Tata Motors Ltd

NSE:TATAMOTORS

Earnings Call Analysis

Company Delivers Consistent Growth and Debt Reduction

The company has achieved consistent delivery across all segments for 6 consecutive quarters, reducing net debt to INR 29,200 crores and planning Indian operations' debt to near zero by quarter's end. Revenue grew by 25%, with EBIT improving by 390 bps to 8.3% and PBT hitting INR 7,600 crores. JLR's revenue and PBT reached record highs at GBP 7.4 billion (up 22%) and GBP 627 million, respectively, with an impressive EBIT margin doubling year-over-year. Capital investment surged by 34% to GBP 862 million, highlighting progress on new vehicle industrialization. Investments in electrification remain strong, with Range Rover Electric witnessing 16,000 sign-ups. The EBIT margin is expected to exceed 8%, and operating cash flow should ensure net debt below GBP 1 billion, aiming for positive net cash by FY '25.

Tata Motors Celebrates Six Quarters of Consistent Growth and Impressive Debt Reduction

The story of Tata Motors in Q3 FY '24 is remarkable, featuring steady growth and significant financial advancements. A highlight in their journey is the impressive six consecutive quarters of consistent performance. This rhythm of success emphasizes their commitment to strategy execution across all business divisions.

Robust Financials with Record Revenues and EBIT Margin Expansion

Financially, the quarter saw a 25% surge in revenues, reaching an EBIT of 8.3% with an upscale of 390 basis points, and a noteworthy profit before tax (PBT) of INR 7,600 crores. This upward trajectory is echoed in their year-to-date (YTD) figures, with a 32% growth in revenue totaling INR 3 lakh crores, and a PBT increase by a staggering INR 22,000 crores compared to the previous year. Furthermore, the company reported a free cash flow of INR 6,400 crores, showcasing their strong cash generation capabilities.

Jaguar Land Rover Steers Strong Performance and Investment in Future-Ready Technology

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), a subsidiary of Tata Motors, reported a record high with a quarterly revenue of GBP 7.4 billion and a 22% increase in wholesales. Their EBIT margin doubled year over year, standing at an impressive 8.8%, while the free cash flow reached GBP 626 million, marking the best third quarter for cash flow in their history. These substantial achievements underpin JLR's commitment to future growth as they increase investment for the transition to battery electric vehicle (BEV) and hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) architectures.

Guidance Ahead: Positive Outlook with Targeted EBIT Margin and Investment

Looking forward, Tata Motors envisions their EBIT margin to surpass the targeted 8% mark, with investments poised to hit around GBP 3.2 billion for the year. The company also anticipates that its operating cash flow will substantiate a net debt under GBP 1 billion by the end of this fiscal year and expects to achieve positive net cash in FY '25, an indicator of prudent financial management and strategic planning.

Tata Motors' Domestic Revenue Peak Despite Industry Headwinds

Back home in India, Tata Motors posted their highest ever revenue for the third quarter at INR 18,538 crores. This feat comes despite challenges in the industry, which have led to a marginal decline in trucks as well as in the small commercial vehicle (SCV) and pickup segment.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Unknown Executive]

Good day, and welcome to Tata Motors' Q3 FY '24 Earnings Call. With me today are PB Balaji, Group CFO, Tata Motors; Mr. Girish Wagh, Executive Director, Tata Motors; Mr. Shailesh Chandra, MD, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Limited and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Limited; Mr. Adrian Mardell, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover; Mr. Richard Molyneux, CFO, Jaguar Land Rover; and our colleagues from the Investor Relations team.

Today, we plan to walk you through the results presentation followed by Q&A. [Operator Instructions]

I now hand over to Balaji to take this forward. Over to you, sir.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, [ Anish ]. Firstly, welcome all of you for the earnings call. Once again, it's our pleasure to take you through the results of the quarter.

If I were to leave one message as to how we see this quarter, we see this as one of consistent delivery, 6 quarters in a row, and that gives us tremendous satisfaction that we are executing on our strategies in all our businesses. So that's probably the broad message I want to leave you with.

Let's get into the details, can have the next slide, please. Safe harbor statement, standard, nothing delta here. I think from product offensive as well as other interventions, it continues to be an intense piece of action for us. We had almost 150 launches happening from the commercial vehicle side, multiple VCs. Very happy to say that the plant that we acquired from Ford, which we are calling Sanand 2 has commence production. In fact, we sold 900 vehicles out of Sanand in this particular month. So coming through very nicely and have done in a record one year of time period.

We also introduced Punch.ev on the advanced pure EV architecture, that I'm sure Shailesh would talk about in his section as well as in Q&A that may come. And from our focus completely on building out the EV ecosystem, signed MOUs for almost 17,000 public charges and also started with the first dedicated EV showrooms in India.

On JLR side, the exciting Range Rover Electric has opened. We teased it earlier in the quarter and almost 16,000 clients have signed up in the first 28 days. And we decided that Nitra will produce electric vehicles by 2030, and Defender, of course, continues to win accolades across the Board with a new set of awards on What Car? saying the car of the year there.

Okay. Next slide. On numbers. I think before I get into the details of the numbers, one clear call out, I see some confusion in the Twitter feed that is there. The TTL sale that we did, the profits from the sale on TTL does not get recognized at a consolidated level because it's still a subsidiary of Tata Motors and its results are getting consolidated into TTL. And therefore, it is only a shareholder to shareholder transaction. And therefore, in the minority interest, you will see a reduction in the minority interest number one.

And number two, it goes via -- whatever the profit is there is coming via OCI. So the PBT numbers that you see do not include TTL profits in the consolidated books. However, in the stand-alone books, it is a company-to-company transaction, in which case the profit gets recognized there. That's just for abundant clarity.

So we're going to the numbers. On that basis, we had a 25% growth on revenues and an EBIT of 8.3%, up 390 bps and profit before tax and exceptional items of almost INR 7,600 crores in the quarter and a free cash flow of INR 6,400 crores. Most strikingly on a YTD basis just to show the consistency in performance. We've had about INR 3 lakh crores of revenue, growing 32% on a YTD basis so far. And we had a PBT before exceptional item of INR 19,000 crores, up almost INR 22,000 crores over the previous year same time. And almost INR 16,000 crores of delta cash has come through. Due to this, the net debt is now down to INR 29,200 crores.

Over to the next slide. And if I look at the source of revenue, where it came from, 25% growth -- out of the 25% growth, 18% came from volume and mix. Price contributed just 1.7% translation because the pound sterling appreciated vis-a-vis the rupee that's giving us about 4.5%. And from a profitability perspective, JLR, CV, PV, all of them are positive, but JLR in particular, a standout in terms of absolute increase that you see there.

