Profits and sales rise for luxury car maker JLR
Luxury car maker JLR has achieved record sales in the first half of its financial year.
The business, which has its engine manufacturing centre at the i54 north of Wolverhampton, achieved revenue of £13.8 billion in the six months to the end of September.
It was up 42 per cent on a year before.
Revenue was £6.9 billion in the second quarter – up 30 per cent.
The growth was driven by higher wholesales, better mix, cost reductions and investment in demand generation.
Profit before tax and exceptional items was £442 million in the quarter – up over £600m year-on year – and for the six months was £877m – up over £1.5 billion.
The £15bn Reimagine transformation investment over five years to transition to an electric future is continuing.
It includes investing more than £1.4bn over next five years in JLR’s Solihull plant and Halewood plant in Merseyside to produce next generation electric models.
A £250m investment is being made in the JLR Future Energy Lab at Whitley Engineering Centre, Coventry to develop electric drive units (EDUs) in-house.
JLR is to hire 300 new technicians to develop and build next generation EVs at JLR’s West Midlands engineering and manufacturing sites.
Adrian Mardell, JLR’s chief executive,said: “I am pleased to announce another strong quarter of financial and operational progress for JLR. We have delivered our best ever cashflow in the first half of this financial year and delivered another profitable quarter due to the strength of our financial performance. These results demonstrate the huge desirability of our modern luxury product portfolio and the skill of our hard-working teams who have increased production to ensure we can satisfy the substantial demand for our cars more quickly.”
Supply constraints are continuing to ease, enabling more vehicles to be delivered to clients.
Wholesales were 96,817 in the last quarter and 190,070 in the first half, both up 29 per cent year-on-year.
The order book remains strong with more than168,000 client orders at quarter end, with Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender continuing to make up a significant portion, accounting for 77 per cent of the order book overall.
Looking ahead, production and wholesale volumes are expected to gradually increase in the second half of the financial year.
