News : JLR reports record sales and £1.5bn profit

Graham Ruddick

The car maker, which has plants in the Midlands and Merseyside, sold 314,433 vehicles in the year to March 31, the most in the history of Jaguar and Land Rover. This meant revenues rose 37% to £13.5bn and pre-tax profits grew from £1.1bn last year, which was also a record, to £1.51bn.

The figures confirm the revival in British car making and are further good news for the industry after General Motors confirmed it would invest in its Ellesmere Port site in Cheshire rather than close it. The increase on last year’s results was led by a 76% rise in Chinese sales to 50,994 and the worldwide popularity of the new Range Rover Evoque.

However, JLR also secured sales growth across Europe despite the eurozone debt crisis and the overall new car market shrinking. The UK, which remains JLR’s biggest market, saw sales rise 3.2% to 60,022, while North American sales increased 15.4% to 58,003, Russia increased 38.1% to 16,142 and German sales rose 22.3% to 13,675.

Meanwhile, France posted a 57.4% growth in JLR sales, while Spain was up 18.1%. Ralf Speth, chief executive, said: ‘The announcement of JLR’s financial results is a positive reflection of the continued level of consumer confidence in both of our brands. These record earnings, driven by strong product demand and operating efficiencies, give JLR the financial impetus to sustain its ongoing investment programme.’

More than £4bn of investment has been committed to the UK by car makers in the last 12 months and the country is exporting more cars than it imports for the first time since 1976. Much of the investment and growth has come from JLR, which employs 21,000 staff in the UK.

JLR has been turned around under Tata after it tried to seek financial assistance from the Labour government in 2009 and was rejected. To keep up with demand, JLR is looking to expand all three of its UK plants at Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull and is building a new engine factory in Wolverhampton. The car maker also plans to produce cars in China for the domestic market.

[Source: The Telegraph]

Keith Adams

28 Comments

  1. JLR just keep on getting better and better, they have their best product range in the history of these two companies at the moment. With all the new models planned to be released over the next five years this should see the company well.

    Long may the profits continue!

  2. Fantastic news from a company that does anything but rest on its laurels. The Land Rover product range is without doubt its most comprehensive and successful yet, while Jaguar’s line-up is getting even more appealing with the prospect of the new XF Sportbrake, F-type in 2013 and the new V6 engine developed from their existing V8 petrol engine.

    Congratulations to all at Jaguar Land Rover for helping make such a great success story that the British public can be so rightly proud of, and long may it continue.

  3. Great news. Now bin the Defender ‘replacement’ and give us a proper one and Ill be even happier!

  4. Great news as always,and a great business model,all for the good of the company and not banks and shareholders,and all this in no small part due to a terrific workforce,how can you not thank them-well done!

    • Just a shame that it is actually Land Rover bringing in all these positive numbers. In Europe (outside the UK) Jaguar seems at best to stagnate at very low sales levels.

  5. I love these news articles about JLR. While BMW are creating the awkward love child of 5er and 6er and making b oth cars worse in the process and Benz are trying to get the bungalowrific G-Classe to wipe out the entire county of Cheshire. JLR are just getting on with building really good cars.

  6. This is fantastic news. I am especially delighted that, for the first time since 1976, we are exporting more product than we are importing.

    The produce mix on Mikey C’s post is interesting in that it shows the dominance of LR products – let’s hope that there are sufficient synergies with the Jaguar product to sustain both brands.

    All in all, this has made my day !!!

  7. This is great news to JLR with rumours from the telegraph that they might build a 4th factory in the uk in the next 18months.
    Keep on bringing out fantastic new models.
    JLR please relauch Daimler and Rover..

  8. @John Daimler- yes. Rover- NO! At least not yet.

    Jaguar needs rebuilding, but as Jaguar has displaced Lexus at the top of the JD Power list of satisfaction, it can’t be far off.