The debt is now down to INR 29,200 crores, of which Tata Motors India is INR 3,500 crores, and we are confident that this will go to near zero by end of this quarter, in line with what we had guided, and JLR is now just GBP 1.6 billion. That is a INR 16,000 crores there. That should also get cleaned out in the coming financial year. So we are well on track to deliver the reduction there.

Just as a memo point. The last 12 months, we have reduced our net debt by almost INR 28,000 crores. So we are confident that the next 12 months, this INR 29,000 crores would be cleaned up.

Next slide. Let me hand over to Richard and Adrian. Over to you, Richard.

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Okay. Thank you. Yes, I'll take you through the JLR results. So next chart, please.

I mean look, it's not often you get to present a chart like this. Every metric up versus every comparative. And it goes to show that we are now consistently delivering in line with our commitments. So I will talk very quickly through the columns left to right. So revenue, GBP 7.4 billion in the quarter, GBP 21.1 billion year-to-date. Those are both records for JLR. On a quarterly basis, we're up 22%. And on a year-to-date basis, we're up 35% versus prior year.

EBIT margin has now doubled year-over-year. We're at 8.8% EBIT and a 16% EBITDA and pretty much at 16% EBITDA on a 3-quarter Q basis as well. PBT at GBP 627 million is the best Q3 we've had since 2016. And we're [ at ] GBP 1.5 billion just over for the first three quarters. Cash flow as well, GBP 626 million in the quarter is the best Q3 cash flow we've ever had, and we're at GBP 1.4 billion cumulative cash flow in 9 months. So as I say, it's not often you get to present charts like that.

Next chart. So this chart has some verbatims. I won't go through it in detail because all the points on it, I'll cover in the following charts.

So next chart, please. So this one shows our wholesale. Wholesales in the quarter at 101,000 units. That's 27% up year-on-year. And this is the first quarter for some time where we have had wholesales, retails and production, all over 100,000 units.

In terms of the graphs, Range Rover continues to succeed and our production capacity for producing these vehicles also increases. So we were running at 2,900 cars per week this quarter versus 2,800 the previous week. Defender is down, but this isn't any demand issue. We have had some supply constraints on engines, which are common between Range Rover and Defender, so we biased the production towards Range Rover. So those are supply issues that will come back. There's no demand issue whatsoever in terms of Defender.

Discovery and Jaguar, you can see that. I think interestingly, the year-to-date numbers, if you look at percent, Range Rover was up 29% year-over-year. Defender is up 46% year-over-year. And even those vehicles, which are slightly more mature in terms of their life cycle, the Jaguar's and the Discovery's are up 9% year-on-year. So even the really mature ones are up year-over-year.

Next chart. And I won't spend considerable detail on this, either as each region that has its own slightly different seasonality. I think when you look at the bottom part of this chart, it suffices to say that all regions year-to-date are up at least 17%. So what we have is a very consistent, broad-based growth across our client base.

Next chart. So this starts to look at the financial walk. It takes PBT from a year ago to the GBP 627 million this quarter. Obviously, volume and the recovery of our ability to produce is the most significant part of the variance. However, I think there is a little bit of a story to tell in relation to net pricing and contribution costs because those columns look quite different to the ones that we presented to you in prior quarters. So it is getting a little bit more costly to acquire customers, particularly as we try to smooth our order bank in the future.

So net pricing is still positive, but not as positive as it's been in previous quarters. However, contribution costs are not as bad as they were 12 months ago. This is largely a result of the fact that as the semiconductor sector has come back a bit more towards normality, we are not having to spend anywhere near the amount of money that we were spending this time last year on broker buys or chips, but we've moved much more into long-term, stable, mutually beneficial relationship with chip manufacturers. So that transition of having slightly less positive net pricing, but more positive material cost is definitely reflective of a change in the industry dynamic.

Structural costs are going up. I mentioned beforehand and that FME, which is our marketing expense and selling, that's essentially the same as VME. Those two parts together are us investing more in terms of demand acquisition than we needed to do in the past.

Admin is also up, over half of that is our digital transformation. FX. Largely, as you would expect it to be, a sterling strengthened considerably in the quarter, and most of our operational FX was offset by our derivative color. So that is largely the message here. We are delivering in terms of volume. We're still net price positive and the inflation -- the serious inflation pain that we had this time last year is starting to ameliorate.

Next chart. This takes our PBT to cash, actually GBP 627 million to GBP 626 million. So not a great deal of net difference. What is important here, I think there is the cash profit after tax column in the middle there, GBP 1.24 billion. That is also a record for JLR. And delivering that level of cash profits does allow us to fund investment spending that is increasing as we move towards the delivery of our new BEV electrical architectures, BEV, HEV hand electrical architectures. So delivery of that is important. Working capital was favorable in the quarter as we had higher volume, but if you note the row below, cumulatively, our GBP 1.4 billion year-to-date cash flow, only GBP 0.2 billion of that is due to working capital. Most of it is due to cash profit after tax.

Next chart. Investment. So investment, GBP 862 million for the quarter. Our capitalization rate remains flat at the same rate that it has been for the past two quarters at 63%. I think interestingly here is our engineering spend is up 3% quarter-on-quarter, but our capital investment is up 34% quarter-on-quarter. And that reflects the fact that we are now moving into the industrialization phase of all of our new vehicles. That is a later phase to engineering, obviously, engineered first, industrialized second, but it gives the indication that these vehicles are now well down the chute in terms of being delivered.

Next chart. I'll take you into a quick business update. So let's move ahead. So what's important here, I think, is this word consistently. If you look at our EBIT over the last four quarters, it was 6.5%, then 8.6%, then 7.3% then 8.8%. We are consistently delivering strong and improving EBIT.

And that's really important for our operating model because we are inevitably going to face challenges, some we know about, and I'm sure there's some we don't yet know about. We will have to keep focusing on the order book to make sure that we build demand as the supply constraints ease. There will be supply constraints, be it natural disasters, accidents, constraints as some of our suppliers find it more difficult to keep pace with our volumes rising. So we will see these things. And we will see continued inflation, even if not in commodity prices and energy prices, there will be inflation and there remains inflation in terms of labor costs, which we will have to manage and offset.

Red Sea is obviously an issue for us. It so far has not caused us a serious concern. We have some suppliers that have also transporting parts the other way that are also we keep a very close eye on. At the moment, it is not having a material impact on our business.

Next chart. So we did want to give an update on our electrification journey as this is also something that we did at the same meeting last year. Bottom line is this very digital change. Range Rover is coming soon, followed by Jaguar and our EMA architecture such that by the end of '26, Jaguar and four landmark BEVs will be available. Two others will follow a little bit later, partly is we do continue to see very strong demand, particularly for PHEVs as a transition technology PHEVs do seem to be taking an increasing share of consumer demand. So we're focusing on that a little bit more as a transition technology. But fundamentally, no real change. And if you look at the right-hand side of that chart, BEV available on all models by 2030, 100% sales, zero tailpipe emissions in '36 and net carbon zero in '29, remain exactly as they were beforehand.

