Ashok Leyland, the country's commercial vehicle major, is planning to launch four products and new variants of its existing offerings for Defence. Besides, the company also said it is planning to bring down its working capital by Rs 1,000 crore and its investment programme has gone up by Rs 300 crore since it is planning to invest Rs 300 crore in Hinduja Foundries.
Speaking to an analyst recently, Ashok Leyland's Chief Financial Officer K Sridharan said: "Next-Generation Cab is expected to be launched in January, followed by Neptune engine fitted tippers, then the 5 Axle 37 tonne vehicle and the much spoken Jan Bus, which is the world’s first front engine, single step entry fully flat low floor bus."
The company got patent for the technology, he added.
The company is also gearing up to launch 2 or 3 variants of Stalin for Defence and one more variant of backhoe loader and wheel loader from its JV with John Deere.
On Nissan JV, to manufacture and sell LCV, Sridahran said, the JV is doing well and the target is to sell 36,000 LCV vehicles this year. The product which was launched in October 2011 growing steadily and the company has two months order position for Dost.
“We are planning to scale up LCV production to 4,000 units a month from 3,000 units a month,” he added. Currently, Dost is being manufactured at Ashok Leyland's Hosur facility, while Nissan Evalia is being manufactured at Oragadam.”
The JV partners which are setting up a greenfield facility at Pillaipakam, to manufacturer the LCV products on the outskirts of Chennai, is expected to go on stream by 2015 and first rollout expected to be in first half of 2014-15.
Meanwhile, the company plans to bring down its working capital from Rs 1,700 crore to around Rs 1,000 crore during the current fiscal and in the bargain bring down its interest costs.
The investment programme of the company has gone up by around Rs 300 crore since the company has decided to invest in one of the Group companies Hinduja Foundries to ensure that casting supply will not be disturbed, said Sridharan.
The company earlier set an investment target of around Rs 1,250 crore including investment programme of around Rs 600-700 crore and rest is capex, said Sridharan.
The company, which improved its overall market share by 180 basis points y-o-y in the September quarter, expects to end the year with a 26% share. The company increased its market share in the M&HCV segment by 167 bps to 25.4%. The reason for the gain in market share has been higher product acceptance increase in touchpoints and aggressive expansion, appointment of new dealers in Karnataka and Maharashtra as well as brand ambassador MS Dhoni which together pushed up sales.
