Mahindra & Mahindra on February 6 said it is considering another increase in price across products in the first quarter of the next fiscal to counter the spike in the input costs. The company had raised prices of its entire range by nearly 2 percent in January.
"We have just taken some price increase in January and unless things come under control we would probably be taking one again in Q1 of the next financial year," Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) Executive Director Automotive & Farm Sectors Rajesh Jejurikar told reporters in a virtual post-earning press conference.
Jejurikar further said, "We do try to mitigate this kind of commodity increase with other internal cost measures, both on material cost and value engineering, and managing fixed cost. So typically when we have this kind of situation we use multiple levers to manage."
The automobile and tractor maker on February 5 reported a massive 39.6 percent year-on-year growth in profit at Rs 530 crore for the quarter ended December 2020.
When asked about the reports of job cuts at its North American operations Jejurikar pointed out it was not in the tractors business but mainly in the product development centre in Detroit as M&M decided not to go ahead to bid for a contract of United States Postal Services. "That team was not going to be doing the development work that was at the concept stage. So, it is really around that and has nothing to do with the tractor business," he added.
When asked if there are possibilities for further job cuts in the North American unit ahead of the planned launch of the off-roader Roxor, Jejurikar said, "We just got approval for the new Roxor model. We are working on a relaunch approach, details not finalised but we may go for much more digital and there may hence be some manpower restructuring beyond what has already happened because there was no production really happening in the last few months."
He said the relaunch of the new Roxor will take a few more months without sharing a definite timeline. "We will then be working on what exactly is the right resourcing for the launch. Manpower number is not finalised," he said.
M&M Deputy Managing Director and Group CFO Anish Shah said the company has also rationalised manpower at engineering services of the Italian unit Pininfarina as it had "excess count compared to what the market demand was".
For Mahindra, the coming financial year is an important one, considering its plans of launching new-gen variants of the Scorpio and the XUV500. Not to forget, the launch of XUV 300 and KUV100- the electric cars, which will unfold the company's electric vehicle strategy.
(With inputs from PTI)
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