Next chart. ICE is the exciting one. The Range Rover Electric, our order bank and our waiting list is open, and we have 16,000 people that have already signed up to that waiting list. This car is a Range Rover first, but it's electric. We're driving prototypes. And what we're finding is that the very, very powerful, but also quiet and serene BEV system. It's actually perfect for what the brand Range Rover stands for. In many ways, it's going to be the ultimate Range Rover.

It will be technically peerless. If you see on the chart, we've filed more patents with Range Rover Electric than any other Range Rover before. It's got an 800-volt architecture, but it's not just technically peerless. It does what all Range Rovers can that others can't, such as wave through 850 mils of water. So we're really looking forward to this car. We're investing GBP 70 million now in an underbody facility. In order to produce the slightly specific underbody that vehicle requires, we are preparing, it's coming. It's going to be amazing.

Next chart. So just looking ahead in terms of guidance. We expect our EBIT margin to be over the 8% number that we targeted beforehand. We expect investments to be around GBP 3.2 billion this year, and we continue to expect operating cash flow to support under GBP 1 billion of net debt by the end of this financial year and positive net cash in FY '25. As it says, our priorities are to focus on brand activation to continue to monitor and improve supply and respond where the challenges emerge and to continue to execute our plans flawlessly.

That's all I think I had to say at this point. I will hand back to Balaji.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, Richard. Moving on to commercial vehicles. And the next slide, please. The market shares, particularly in the heavy and medium sections are consistently gaining on the heavy is fundamentally -- the products are performing much better than competition and very much meeting the needs of the customers. And hence, you can see a consistent increase in market share despite realizations discounts being wheeled back. And we are also seeing in the intermediates is what you see as HGV here. With the product availability starting to increase, we are seeing a step-up in market shares here as well.

Light commercial vehicles, we do have a challenge. We are addressing it. It will take a few quarters for us to get our act right, but we are committed to ensure this shape of this graph has turned as well. And passenger as the orders start coming in, we do not expect any challenge on this front as the school season opens up, you should see this coming back again.

Next slide, please. On the financial performance of 19% revenue growth with an EBITDA now touching 11.1%. We turn -- on a full year basis, this EBITDA is now 10.4%. So very much well and truly double-digit EBITDA margin, a milestone that we set for ourselves has been secured, and we intend to build on this. EBIT of 8.6%, the 270 bps improvement and almost INR 1,700 crores of profit in this quarter and INR 4,100 crores on a full year basis so far. So PV and CV clearly coming back from a financial perspective in a very healthy space.

Next slide. Source of where the money has come from as on strategy, volume mix and realizations, that's where it is. Investments in products and investment as the activity levels pick up on employee cost is the ones that you see there.

Let me now hand this over to Girish to talk about the business.

[Girish Wagh, executive]

Thank you, Balaji. So initially, let's look at the segment-wise growth. We have seen year-over-year growth in the truck that is heavy commercial vehicles, intermediate light and medium commercial vehicles as well as the buses in the last line. I think it is just the small commercial vehicle line which has declined year-on-year.

I think quarter-on-quarter, we saw a marginal decline in trucks as well as in SCV pickup. But as far as revenue is concerned, I think we had our highest ever revenue for third quarter at INR 18,538 crores, surpassed our earlier highest in FY '19 Q3.

As Balaji mentioned, the market shares continue to move up in the heavy commercial vehicles. And also in the intermediate and medium commercial vehicles as we continue on our realization improvement journey. I think on SCV pickup, yes, the market shares have disappointed us. But I think we are on a longer-term journey here. I think we have improved the unit economics very aggressively, and we are happy with the scale that we are in, in terms of breakeven for this business, and we are making a lot of structural transformation on the front end in this business to then gradually improve the volumes through a full basis.

Non-vehicle business, which has been our focus consistently over last 8 quarters continued to grow and grew by around 12% Y-o-Y. Some of the bright spots. I think in Q3, when we measured the customer sentiment index, a very good improvement in the tippers. Rest of the segments have kind of remained flat, which in a manner augurs well for the business.

On digital, I think we are continuously ramping up our activity. And in Q3, we had 20% of our sales lease coming from digital sources, from digital channels. And in small commercial vehicle, which is one of the important transformation we're doing, 23% leads came from digital and in vans and buses, it was almost 28%.

We introduced more than 150 variants in Q3. And with that, I think we are now positioned very well in all the product lines in all the segments. As far as the commodity scenario is concerned, I think we saw some softening across the nonferrous metals, which was offset by hardening in the ferrous metal prices. But I think we had a significant push in cost reduction and therefore, very healthy outcomes, which in fact, helped us to negate most of the cost increases that had happened when we migrated to BSVI Phase 2.

Going ahead, we will continue to improve our realization. So this is a track that we have taken, a transformative track, and we continue to look at this. We will drive innovations to address some of the specific micro segments. So while we launched 150 variants in Q3, we'll continue to come up with newer products. We'll continue to create demand by judicious mix of ATL, BTL and digital we keep on increasing quarter-over-quarter.

I'll speak about the electric vehicles on the next slide, but I think we continue to ramp up our efforts in terms of generating demand and fulfilling the same. We continue to increase our penetration in service and spares. In international markets, I think while the total industry volumes in most of the markets remain subdued, we are maintaining our market shares and, in fact, grown our margins significantly Y-o-Y, and we are also ensuring channel profitability until the industry volumes come back in these markets.

Next slide. On Electric Mobility, we now have -- as of yesterday, more than 2,700 vehicles now plying on the roads and we continue to gain traction in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. We are working on demand creation initiatives here. So more than 500 fast chargers have been installed in PAN India. We are working with the financials on very innovative financing solutions, backed up by increased battery warranty, which is actually giving a favorable total cost of ownership comparison with respect to internalized engine combustion variants, ICE variants.

We have been able to crack first few deals in the municipal garbage collection application. So until now, we were focusing on last mile distribution, e-commerce, I think we are now getting into municipal applications also. The vehicles have been demonstrating significantly better performance and reliability in the market compared with some of the other vehicles, which otherwise are serving this mean. We've also put up more than 150 EV dedicated support centers across the country, which are helping manage the health of all these vehicles proactively.

Coming to our Smart City Mobility Solutions business. Continues to grow strength from strength, and now we have more than 1,200 buses deployed until December and total now more than 2,000 buses are operating. Out of which 1,000 are as a part of the CESL tender 1 that we had won, and we have delivered buses to DTC that is Delhi Transport Corporation, Bangalore as well as Jammu and Kashmir.

