Despite Challenges, Maruti Suzuki Records More Than 15 per cent Growth

The company's net profit in Q4 stood at Rs. 17,090 million, a growth of 15.8 per cent compared to the same period previous year.

By Carandbike Team

1 mins read

Published on April 27, 2017

Highlights

Maruti Suzuki India sold 414,439 vehicles in Q4
The company saw a growth of 15.8 per cent in net profit in Q4
Maruti launched Vitara Brezza, Ignis and Baleno RS in Q4

Maruti Suzuki today announced a significant growth in its sales of the fourth quarter. In a statement released by the company, 414,439 vehicles were sold in Q4 out of which 31,771 were for the export market. This reeled in a 15 per cent growth for the company as compared to the same period in the previous year. Net profit stood at Rs. 73,377 million, up 36.8 per cent. The company’s net profit in Q4 stood at Rs. 17,090 million, a growth of 15.8 per cent compared to the same period previous year. In fact the company also recorded net sales of Rs. 669,094 million in Apr-Mar 2016-17, a growth of 18.5 per cent over the same period last year. The company launched the Vitara Brezza, Ignis and even the Baleno RS in the previous financial year. The Vitara Brezza has certainly been the most successful of the lot, with the Ignis catching up. The Vitara Brezza has already crossed the 1 lakh sales milestone and that speaks a lot about the demand this car has in the Indian market. The growth in volumes, increase in share of the company’s higher segment models, benefits due to full capacity utilization and cost reduction efforts also contributed to increase in profits for Maruti Suzuki. The company sold 1,568,603 vehicles in 2016-17 a growth of 9.8 per cent. Of this, exports were at 124,062 units. RC Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki said, “The year was in some respects quite challenging. But the adversity has been overcome by higher volumes.” And this of course includes currency movements, demonetisation and the shift of focus from diesel vehicles to petrol. He further mentioned that, “The diesel sector is becoming less and less polluting but there is a general understanding that diesel is more polluting. This will go away after the BSVI Norms are introduced in the country” We've told you just this morning that Kia is all set to enter the Indian market and it's going to be a challenge for Maruti Suzuki considering the addition in competition. Mr. Bhargava said, "We are a market which has a potential to grow to 7-8-10 million cars. When there's such growth, it means a lot of cars. Where else in the world will should it go?" "The objective of Maruti Suzuki is that we have to remain competitive in what the others are doing also in terms of customer requirements which we will keep doing. I can't give a fixed answer on what we will do but the fact that our market share has been going up from the past several years despite all the competition and we've been able to judge what the market wants, the results are for you to see." As far as the Gujarat plant is concerned, the company will start producing 10,000 cars a month from may onwards. The company has already pushed out 10,000 units from this plant (February and March put together) and this will certainly slash the waiting period on cars. The future looks bright then for Maruti Suzuki and it’s clearly not resting on its laurels. The company has a couple of blockbusters lined up for this financial year and these include the 3^rd generation Dzire as also the all-new Swift hatchback. With new cars coming in, Maruti Suzuki said that it will invest more in sales and service networks this year. The company’s premium dealership, Nexa, have already been quite successful and the company announced in January 2017 that it had opened its 200^th dealership in India and there are more coming this year. (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)