Royal Enfield Sales Grow 25 Per Cent In May 2017

Royal Enfield is going strong, selling over 60,000 bikes in the second consecutive month, after posting best-ever sales figures for a single month in April 2017. In May 2017, Royal Enfield sold a total of 60,696 bikes, posting over 25 per cent growth over the same month a year ago. In domestic sales alone, Royal Enfield sold 58,647 bikes in May 2017, compared to 47,232 bikes sold in May 2016. In exports, the company sold 2,049 bikes in May 2017, compared to just 1,372 bikes sold a year ago, posting an export growth of 49 per cent for the month.

Royal Enfield posted its best-ever quarterly performance for the quarter ended March 2017. In this quarter, Royal Enfield sold 1,78,345 motorcycles, registering its best-ever quarterly sales and posting a growth of 20.8 per cent over 1,47,618 motorcycles sold in the same period last year. Royal Enfield also posted its highest ever quarterly income from operations at Rs. 1,888 crore (net of excise duty) for Q4 2016-17, a growth of 23.2 per cent over the corresponding period last year.

In May 2017, Eicher Motors announced an investment of Rs. 800 crore in FY 2017-18 towards Royal Enfield's upcoming manufacturing facility at Vallam Vadagal near Chennai, product development, two technical centres in UK and India, and towards market expansion. The new plant is expected to be operational by August 2017. With the third plant coming into action, combined capacity of Royal Enfield is expected to be 825,000 motorcycles in 2017-18. The company's immediate business outlook remains strong as Royal Enfield continues to grow consistently, competitively and profitably towards leading and expanding the mid-sized motorcycle segment globally.

Royal Enfield is currently working on the development of a new engine, a 750 cc parallel-twin engine, which will be targeted towards making a more powerful and performance-oriented product. The new 750 cc engine has been spotted testing on what looks like a larger model of the Continental GT café racer. While there's been no official announcement from the company, the new engine is expected to power a range of products in the Royal Enfield portfolio, including a larger, more powerful adventure tourer. The new products are naturally going to be launched in the domestic market, but for now, Royal Enfield's product expansion seems more in line with the company's aggressive expansion in overseas markets, where it intends to be a leader in the global middleweight motorcycle segment.