Read the full text of Tata Motors Chairman N Chandrasekaran's speech at AGM

COVID-19 Impact

Fiscal year 20-21 has been amongst the most challenging to-date, with Covid-19 creating a crisis of unprecedented scale and impact across the world. The swiftness and intensity of the pandemic as well as its multiple waves overwhelmed health systems, devastated lives, and livelihoods.

For our Company Tata Motors too, it was a very difficult year. Our immediate focus was the safety and well-being of our employees and our ecosystem partners. Despite our best efforts we have lost 91 people in this fight. Our heartfelt condolences to their families and loved ones.

The pandemic resulted in muted consumer demand along with disruptions in production, supply chain and retail networks. To address this crisis, we put in place a comprehensive Business Continuity Plan. Our agile and ecosystem centric ways of working helped us to absorb the initial shock of total lockdowns and as demand started coming back, we swiftly shifted gears to significantly scale up capacities and moved fast to serve customer demand thereby ending the year on a stronger note.

The business improved its EBIT margins by 260bps to Rs 6471Cr and Auto Free Cash Flows of Rs. 5317 Cr despite volumes declining by 10.3% to 903K units and revenues declining by 4% to Rs 2.5Lakh Crores.

India Business:

While the overall industry volumes declined by 6.1%, our domestic business grew 2% by volumes, 7% by revenues, and improved EBIT margin by 370bps.

Passenger Vehicles

The Passenger Vehicles segment was the star performer of the India business. A shift to personal mobility over public transport and rising preference for our ‘New Forever’ range of cars and SUVs, led to the PV business recording its highest ever annual sales in 8 years and growing its market share to 8.2% and now touching double digits.  The launch of ‘Altroz i-Turbo’ and the iconic ‘Safari’ in an all-new avatar have been received well. Additionally, the “Reimagine PV” strategy to rejuvenate front-end sales and dealership while stepping up customer experience has delivered excellent results.

Within PV, the performance of the EV business is particularly noteworthy.  We strengthened our market leadership to 71.4% led by sales of more than 4000 Nexon EV units since its launch last year. EV penetration has now doubled to 2% of our overall PV volumes. Overall PV volumes grew by a robust 69%, even as the overall industry volumes reduced by 2% while within that EV volumes grew 218%.

Commercial Vehicles

CV sales mirror economic growth and the reduction in overall economic activity resulted in CV volumes dropping by 23.4% this year.  Amidst a tough demand scenario, Tata Motor’s CV business posted sequential quarter on quarter growth on the back of improved consumer sentiment, buoyancy in e-commerce, firming freight rates and higher infrastructure demand.

We improved our market share in M&HCV to 58.1% (+410 bps vs FY 18), ILCV 45.9% (+90bps vs FY18). Disappointingly, our SCV market shares was 37.5%, losing 250bps vs FY18.  The company is committed to win in this segment too and is taking concerted actions with a richer product portfolio and by driving smarter engagements with customers.

Tata Motors Finance business also delivered a strong performance despite the pandemic. The Assets Under Management grew by Rs 5928Cr to Rs 42,810Cr and it delivered a PBT of Rs 266Cr and a pre-tax ROE of 9.2%.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Guenter Butschek who led the Indian business over the last 5 years for his contributions to the company

Jaguar LandRover

Jaguar LandRover also delivered a resilient performance during the year. Retail sales declined 14% for the year with China being the exception growing at a strong 23%. The all new LandRover Defender was a standout performer clocking a robust 45.2K units for the full year as well as winning the 2021 Word Car Design of the Year. Despite a 14% drop in revenue to £19.7B, the business improved its EBIT margins by 250bps to 2.6% and generated positive free cash flows of £185m.

Jaguar LandRover has now unveiled its Reimagine strategy to make the company a world leader in electrified luxury vehicles, sustainability, manufacturing efficiency and new automotive technologies.

Outlook

As the impact of the pandemic recedes globally with more people getting vaccinated, we expect demand to remain strong with consumer preferences shifting further towards personal mobility. The supply situation however is expected to be adversely impacted for the next few months due to disruptions from COVID-19 lockdowns in India and semi-conductor shortages worldwide for the auto industry globally which will take time to work through. This will impact production volumes, sales, cash flows and margins.

We expect the situation will start to improve in the second half of FY22 even as the broader underlying structural capacity issues resolve with new capacities coming online over the next 12-18 months. Some level of shortages will therefore continue through to the end of the year and beyond. 

I take this opportunity to thank the management and staff of the company and express my deep appreciation for their immense contribution in these trying times. I would also like to thank you, the esteemed shareholders for your continued trust and support in our journey ahead.

Thank you.