax profit of £156m against revenues of £6.1bn which hjad grown by 8 per cent in the period year on year.  
 
There was an almost 25 per cent year on year growth in the sale of its cars in China which is the second largest car market in the world and therefore a key market for many of the largest and global car manufacturers.
 
The company reported that the quarterly performance of the company was propelled by the growing popularity and demand for its new models. For example, JLR said, there was growth of more than 50 per cent in the sale of its new Range Rover Evoque model.
 
This good performance of JLR also helped Tata Motors to offset some of the losses it made on the overall as the company reported a smaller than expected loss for the last quarter. For the entire quarter, the total loss of Tata Motors narrowed down to 2.17bn rupees or $31m or £24m compared to a loss of 10.49bn rupees in the same period a year ago.
 
After the JLR had confirmed its plans for shelving more than 4,500 jobs, the maximum number of the cuts being accounted for from the UK workforce of the company which totals about 40,000, a spokeswoman for the company said that the job cuts have been implemented now.
 
It was "encouraging to see the impact of our Project Charge transformation programme and our improvement initiatives in the China market start to come through in our results", said JLR chief executive Sir Ralf Speth while announcing the results.
 
Uncertainties around Brexit had forced the British company to shut down production for a week in April this year. Moreover, in order to adjust production due to uncertainties including Brexit and lower demand for diesel cars, the carmaker also plans to shut down UK factories for a week in November, the company representative said.
 
The company has previously given a call for tariff-free and frictionless trade after Brexit because about a fifth of its sales is accounted for by customers in Europe.
 
(Source:www.bbc.com)