Maruti Suzuki reported an 18 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) jump in its net profit to Rs 802 crore for the quarter ending December 31, 2014. Its net sales rose over 15 per cent y-o-y to Rs 12,263 crore.
Higher volumes, lower raw material costs and favourable foreign exchange helped Maruti register a strong growth, analysts said.
However, the company missed Street estimates as analysts polled by NDTV had estimated its net profit at Rs 901 crore on revenues of Rs 12,471 crore.
Maruti had reported a net profit of Rs 681 crore on sales of Rs 10,619 crore in the same period last fiscal.
Maruti Suzuki sold a total of 323,911 vehicles in Q3, up 12.4 per cent year-on-year.
Ashwin Patil, equity analyst at LKP Securities, told NDTV that lower realisation, higher tax expenses and lower-than-estimated other income has led to the miss in net profit.
Tax expenses of the company came in at 24.6 per cent of profit before tax in Q3, against 23 per cent in the same quarter last fiscal. However, Mr Patil believes that tax expenses were higher due to one-off items. "We may see tax rates getting back to 22-23 per cent," he added.
Maruti reported an EBITDA margin or gross profit margin of 12.7 per cent in the reporting period, against estimates of 12.9 per cent. The company reported an
EBITDA margin of 12.4 per cent in the same period last fiscal.
Mr Patil said the favourable impact of yen depreciation is likely to get reflected in the margins of Maruti with a lagged effect due to inventory backlog.
The higher profit expectation from Maruti was also built on the basis of higher realisation per vehicle. However, Maruti's realisations grew by about 0.5 per cent against estimates of 1.5 per cent.
Mr Patil says due to festive discounts its realisations might have come down in Q3. However, he expects a strong Q4 from Maruti.
Shares in Maruti Suzuki ended 2.45 per cent higher at Rs 3,695 apiece, outperforming the Nifty, which closed 0.85 per cent higher.
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