Jaguar Land Rover Q4FY18 revenue up 4%; Land Rover Discovery, Velar sales shine

Tata Motors luxury car brand Jaguar Land Rover’s fourth quarter ended March 2018 (Q4FY18) financial performance was announced on Wednesday. Tata Motors has revealed the performance of JLR alongside it’s financial audit report. Under the report, JLR’s revenue grew by 4% yoy to £7.6 billion in Q4FY18, whereas the growth was 6% yoy in entire fiscal FY18. Further profit before tax (PBT) was at £1.5 Billion in this quarter. JLR’s dividend increased to 20% of PAT which was £225 million  in Q4FY18 and was also up 25% of PAT from next year. 

For the FY18, Retail sales grew 1.7% year-on-year to 614,309 cars, with demand up in China (19.9%), North America (4.7%) and in Overseas Markets (3.4%). 

Ralf Speth, Jaguar Land Rover CEO, said: "Despite external headwinds, these results reflect the underlying strengths of Jaguar Land Rover. Sales have reached a new high, as strong demand in our key overseas markets offset the challenging conditions in the UK and other parts of Europe. Our sustained growth and business resilience reflects the support we have received over the past 10 years from Tata.”

These regional increases offset lower figures in the UK (-12.8%) and Europe (-5.3%), where sales were impacted by consumer uncertainty surrounding diesel models. The increase in sales was driven by new models, including the latest Land Rover Discovery, the award-winning Range Rover Velar (World Car Design of the Year), the long-wheelbase Jaguar XFL in China and continued solid demand for the Jaguar F-PACE.  

Revenues increased 6.0% to £25.88 billion, Pre-tax profits were £1.58 billion including a one-off £437 million  pension credit reported in the first quarter partially offset by engineering charges ("Fit for Future") in Q4 '18. The EBIT margin before these "Fit for Future" charges was 4.2%, compared to 5.9% a year ago. 

The lower margin mainly reflected higher depreciation and amortisation as a result of the significant investment in the business and slower sales growth than in recent past. For the fourth quarter, pre-tax profits were £364 million on revenues of £7.68 billion. During the financial year, the company invested a record £4.28 billion, over half of which was in new vehicles and technologies.

For further outlook, Speth said, “We are confident of our plans to drive robust growth and efficiencies to ensure that we continue to deliver solid results and generate sustainable profitable growth to support continued investment with positive free cash flows in the medium to long term.”