Riding on a 7% year-on-year growth in domestic motorcycle sales as well as the recovery of three-wheeler exports, Bajaj Auto reported a 3% year-on-year rise in profit to Rs 819 crore in the three months to December, 2012.
The firm?s turnover rose 9% y-o-y to R5,616 crore. ?The launch of new exciting and differentiated products helped the company partially address the slowdown in the domestic market,? the company said.
In a challenging environment the company had recorded an operating Ebitda margin in Q3 FY13 of 20.01% compared with 21% in Q3 FY12. Export revenues grew by 2% during the quarter to R1,748 crore.
Bajaj Auto managing director Rajiv Bajaj had cautioned last week in Pune that expectations, going ahead, needed to be tempered since the last quarter was going to be tough. The December numbers, he pointed out, should not be taken as the benchmark for the remaining part of the year, the outlook for which wasn?t too good.
Bajaj told a television channel that they would end the year at a little less than the 5 million unit sales expected for the entire year as the domestic market continued to be sluggish and there was no recovery in sight.
For Bajaj the bigger sportier bikes continue to account for 70% of its total motorcycles sales and now has a market share of 32%. The total motorcycle sales in the domestic market was up 7% to 6.87 lakh bikes while in the export market there was a 2% decline to 2.93 lakh units.
In the three-wheeler segment, Bajaj had the highest-ever sales at 1.41 lakh units with domestic market growing at 23% to 64,168 units while exports were up by 1% to 77,310 units, growth coming in from the diesel passenger carrier segment. It continues its hold on the petrol segment with a 89% market share.
These results were in line with what the Street had pencilled in. In a report, Motilal Oswal Securities said the margins had been driven by richer product mix and higher contribution from three-wheeler exports as also favourable currency movements.
Kotak Securities pointed out that realisations had been better. The brokerage believes margins in FY14 are expected to receive a boost from currency benefits in exports and an improved product mix. The company has launched products over the past few months and that should aid volume growth in FY14.