Now our e-bus fleet, cumulative has covered more than 110 million kilometers, delivering consistently more than 95% uptime. We have been consistently meeting the off-shedding requirements across all the depots and we are working on improving energy efficiency with all these kilometers that we have under the belt now, which is, therefore, improving our operating economics in this business. We are also working with government and made a good progress on the payment security mechanism. There are a few last issues, which are being solved with respect to the balance sheet, which I think we will get back into the new tenders aggressively.

On digital businesses. Please to inform that the Fleet Edge continues to build momentum. Now more than 530,000 vehicles are on Fleet Edge. We started the subscription models, which are very well received, and we have more than 50% penetration in the trucks and buses in the subscription model. We've also seen the engagement times increasing month-over-month. The Fleet Edge continues to give enhanced insights on operations, metal health, et cetera, to the fleet owners. We've also completed integration of FASTag into the Fleet Edge with which a truck owner can seamlessly move from one FASTag to another.

As far as further value-added products, we have launched now fuel efficiency consultancy in Fleet Edge, which is branded as Mileage Sathi. And there are 2, 3 versions in this. The first one being part of subscription self handed kind of do it yourself and rest are paid basis.

On Freight Tiger. we are on our track to do the integration with Fleet Edge. The first integration, which is happening is the carrier matching of platform of Freight Tiger with that of Fleet Edge, who have a native journey.

On E-dukaan, our online marketplace for spare parts growing leaps and bounds, I think it grew 4.5x Y-o-Y. I spoke about the digitally source leads. We also have our online sales platform. Very happy to tell you that we had more than 6,000 leads originated from this online sales platform, and we now have 5 financiers, which are integrated on this platform.

So that's the progress on the digital businesses. Back to you, Balaji.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thank you, Girish. Moving on to PV. Next slide, please.

The market shares, Vahan is now -- the focus is squarely to drive that, and that is yielding very good results for us. And we are now, this quarter, delivered 14.6% share and now consistently for a few months have been #2 in the country, and we intend to sustain that. The other on the EVs as well as CNG, the penetration of CNG, I draw your attention to now at 14%, EV at 12%. And this is really delivering the CAFE compliance for us where as against our calculated target of 18.9 grams per kilometer, we are trending at 93.8. And therefore, there's a significant headroom that we have on the CAFE compliance piece.

Next slide, please. On EVs, of course, the overall volumes continue to be strong, delivering almost 21% growth. This is not enough for us, and we will be stepping this up further as the new cars come in, the networks increase, charging networks go up. So the task on hand as far as EV is concerned, is squarely to develop the market, and you would see us intervening in this in a complete 360-degree manner, which we'll be more than happy to talk about the subsequently. We're actually more than happy to elaborate on that.

Next slide. On the numbers per se, the full year YTD so far, delivering a 6% growth, delivered EBITDA margins flat at about 6.1% and I'll tell you why it's happening that way. And as far as EBIT margins are concerned, operating leverage kicking in to deliver a 70 bps improvement. And even on the current quarter, we're now sitting at an EBIT margin of 2.1%. And the business is now almost INR 500 crores of profits has been made this year.

Next slide. This is a very important slide in terms of how the PV and mix is starting to play around. Obviously, as guided last time also, we do see significant savings coming through in the variable cost line, and hence, you see that stepping up. And therefore, this is then translating into the PV EBITDA now nearing almost double digits. And on the EV EBITDA, before product development expenses, we are now breakeven. And once we include the step-up in product development expenses as new cars are getting created and will get launched in due course, you see the EBITDA sitting at minus 8.2%. But on an overall basis, we are still comfortable in terms of overall EBIT being 2.1% or INR 400 crores of profit in the quarter. So that's how this is coming through. And as battery prices come off, you would expect to see the EBITDA pre -- excluding PV expenses to continue to keep inching up. And overall EBITDA destination is to take it to breakeven sooner rather than later.

Next slide. Shailesh?

[Shailesh Chandra, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Balaji. Let me start with the key highlights of the industry. Rather, I'll start with the calendar year '23. This was the calendar year where we saw that every quarter, the industry posted 1 million units or more. And therefore, for the entire calendar year '23, industry sold 4.1 million units, which was roughly 8% growth.

Specifically in quarter 3, the wholesale volume grew by 9% year-on-year, again hitting a 1 million mark. There was a high level of discounting also that we saw in quarter 3 right from the festive season and peaking, I would say, in the month of December. And I would say this was mostly because the festive period was slightly below expectation. And therefore, there was a pressure of clearing the inventory in the industry.

Vahan actually grew at 7%, was 2% lesser than the wholesale growth of 9% and that pretty much indicates the situation of why the stock was slightly higher. And therefore, the channel stock, while it ended in December and to lower levels than what we had been seeing for last two quarters. But still, it was higher than, let's say, if you compare with the 1st Jan '23 inventory.

As far as [ EV ] is concerned, Tata Motors performance. The calendar year '23 was the third successive year of our highest ever sales, and we touched 553,000 units. Unlike the industry, our Vahan actually grew by 15% as compared to just a 5% wholesale growth. And this, we did it deliberately because we wanted to go for a steeper reduction in channel stock to create a very healthy situation for ourselves in quarter 4 of this financial year.

The focus on Vahan really helped us in ensuring that in quarter 3, we were ranked #2 with a 14.6% Vahan market share, which was nearly 190 bps growth over the quarter 2. And this has happened because we also had a very strong performance during the festive period unlike the industry where it was slightly moderate, I would say.

Coming to bright spots in the industry. If you really see the growth rates in CY '23 to understand the trend of different powertrains, while the overall growth I said for calendar year '23 for the industry was 8%, CNG grew by 25% and EVs nearly doubled, a growth rate of about 95%, 100%. And I think this trend is likely to continue. So companies with stronger portfolio in CNG and EVs will [ gear ]. Market is responding well to new launches. So we have seen that all the players who actually went for new nameplate launch have driven the growth better than the industry growth.

Coming to Tata Motors, the bright spot for us is a very healthy channel stock, as I mentioned earlier, because we have taken a steeper correction of stock in quarter 3. And therefore, we have seen that in Jan '23 -- Jan '24, which was last month, we offtake the highest ever at 53,600 in domestic market. There's a strong traction of the facelifted products iCNG range. As you know that in quarter 3 and quarter 2, we launched Nexon, Harrier, and Safari also the Punch CNG. All these four products have sold the highest in Jan '24. So there's continued traction for all these three products, which is helping us go to a higher level of volumes.

Launch of Punch.ev has been taken well in the market, and I think this is going to help us drive EV sales going forward. In Jan, we posted 69% growth as far as EV sales are concerned. We also launched the first two Tata -- Tata.ev exclusive channels in Gurgaon, very good footfalls we are seeing. And these -- we have a plan to expand this in the coming months. In the next 18 months, we believe that in most of the high saving cities, we would have these exclusive channels. And we plan to only sell EVs through these channels in the cities where we open this.

