Tata Motors aims local biz turnaround
Tata Motors will focus on turning around the domestic business, particularly the commercial vehicles (CVs) segment, which has suffered due to a challenging environment as also the company's sub-optimal execution and market misses, its chairman N Chandrasekaran said on Tuesday.
Addressing shareholders for the first time after taking over as chairman, he also expressed regret over its inability to pay dividends due to losses in the domestic business and said it is working "with tremendous urgency" to deal with the matter. "We expect the business environment to remain dynamic and unpredictable. Our clear focus is the turnaround of the domestic business," he said at annual general meeting in Mumbai on Tuesday.
For 2016-17, he said Tata Motors' standalone gross revenue was at ~49,100 crore, up 3.6 per cent from the previous year. The loss after tax, on a standalone basis, was ~2,480 crore compared to ~62 crore in the previous year.
Chandrasekaran said the CV business faced challenging and uncertain environment due to changeover to the Goods and Services Tax regime, demonetisation and "unexpected Supreme Court ruling on BSIII to BS-IV migration".
"On the other hand, the performance also suffered due to sub-optimal execution and market misses. We have continued to lose market share in the commercial vehicles business, reaching 44.4 per cent in March this year from a high of nearly 60 per cent five years back," he said. Tata Motors' CV volumes have remained more or less constant at 320,000 vehicles, over the past three years, while the operating costs have gone up over time.
Tata Motors took unanimous decision to stop Nano: Mistry
Ousted Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry on Tuesday said Tata Motors had taken a unanimous decision to discontinue production of loss-making Nano almost a year back, which, however, continues to be manufactured at a sub-scale level till date.