Jaguar Land Rover profits up 34 per cent to £1.5 billion

Just four years after Tata took over what looked like a basket case in Jaguar Land Rover, profits have hit £1.5 billion.

It’s become the norm for Jaguar Land Rover to report ever improving profits and sales, but the news that JLR made profits of £1.5 billion in the year to end of March 2012 is still amazing.

Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata four years ago as it unwound its faltering luxury car brands, and as recently as 2009 JLR were almost begging for government help to keep going.

But we now see sales at JLR up 27 per cent to 305,859 units and pre-tax profits for 2011-2012 of £1.5 billion. Sales in China have jumped by 76 per cent (and that’s before JLR sees any benefit from the JV with Chery that’s still awaiting regulatory approval) despite punitive import duties as China’s new middle class fall in love with Land Rover and Jaguar cars.

But it’s not just China where Jaguar are doing well; sales in India are up 153.3 per cent to 2,138 and Brazil bought 9,027 cars – a 62.2 per cent jump.

The UK is still JLR’s biggest market – taking almost 20 per cent of JLR’s production – but that looks set to change as the rest of the world falls in love with cars that are still very British.

Perhaps even more encouraging for JLR is that pre tax profits in the last quarter of their financial year were up 177 per cent to £530 million compared to the same quarter in 2011.

At this rate it’s going to be the JLR tail wagging the Tata dog before long. Well done JLR.

By Cars UK