Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd. reported a consolidated net loss of ₹5,531 crore (55.31 billion rupees) for the three months ended Sept. 30, as restructuring charges at its British luxury unit Jaguar Land Rover outweighed a 34% rise in revenue. JLR also lowered its profit margin target for the full year.

The result, published on Friday, splits the company in two for investors. In India, the maker of the Nexon and Punch sold more than 200,000 cars in a quarter and cannot build electric models fast enough. In Britain, JLR is running a voluntary redundancy program aimed at about 4,000 employees, writing down assets and telling shareholders it does not know whether its sales decline in China has ended. The shares closed down 3.31% at ₹287.40 on Friday, Business Standard reported.

Revenue from operations rose to ₹96,920 crore from ₹72,349 crore a year earlier, according to Business Standard and the brokerage Upstox, which both reported the filing. A crore is 10 million. The year-earlier quarter showed a profit of ₹76,170 crore, but that figure included a large one-time gain from the demerger of the commercial vehicle business and is not comparable, Business Standard said. On a continuing-operations basis the loss narrowed to ₹5,451 crore from ₹6,368 crore.

The group booked exceptional charges of ₹6,738 crore in the quarter, mostly employee separation costs and asset impairments, the newspaper reported. The consolidated margin on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was 6.2%, up 630 basis points from a year earlier, when a cyber incident disrupted JLR.

JLR cuts its margin guidance

JLR, which is wholly owned by Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, said in its own release on Friday that revenue for the quarter was £5.9 billion, up 20.3%. Wholesale volumes rose from the previous quarter in the U.K. and overseas markets and fell in China and the Middle East.

Profit before tax and exceptional items was £6 million, against a loss of £485 million a year earlier. The adjusted margin on earnings before interest and tax was 1.1%, compared with a negative 8.6% in the cyberattack quarter. After £530 million of exceptional items, which the company said covered separation costs and write-downs of intangible assets under development and other assets, JLR's loss after tax was £451 million. A year earlier it lost £559 million.

Cash moved the wrong way. Free cash outflow was £540 million in the quarter, leaving £1.8 billion of cash and £6.0 billion of total liquidity, including a £1.0 billion syndicated term loan signed on Sept. 29, the release said.

JLR revised its full-year guidance to an adjusted EBIT margin of 2% to 3% and a free cash outflow of about £1.25 billion, citing market challenges, geopolitical risks and the exceptional costs.

Of the charges, £295 million related to a voluntary redundancy program aimed at about 4,000 employees, JLR management said, according to Business Standard. About 3,000 had signed up, and most are expected to leave on Nov. 30. Management described China as a difficult market and said it could not be sure the decline in sales there had bottomed out.

P.B. Balaji, JLR's chief executive, pointed to new models. The company has shown the Range Rover Electric, Range Rover Sport Electric and Jaguar Type 01, with deliveries slated to begin from early 2027, and plans a Range Rover GT and an electric Defender next year. He said in the release that "we are entering a phase of exciting product launches." JLR said its cost program is on track to save £1.7 billion over two years and bring breakeven volumes toward 300,000 vehicles.

Tata Motors' India car business: record revenue, thin margins

The domestic passenger vehicle business recorded its highest quarterly revenue, ₹20,423 crore, up 50.9% from a year earlier, Business Standard reported. Volumes grew 40% and electric vehicle sales rose 90%, Shailesh Chandra, managing director and chief executive of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, said on the earnings call, according to the newspaper.

Profit did not follow. The unit's EBITDA margin narrowed by 180 basis points to 4%, and its EBIT margin was negative 0.3%. Chandra said price increases and cost cuts had offset only about 40% of the rise in commodity costs, with steel, rubber and copper expected to stay expensive in the December quarter. Capital Times has separately covered Maruti Suzuki's quarterly results.

Chandra signaled a response. "In Q4, we might go for slightly higher price increase," he said, according to Business Standard, adding that he expects profitability to stay near current levels in the December quarter before improving in the three months to March.

Supply is the other constraint. The company is meeting only about 60% to 65% of demand for its electric cars, Chandra said. It plans to lift electric vehicle supplies to nearly 20,000 units a month over the next two to three months from about 16,000, and dealers hold roughly 10 days of electric inventory.

What Chandra expects for India's car market

Chandra expects India's passenger vehicle industry to grow 12% to 13% in the year to March 2027, slowing to about 5% in the second half because of a higher base, Business Standard reported. He said discounts had been falling for two to three quarters. Maruti Suzuki's October sales figures are covered separately.

The next fixed date is at JLR. Most of the employees who accepted voluntary redundancy are due to leave on Nov. 30, and the first deliveries of the electric Range Rover models are scheduled from early 2027.