  9. This is very good news for the UK
    However my mate who has a 2 year old Discovery 3 will be reading this and wishing them nothing but bad luck! Its been a disaster in terms of reliability and more importantly customer service

  10. @13 they always have been,a pal has a L reg defender 90 with the 300 TDI engine and has 267k on the clock without a rebuild so that would confound the critics! the new ones are terrible,patch updates every service or dealer visit without owner knowing,failures of mechanical/electrical the list goes on……. as the saying goes if you go into the outback get a landrover..if you want to get out get a landcruiser!

  11. yes good news but i agree with James , pull there finger out and give us a true utility Defender replacement not an urban chic hairdresser thing , they already make enough of these.

  12. It’s such a shamne that LR reliability and dependability is reported to be such a disgrace – does anyone know how the Evoque is faring? Have LR learnt?

  13. Excellent news, always felt that Ford would have been better disposing of the Ford (Europe) brand and focusing instead on its Premier Motors brands (JLR, Aston Martin, Volvo), instead of virtually giving them away after investing so much in them.

    However Mr Obama was never going to let them do anything so radical, instead focussing on scoring cheap political points by demanding they sell the corporate jet in return for government loans.

  14. @14 Yes the 300TDI & earlier 200TDI are appart froma few niggles un burstable. Possibly the most robust automototive British engine ever. Saying that there is not much else to go wrong with a Defender 🙂

  15. @18 Didn’t think Ford took any money off the US Government, it was the other two (GM and Chrysler) that had to go that route.

    Also, the disposals didn’t stop with Ford’s European brands. They sold all but a nominal shareholding in Mazda and killed the Mercury brand in the US after 73 years, just leaving Ford and Lincoln. With nothing larger in Europe than the EUCD platform (Mondeo, S-Max & Galaxy), what do their Execs drive? Perhaps they’ll offer Lincolns in Europe?

  16. Great news, a few points. JLR in theory replaced the slow selling volume car in its range, the X – Type, to concentrate on the Freelander and Evoque. A good move, both LR cars are selling like hot cakes, something the X Type never achieved. Remember it wasn’t that long ago that JLR were contemplating dropping a factory in the UK, the decision now overturned and they are now building a new plant near RAF Cosford. RR,Sport,Disco XK, XF and XJ are low volume high profit cars.

    A new smaller Jag saloon and Sports car are due very soon as well as a Defender and RR. This £1.5 Billion profit is going help TATA and JLR achieve this, only three years ago they were struggling to borrow money to develop the Evoque, the Government at the time preferring to boost the Korean car industry with the Scrappage Scheme instead.

    Ford had little choice selling off the Premier Group, the Credit Crunch hit the US car industry hard, the US Government Bail out was eye watering but safe guarded a lot of jobs over there, so was that a bad thing? not in my book. The money made by selling off the group would have been more than welcome at the time, makes sound business sense to me.

  17. Its because JLR dont listen to weird beard nutters who want to “bin the new Defender” that anyone who is likely to buy one thinks is fantastic that JLR can report these remarkable results!

  18. Re Big H’s comments.
    On a short journey yesterday a spotted one Freelander 1 stopped with the bonnet up and another FL 1 stopped with a recovery truck parked behind it… oops !

  19. ^^ FL1 Are another lash up of a car^^ 🙁
    A good friend of ours has a 2 year old FL one im happy to report its been trouble free. A nice motor too

  20. Tata have achieved one hell of a lot with JLR in a pretty short period of time – Well done!!!

    It’s made me think yet again of the age old wonder, question. Look what can be done – JLR, MINI, SKODA, SEAT. Why could nobody ever sort the bulk, the mass market part of BL?

  21. A really wonderful performance by JLR. It is early days yet and JLR are hamstrung by relatively high emissions engines, this puts them at a disadvantage when compared with BMW and Audi, especially on company car tax. With the new engine plant and new JLR powertrains coming on stream late next year, this issue will be corrected.

    The long term aim is to build 800,000 units in the UK, this will make JLR very competitive and profitable. The X760 small/medium car and its derivatives (Crossover SUV, coupe etc) will make for a convincing product range for Jaguar.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.