Tata Motors Ltd., India's largest truckmaker and the owner of Jaguar Land Rover, turned to full-year net income after the luxury unit had a pretax profit and sales gained amid economic growth.
Consolidated net income in the year ended March totaled 25.7 billion rupees ($543 million), compared with a loss of 25.1 billion rupees a year earlier, Mumbai-based Tata Motors said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. That beat the 15.6 billion rupee average of 14 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Jaguar Land Rover had a pretax profit of 32 million pounds ($46 million) in the year as the global economy began to recover from the worst recession since World War II. Tata reduced workforce and cut costs at its luxury vehicle unit and will next week open a new factory to boost production of the Nano, the world's cheapest car, as demand surges in the world's fastest- growing major economy after China.
"They have taken many steps in the right direction," said Juergen Maier, who helps manage 1.1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of assets at Raiffeisen Capital Management in Vienna. "With their local sales also picking up, Tata Motors can continue to surprise on the upside."
Tata Motors shares rose 4.6 percent to 741.75 rupees in Mumbai yesterday. They have fallen 6.3 percent this year after rising almost fivefold in 2009.
Jaguar Sales
Jaguar Land Rover, which Tata purchased from Ford for $2.5 billion in 2008, sold 193,982 vehicles last fiscal year compared with 167,348 in the 10 months ended March 2009, the company said in the statement.
Sales of trucks, buses, Nano cars, and other sport-utility vehicles in the year gained 32 percent to 667,971 units as expansion in Asia's third-largest economy spurred demand.
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