 "Ashok Leyland reports Rs 32 cr profit in Q3")
Total Income rose by 72% to Rs 3,380.3 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2014, from Rs 1,968.6 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2013.
Vinod K Dasari, managing director, Ashok Leyland said "this marks a significant turnaround for the company".
In addition to company's export orders from Sri Lanka and Africa the company is hopeful of making inroads into newer markets, maintaining network expansion and opening assembly centres in overseas markets, like its experience in UAE.
"We are reasonably confident that the domestic market is indeed coming back and that the worst may be behind us. We believe this growth momentum will continue and we should close this fiscal on a good note," said Dasari.
He added, total industry volume has grown 10% year on year, due to stable and optimistic business environment, improvement in profitability of fleet owners, pre-buying ahead of the excise duty hike contributed to increase the sales in the last quarter.
"Our single-minded focus on fiscal discipline and customer profitability reflects in the results of the company," said Dasari.
Bharat Gianani, Senior Research Analyst - Automobiles at Angel Broking commented that third quarter results were below estimates mainly on back of higher tax provision, even as the operating performance was in line. Revenues grew 72% year on year driven by 44% volume growth and robust realisation growth of 19% year on year due to improved product MHCV mix.
All reported operating margin of 7.1% (in line with our estimates) as against operating loss in third quarter of 2014. Operating leverage due to steep volume growth and better MHCV mix enabled ALL to report margin improvement. However higher tax expenses (tax/PBT at 46%) dragged the profitability.
"Net Profit at Rs 32.1 crore was lower than our estimates of Rs 50 crore," he said.