Coming to challenges as far as industry is concerned, we have seen a very strong growth in FY '23 of 25%, which is likely to moderate in FY '24 to about 8%. And therefore, we are seeing with this high base effect, the FY '25 will be slightly challenging. With less than 5% growth rate is what we anticipate.

As far as EVs are concerned, I think biggest challenge here is the pace at which the charging infra is growing. It is lagging behind the pace at which the EV adoption is happening. We have seen that even the commodity prices have been stable in the past one quarter or so. But there is a risk going forward of this going up for certain commodities. So we are keeping a very close track of that.

For PV and EV going forward, our focus will be to maintain ICE market share with continued focus on the new models. We will be working on driving the penetration and expansion of electric vehicle market. And there are specific initiatives that we have taken to fundamentally expand this industry through micro market focus. So we are focusing on about 15 to 20 cities and also leveraging the expanded range of products. With Punch launch, we have now four promising products in the personal segment, so we'll be utilizing that.

And given that the charging infra is crucial to the growth and expansion of EV market, we have gone for an open collaboration approach with all charge point operators as well as the oil marketing companies who are focusing on expansion of charging Infra. So I think with these initiatives, we should continue to do well in the future.

Back to you Balaji.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, Shailesh. So at an overall level, let me step up the pace here. Go to the next slide, please.

The CapEx spend, we are trending towards the INR 8,000 crores that we identified as a spend for the year. So we, therefore, expect that CapEx to be funded completely out of cash profit. So don't see us stress there.

Next slide. This is what I guided saying that INR 6,000 crores we have spent so far, so we should be in the INR 8,000 crores zone for the year.

Next slide. On Tata Motors Finance, the call out is the continued reduction in GNPA. The collection efficiencies have been trending well. Even January has been a good month for us. GNPA is now reduced to 6.5% and both the early delinquency as well as the roll forward rates are now performing well. And disbursals, of course, have declined 11% as the focus has been completely on building the quality. This will now start changing from now onwards. As the portfolio quality is fine through prudent sourcing, we will now step up the ROA by focusing on growth, but we want to do it in a prudent manner. At the same time, we will want to diversify the book further to reduce portfolio risks and digitalize the business for lower TAT. So the fundamentals of the business are strengthening. And therefore, we are now gradually step back onto the growth story.

Next slide, please. So looking ahead, I think all three businesses are performing well, and we continue to remain positive on that. And therefore, we are -- on Q4 should see an improvement because of the traditional seasonality. Q4 is normally the strongest quarters for us. New launches that are there in [ salacious ] area and gracious area, and of course, improving supplies at JLR, which Richard talked about. And therefore, we are quite confident of delivering on the deleveraging plans that we have laid out, and the priorities is there for all of you to see.

The only delta which is compared to earlier that is there is the whole focus on EVs. To step up the market, the -- develop the market and drive portfolio penetration to 15% plus from the current 12%. So products charging infra ecosystem and everything that Shailesh has talked about. So that's what we had to say.

[P. Balaji, executive]

And we'll probably go into questions and the queue has already formed. So let me take the first set of questions from -- so just give me a minute, please.

Okay. Maybe the first question, JLR, Richard, coming your way. In terms of outlook, this is from Mumuksh from Anand Rathi. Can you share the outlook for the demand in the U.S. and Europe? And how do you see this industry -- the fact that the volumes are still below 2019, how do you see that performing around and also a lot of noise around EV penetration slowing down in developed markets. How are you going to respond to that in your plans?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Yes, let me take that. So at the moment, certainly, we are not seeing any demand issues in the U.S. It remains extremely strong Defender and Range Rover in particular, very strong brands over there and doing really well. Europe, I think, a little bit more stable and we're probably keeping more of an eye on.

EV penetration over the medium term. Look, I don't think there's any change in the end date here. The speed is to exactly how and what the curve looks like to get there. I think there have been many predictions in the past that it would be a very S-curve focused transition. And now some of those are being tailored back a bit, certainly most of the recent forecasts have come back.

But it doesn't change our plans at all. We have targets for our sustainability, our CO2 emissions in 2030, 2036 and 2039. So we are not going to change our plans. I'm sure in a year or so's time, those forecasts around EV penetration will change again. But as I say, for us, we have our plans, we know our plans. We're executing our plan.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thank you, Richard. Next one, Girish coming your way. Again, a question has been asked in different forms, demand in commercial vehicles, particularly for medium and heavies as well as the small commercial vehicles. So how do you see it?

[Girish Wagh, executive]

Let me talk about a few macro factors first. So I think if we trend with history for the last 5 years, we see that the demand in 1 billion tonne kilometers has been growing every year. And actually, the feed utilizations continue to be at good levels. And there is a steady balance between demand and supply. The transporter profitability actually remains stable.

As I spoke in my presentation, the customer sentiment index is also quite stable. The freight rates are steady, but we have seen Y-o-Y decline in volumes in Q3 to some extent and mostly in January. In the month of -- in the third quarter, we have seen some drop in the government expenditure and also due to the elections in the 5 states, there was some impact. And therefore, we do expect a pause in growth in Q4. And also, as you know, last Q4 was a very robust Q4 for us because of the transition from BSVI Phase 1 to Phase 2. So we do expect a single-digit kind of decline over Q4 of last year.

Due to the general elections, we do see that Q1, at least of next year, should be a bit soft. And when we meet next, I think we will have visibility post that also, but this is a common phenomenon whenever there is general election. We see an impact for around 3 to 6 months. But at a larger level, if you see, I think the overall, the GDP growth continues to be strong. The capital expenditure by government continues to be strong. We infra push is there. And this will, therefore, ensure that the CV demand will be there because whether it is fleet utilization, freight rates, demand supply balance, I think all these factors remain pretty steady.

Now within that, we've always seen that generally, the medium and heavies have higher amplitude. But this time, we see that most of the segments seem to be moving together. So that's the outlook that we have for the demand, Balaji.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, Girish. Richard, this is coming your way. I think two types of questions on the margins. One is the gross margins have seen an improvement. Are they sustainable or any one-offs there? And what were the realized revenue hedges that you have? This one around gross margin. The other is around the employee cost that you are in. The numbers have trended up a bit. Is there any one-off there, anything that you would like to call out?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Yes, sure. So let me deal with that. So look, our gross margin, there is a little bit of seasonality in that, dependent on where we sell vehicles and what we sell. So in Q3, we had a slightly higher mix in China and also slightly higher mix in terms of pure Range Rover, the big Range Rover. So I don't expect massive changes, but Q3 mix was more favorable for us than you would expect in an average year.

The next question was about...

[P. Balaji, executive]

Employee cost.

