India's top vehicle maker Tata Motors (IW 1000/185) said Thursday quarterly net profit rose 12.2% helped by strong sales of British brands Jaguar and Land Rover, but missed forecasts.
The auto giant reported consolidated net profit of 22.44 billion rupees ($408 million) for the three months to June, up from 20 billion rupees a year earlier.
The company, part of the salt-to-steel Tata conglomerate, undershot analysts' expectations of profit of around 27 billion rupees.
Revenues for the first financial quarter climbed 30% to 431.7 billion rupees, the company said.
Tata Motors, which also makes utility vehicles and the low-cost Nano car, said it suffered a foreign-exchange loss of 4.41 billion rupees in the quarter, around eight times more than the size of its currency loss of 570 million rupees a year earlier.
Net revenue for the Jaguar and Land Rover brands rose 34.6% to $5.68 billion and net profit jumped to $369 million.
Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor (IW 500/6) in 2008 for $2.3 billion as part of plans to expand its reach beyond Asia.
The deal vaulted Tata Motors from a commercial vehicle and small-car maker into a global player with luxury brands in its range of offerings.
Jaguar and Land Rover sold 83,452 units in the last quarter, a jump of 34.4% from a year earlier.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012
