Tata Motors soars 10% on JLR's record sales performance

Moneycontrol Bureau

Shares of Tata Motors soared 10.6 percent to touch a record high of Rs 348.3 in noon trade Tuesday after its UK subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) reported record sales performance in August.

The luxurious car maker sold 27,852 units in August, a growth of 28 percent over a year ago period on the back of strong retail volumes in the key geographies of USA and UK.

Jaguar's sales jumped 92 percent year-on-year at 5405 units, driven by strong demand for all XF derivatives (XF Sedan & Sportsbrake up 91 percent while XJ also delivered strong growth of 50 percent).

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The sales of Land Rover increased by 18 percent to 22,477 units, led by solid performances from Evoque and Freelander (up 34 percent and 23 percent, respectively)

The year-to-date increase in JLR sales was by 16 percent to 2.69 lakh units.

Sales of North America rose by 40 percent Y-o-Y to 6661 units and UK jumped by 39 percent Y-o-Y to 1066 units.

The performance of the JLR in China continued to do well, showing 43 percent growth in sales. Asia Pacific's sales soared by 35 percent while Europe fell 1 percent.

Phil Popham, group sales operations Director at Jaguar Land Rover, in its release, said, "The Jaguar XJ and XF, the Range Rover Evoque and the Land Rover Freelander are up significantly whilst the new Range Rover and F-TYPE continue to attract new buyers to our brands. This is further evidence that we are offering customers our most accomplished product line up to date."

Meanwhile, JLR said it would invest 1.5 billion pounds for new technically-advanced aluminium vehicle architecture in forthcoming models.

"To support this strengthening of the Jaguar product portfolio 1,700 new jobs will be created in the UK at our advanced manufacturing facility in Solihull," the company said in its release.

JLR further said, "The first new model to utilise this innovative architecture will be an all-new mid-sized sports sedan from Jaguar. This vehicle will feature the first engine to be built at Jaguar Land Rover's new 500 million pound Engine Manufacturing Centre." The product will be launched by 2015.

At 12:02 hours IST, the stock rallied 8.07 percent to Rs 343.75 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.