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Employee costs? So yes, there are some one-offs in there. We have just concluded a deal with the U.K. unions that gives them -- this is a 2-year deal. The first year is a 3% base pay increase plus a fixed bonus for the employees. The second year is 3.5% plus also a bonus, but this time more variable to company performance. Some of the accounting for that deal has led to a bit of a one-off that we've taken in Q3, so that is one effect that will reverse back out as we go through into the future quarters.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thank you. Again, staying with you, Richard. The U.K. government's electrification policy change. Does that change anything on your plans, given the decision to delay ICE sales ban to 2035?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

As I mentioned before, no, it doesn't. We have our own targets. We will be net carbon zero in 2039 and we will have all vehicles on BEV in 2030, but no U.K. government policy to change our plans. We're also, obviously, per note, a global manufacturer. And so U.K. is 20% or so of our business.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Okay. Second one, just staying on the Red Sea shipping issues for a while. Is there a challenge? What percentage of your shipments do you think will face this impact, both on the inbound as well as outbound?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

So for us, in terms of outbound, we have 15% of our sales in China, obviously, that goes through that route. And the proportion of our sales in overseas, overseas in the quarter was about 18% of our sales. Not all of those will now be forced to go around the Cape, but a proportion of them will.

So we're keeping an eye on it. Look, at the moment, it is having a little bit of effect on us in terms of Q4. We obviously have more vehicles on the water than we would normally expect to have. I think the one that we're keeping an eye out is the sort of derivative effect of that in terms of container capacity and shipping capacity and timing coming back from the Far East, where we have several suppliers. So no actual issues yet, but something we're keeping an eye on. At the moment, I'd say, the impact of the Red Sea issues on our business up to this point are manageable.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Girish, a slightly different kind of a question. Can you go back to the Freight Tiger acquisition and just talk about what benefits you expect out of that?

[Girish Wagh, executive]

Okay. So I think as we said in the last call also, I think we are focusing on building digital platforms at scale with the purpose of reducing or eliminating the friction points and actually bringing efficiencies in the logistics ecosystem.

Now we already have a very powerful platform, which is Fleet Edge.. As I said, we have more than 0.5 million vehicles on this platform. And this platform plays in the trucking ecosystem and is contributing significantly in terms of ECO that is total cost of ownership and therefore, business profitability improvement for our customers.

The Freight Tiger, as we explained, is a platform which will scale up and operates in the logistics ecosystem and has a carrier matching as well as a trucker's management systems, transport management system has two platforms within. We are now focusing on integrating the Freight Tiger and Fleet Edge, two platforms, which will connect the trucking ecosystem with the logistics ecosystem. Therefore, the customers of Fleet Edge will now have an access -- native access to the logistics and therefore, freight in the market. And the shippers on the Freight Tiger platform will have seamless access to the truckers. So this will ensure that both the sides of the continuum will actually have access to each other and, therefore, improve efficiencies.

So with this, we believe that we can create a significant value for the shippers as well as the fleet owners as we integrate these two platforms going ahead, Balaji.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, Girish. Shailesh, Sanand 2 with the capacity now starting to fire, what's your magnitude and time line for phase wise addition of capacity there?

[Shailesh Chandra, executive]

See, we have installed capacity of 3 lakh in Sanand 2, and we can potentially add further 1,20,000 to take it up to 4,20,000. But as of now, I think 300,000 is what we are first thinking of utilizing.

We have started the production from 10 Jan onwards. And the target is that in the first phase, which is this quarter, we would target about 20% to 25% production of Nexon from Sanand 2. And progressively in the next 6, 7 months, we would completely shift the production of Nexon, both ICE as well as EVs to Sanand 2. That's probably the plan.

We have already identified the products which we have to make in Sanand 2. And I think that is something which I would not like to disclose today. But that plan means that in the next two to three years, this will be completely utilized.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks Shailesh. Again, coming this way, I will take top process on any other monetization opportunities there. Currently, there's nothing that we are actively working on. If and when something comes up, we'll let you know.

So that's a set of questions. Let me move to the next one. I think Ben or Richard, this is coming your way. Post reporting, there was GBP 650 million due on 15 Jan, which I presume you repaid with cash, you have another GBP 500 million in the next 12 months. Any plans for debt once you achieve your GBP 1 billion target?

[Bennett Birgbauer, executive]

Do you want me to pick that up, Richard?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Yes, go for it.

[Bennett Birgbauer, executive]

Yes. Okay. So we did pay the GBP 650 million bond matured in January out of cash. It's probably worth point out that we target obviously getting to net debt of GBP 1 billion or better by the end of March, moving from GBP 1.6 billion at the end of December to that would mean that we'd be generating cash flow sufficient to cover that.

As far as next year, the next maturity that we have is a bond maturity of EUR 500 million in November. Again, we've said that we expect to get to net debt zero in FY '25. So that would imply that we're generating sufficient cash flow to also cover that. I think we continue to evaluate our funding plans when we might next come to market, but I don't really have any comments on that right now.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thank you, Ben. Moving again staying with JLR for a while on demand, order book, VME, basically saying considering expectations of mild recession, would you expect the order book run down pay [ INR 10,000 ] per month or higher? VME, how much do you expect it to increase from the current 2.5%? And is there any caps that you are working with? And of course, when would supplies commence for Range Rover BEV?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Okay. So let me try and take those. We started the quarter with an order bank of 168,000. We ended just under 150,000 so 19,000 off in the 3-month period. We've said before that our sort of pre-COVID natural level of order bank is about 110,000. And we would expect to sort of glide down towards that level over 20 months. So I don't think there's any change in our plans as to how we manage that. We will start to focus, as I mentioned before, more on to demand generation to make that transition smooth.

In terms of VME, we're at 2.5%. I do expect that to increase over the coming quarters, but noway near the levels that we've seen from JLR in the past. Range Rover and Defender, in particular, continued to have really strong demand at extremely low, if not zero, levels of VME.

So yes, I do expect it to increase from 2.5%, but not in leaps and bounds.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Yes. And the Range Rover BEV?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Range Rover BEV? Yes, with sort of circa 12 months from now, they will be around. We are driving prototypes now and they are amazing.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, Richard. So Shailesh, this is coming your way. Tata Motors acquired the Sanand plant from Ford. The number stands corrected, there's just -- there's also a stamp duty to be added to this, roughly about INR 1,100 crores. What is the additional CapEx incurred to make this operational? And how will this product -- how is the productivity be of this plant.

[Shailesh Chandra, executive]

Yes. I would not like to share the exact CapEx number because it is, I would say, still work in progress given that we have first -- only started with one nameplate, there are more nameplates to come.

But broadly, if I have to give a ballpark understanding of what it means, the benefit that we would have, if I compare it with a greenfield of similar capacity and the nameplates that we have in mind, this would have -- this investment would come down to about 40% to 45% of what we would have otherwise incurred for a greenfield project.

From a productivity perspective, this plant is highly automated. And especially when I talk about weld shop, paint paid shop, specifically in these shops, I believe that the productivity will be better by 10% to 15% as a ballpark.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thank you. Again, Richard, this is coming your way on JLR. Do you expect any release from working capital in Q4? And how do you see the marketing expenses developing in the forthcoming year? You've answered VME, can you also talk about FME?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Yes, of course. So I would expect a little bit of working capital in Q4 FY '25, if you look at the cumulative fourth quarters of that year, I would not necessarily expect any cash flow impact on working capital, certainly not a material one. Marketing expense is pretty much the same answer as I gave in terms of VME. VME and fixed marketing expense combined is essentially the cost of acquiring new customers. And we do expect that to together so VME and FME to increase marginally as we go to the start of next year. But as I said, not in massive amount.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Yes. So two additional questions again. BEV versus ICE margins since BEV tends to be lower margin, how do you see this mix playing out in your overall portfolio? And second is, are you breakeven? Can you just comment on that?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Yes. Sure. So we've spoken about the Range Rover Electric. And it should -- we should know we have a different strategy to many in the industry. This is a Range Rover that is electric. And electric powertrain in a Range Rover is more powerful, more serene, more quiet than the ICE ones. Actually, to many respects, this car is going to be the ultimate expression of what a Range Rover is.

So if you look at it from that perspective, I don't think there is a reason to necessarily assume that the margins are going to be lower. And so we have a different way of approaching BEV on our products and the interaction of what a BEV is with our brands that probably puts us in a slightly better place than others.

In terms of breakeven, I think we do expect that to increase a little bit over the next 18 months or so as our mix moves probably a little bit away from Range Rover and Defender towards some of our other nameplates, but I would not again say that it would materially shift.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Okay. Staying with you, Richard, for a minute, two additional questions. 10% EBIT margin by 2026. Still comfortable with that? Are there any risks that you see to this target?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Yes, we're not going to change our guidance in that. That's definitely what we're aiming for. There are always risks, particularly when you're talking about FY '26, it is a way away. We don't know what's going to happen to geopolitics and to global demand. But it is still our target, and nothing particular, I want to note in terms of risk.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Yes. And the other one is effective tax rate for JLR, let me take that. Effective tax rate in the quarter is normally volatile. Full year basis on a console, we are still trading at about 22%. So it should be anywhere between -- that number seems realistic in terms of how you should plan your effective tax rate for the company. 25% is a sensible number to go with.

Question, Girish coming your way. How is the pricing environment for M&HCV? I think the other demand environment you talked about, pricing, can you talk about?

[Girish Wagh, executive]

So I think as we have been indicating for past four quarters now, we continue to improve the value of our products. We continue to deliver more and more services using Fleet Edge and beyond. And therefore, I think we are in a very good position, delivering higher value to the customer. And we remain focused on that. And with this, I think we are happy to keep on improving realization quarter-over-quarter. So I think that's the journey that we have taken, and we will stay on that journey.

[P. Balaji, executive]

The other one on Tata Motors Finance. Can you also talk about the reduction in CV market share in Tata Motors Finance and the overall AUM for TMFL. I think the focus has been squarely on quality and ensuring that we get our act right on sourcing. So we have consciously not targeted the business on CV market share and Girish and team have been very supportive to ensure that we have other financiers coming up and picking up the slack.

This, of course, going forward now that we've got our business model right, sourcing strategy is right. We will start building back our share as far as CV is concerned, but done in a prudent manner. And the AUM for TMFL is fundamentally a mirror image of the view that we take on disbursements. So we should expect to see AUM also to pick up going forward.

Then again, on demand, I think we already covered this point, so let me probably skip that. PV Shailesh, coming your way. In the recent budget, the PLI incentive allocation was only [ INR 35 million ]. This is extremely small concerning the entire auto industry will claim it. How do you see it?

[Shailesh Chandra, executive]

I believe that INR 3,500 crore is sufficient given that there are not many players who have been able to get the PLI certificate. And therefore, I believe, for us, we already have one product which has got the certificate. And rest of the products, the work is underway to get the certificate. I believe that this should be okay as far as we are concerned.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Okay. Again, Richard, is coming away a little bit more on Ranger Rover BEV. Who is a target customer and for this, what we are showing to those people who are registering interest, can you say, we -- are taking any deposits from them? Is it to be treated as orders? How do we treat it?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

Okay. So on the latter part of that, no, we are not taking deposits, and we are asking them to sign up to a waiting list. We do collect information in relation to that waiting list as to who those customers are and how they break down. I don't have the details to hand. But it is a mix, including a large number of people who drive electric variants of other OEMs. So we are anticipating quite some incrementality as a result of this and looking forward to delivering cars to those customers, as I say, circa 12 months from now.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks. Coming from Chirag, I think the one on VME, we've already answered, so I'll skip that. Order book, we have covered. So Girish, this is yours. How do you look at the tonnage growth versus volume growth in M&HCV in FY '25 as compared to FY '24?

[Girish Wagh, executive]

Okay. I think as far as M&HCV, let me take HCVs and MCV separately. As far as heavy commercial vehicles are concerned, I think the transitions to higher tonnage multi-axle vehicles, which is the 48-tonne, and then beyond that to 55-tonne tractors to a large extent, has happened. And now most of the demand, which is amenable to these kind of vehicles that's 48-tonne and 55-tonne has already happened this year.

The other tonnage vehicles which are sold currently are meant for specific applications, and they need to be in that tonnage node. Therefore, I think, in my view, the migration to our higher tonnage node has happened to a large extent.

As far as volume projection is concerned for FY '25, as I mentioned, I think we will see some slowdown in Q1 and probably H1 a pause. But after I think the new government comes in place, and the investments in infrastructure CapEx starts again, I think we will see the next year H2 or Q2 onwards, we will see a Y-o-Y growth again.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Girish, the next one, again with you. This is on small commercial vehicles from Amyn Pirani. Your India SCV market share has been impacted by weakness in the category of less than 2 tonnes. However, the categories which we are doing well, our market share remains quite low. Are there any product interventions that we can expect here right?

[Girish Wagh, executive]

So let me answer it on two fronts. First of all, I think your assessment of the situation there is right. See, first of all, in SCV pickup, as we have done in other businesses, we are focusing on improving our financials and unit economics very aggressively. And I think I'm happy that we have actually made a very good progress. It is a transformation that we're on to, and we will -- we are committed to it.

Now coming to the volumes. Yes, the small vehicles has two categories, the SCVs and the pickups. And as you rightly put up, I think the SCVs are facing a challenge because overall segment is declining. The main reason for this is with BSVI Phase 1 and BSVI Phase 2, there has been a significant increase in the prices of the vehicles. And as we've seen globally in both cars as well as commercial vehicles, I think with such kind of an increase, the smallest segment actually starts facing pressure.

I think to address this, what we have done is we've actually launched the Ace in gasoline variant which actually comes at BSIV prices and BSIV total cost of ownership. So it's a completely new value proposition, and we see a continuously increasing traction for this. So we are trying to build good traction for this product, improving the consideration amongst the customers because it is gasoline and gasoline is seen as not suitable for commercial applications. So this is the first thing.

Second thing, we are also facing a lot of financing challenges for the smallest commercial vehicles, post-COVID especially. And the first-time users are finding it difficult to get higher loan-to-value vehicles. Therefore, the down payment requirements are higher. And while we do get very good lead, I think the conversion rates are currently low. So we are working with the financials to improve the availability of financing here.

And third, of course, as Balaji mentioned, I think with Tata Motor Finance coming back on track and being very healthy, I think we are working with them to see how we can start helping the first-time users once again. So these are the things that we are doing in small commercial vehicles and increase its salience once again.

Coming to pickups. I think your question is whether any product intervention is going to happen here. So in pickups, we believe that we actually have a very good product portfolio. In the Intra family, we have a very strong platform, which has vehicles with all powertrains, whether it is petrol, diesel, CNG. And I think the focus that we have here is now to improve awareness and be in the consideration set.

See in the SCV and pickup category, we've always seen that there is a lot of brand loyalty because when customers buy this vehicle, it's a significant purchase for them. And their earnings actually depends on this. So generally, they tend to depend on a vehicle, which has been there in the market for quite some time. And therefore, any new vehicle takes time to get established. So our focus here has been to improve awareness and be in the consideration set and start creating a brand pull.

Towards this, we are also working on influence our ecosystem to ensure that they talk positive about these products and also on making network effective and profitable for this particular type of business. So we are also, therefore, creating a separate network from the heavy commercial vehicle business. So I think these are the actions that we are taking on the small commercial vehicle and to pickup business, Balaji

[P. Balaji, executive]

So just to hold it with you for a minute. I think if I look at Gunjan's questions, most of it, we have answered. There's one on, in small commercial vehicle, is there any impact of electric 3-wheelers on your SCV portfolio?

[Girish Wagh, executive]

So if you look at the electric 3-wheelers, bulk of those are actually getting sold in passenger application. The salience of the goods electric [ 3-wheeler ] is pretty low. But initially, yes, I think the customers were comparing this with Ace EV. And gradually, what I think there has been a realization that Ace EV is actually far better on performance, far better on reliability and therefore, far better on profitability. And I think we had an issue about financing again in Ace EV and what should be the end-of-life value that should be considered.

I think here, we have worked with the financiers. We have come up with the first in the industry, 7-year battery warranty, which has helped to actually give very attractive financing schemes, as a result of which we see very good traction for Ace EV. So in nutshell, I think electric 3-wheelers for some time, goods carrier did show some impact on this, but not to such an extent now, I think the customers are coming back to the ICE portfolio or otherwise, the Ace EV.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Thanks, Girish. Sharish, coming you away. When is Curvv commercial launch plan, one. And if you can comment, if possible, on other product launches that you're planning this year? And how's the Punch.ev, how's it picked up? And how is the order intake there? I think Ace EV, you already answered.

[Shailesh Chandra, executive]

So there are -- let me talk about the full calendar year '24. So this calendar year will see 3 electric vehicle launches, one, Punch.ev, which happened already in Jan, and I'll talk about the order intake of Punch.ev in a vast.

The second would be Curvv which will come in, say, second quarter of the financial year '25. And the third would be Harrier EV. The ICE Curvv would get launched, say, 3 to 4 months after the launch of the EV version. So that's what has been planned for the calendar year 2024.

As far as Punch is concerned, this was our first product on the pure EV architecture, which is active. Solid product under INR 15 lakh, given 400-kilometer range was expected to create a lot of demand for us and that is what we are seeing, a very strong demand in bookings that we have received for the product, and we are ramping up our capacity also. I can't share the numbers because we have not been sharing booking numbers for the simple reason that, that should not create any kind of concern for the customers in terms of the waiting period and all. So the idea is that we take into account the bookings that have come and ramp up the production as fast as possible.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Yes. Thank you. And moving to Richard, this probably coming your way. Proportion of buyers who bought Jaguar and Land Rover for the first time and how many already own a Jaguar or [indiscernible]. Has there been any changes to these numbers from 2019? Would you track this?

[Richard Molyneux, executive]

I don't have that information in front of me. I am not aware of any material change in our mix of buyers between loyal and conquest.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Okay. The other one coming your way, Girish. I think you touched upon a little bit maybe worthwhile given a number of questions that have come with the payment security mechanism now they are in place for EV buses, would you be participating more aggressively? Has there been any discussion with the government for only buses that are being made locally, those kind of things.

[Girish Wagh, executive]

Yes. So I think two things here. First is, I think we have in the OEM, which started deploying the buses after winning the first tender of CSL, which we had built very aggressively with an objective of making the government intention successful of electrification. And as I explained, we have actually a good amount of experience under our belt now, which gives us very good data to decide what we should be focus.

Now coming to payment security mechanism. Actually, we must appreciate the openness of the government to listen to the industry and accept this requirement, so this payment security mechanism is more or less agreed upon. I think there are a few things that are remaining, which need to be sorted out, which will ensure that our balance sheet remains lighter and which will help us to get into this business very, very aggressively. So I think good experience under the belt product range ready, the scheme is becoming what we need just a last mile thing that need to be addressed, and we will be there.

[P. Balaji, executive]

So one more coming your way, Girish -- sorry, Shailesh. Punch.ev, Nexon EV. Do you see an overlap? And is there any cannibalization risk that you see?

[Shailesh Chandra, executive]

There's always some cannibalization risks in adjustment segments, and that is okay for us. But these are two very distinct segments at very distinct price points. If you compare a 450-kilometer Nexon, that is costing around INR 18 to INR 19 lakh has a weighted average price, whereas Punch's with a similar kind of ranges being priced between INR 13 lakh to INR 15 lakh. So there's very less chance of cannibalization, a very different customer segment as far as the [indiscernible] least concerning. So I don't see a big risk of cannibalization, and that's what we have been observing in Jan also post the launch.

[P. Balaji, executive]

Yes. Thank you. Thanks, Shailesh. I think with this, we have come to the end of the questions. I think we have covered most of the questions that are -- that people are very keen to understand. So if there's anything that's still left, feel free to contact our Investor Relations team, will be more than happy to respond to you.

With this, I'd like to brought this results call to a close. Thanks all for your time and patience in going through the results. Looking forward to catching up with you. Thank you. Bye-bye. And thanks, guys. People on the call. Goodbye.