Back in December'17, I had reported about Tata Motors gaining it's Momentum back, based on the Sales numbers till November'17. That was just the beginning of the company's Sales recovery & strengthening of market share across segments. The last 5 months have been nothing short of stellar for the company. No doubt that the entire Industry is growing at a healthy pace, but Tata Motors is growing faster than competition in most segments, which is helping it gain back the market share it had lost in the previous couple of years.
March'18 has proved to be the best month for Tata Motors in terms of Sales, both in Passenger Vehicles as well as Commercial Vehicles, in a long long time. Tata Motors (India) Wholesales stood at 69,440 units in the Domestic market, a 35% Y-o-Y growth, and 6713 units for Export, a growth of 15% Y-o-Y. For the month of March'18, the M&HCV segment reported a growth of 20%, the LCV segment posted 48% growth, the UV segment grew 223% and only the Car segment posted a de-growth of 5%. The M&HCV number of 24,321 units and the LCV segment's number of 31,296, are probably the highest the company has ever recorded in it's long history. The Tata Nexon & Tata Hexa powered the company's UV numbers to 7,908 units, again a highest ever figure. It's only the Car segment numbers for Tata Motors, which have seen better days when the Indica & Indigo CS models were in their prime.
Tata Motors (India) ended the year FY'18 with M&HCV numbers of 190,367 units, a growth of almost 9%. Remember that this growth has been achieved despite a terrible Q1 for the company, when the SC ruling disallowed sales of BS-III vehicles across India from April'17. Tata Motors had reported 33% drop in M&HCV sales during that Quarter. This was followed by a small jerk due to GST implementation in July'17. Tata Motors' LCV sales have certainly done much better than expected. The FY'18 number has climbed to 259,072 units, a growth of over 23% Y-o-Y. This growth is mainly because of the success of new products launched about 6 months ago. Before that the company was losing market share to aggressive competition from M&M, Ashok Leyland and others. With the success of the new products in both M&HCV and LCV segments, Tata Motors has not just arrested the fall in market share, it is also clawing back some share gradually.
At the start of FY'18, Tata Motors took a conscious decision to stop pushing sales of it's older car models like the Indica, Indigo eCS and the Nano, and let them die. Together these models were generating nearly 5,000 units on a monthly basis. The chart alongside clearly shows that Tata Motors has managed to limit volume losses in the Car segment, due to the stoppage of the above models, to a very small percentage. The company managed to increase production of it's Tiago and Tigor models to around 10,000 to 11,000 units every month. But the bigger story for Tata Motors' Passenger Vehicles business is the super success of the Tata Nexon. This model is single-handedly brought a lot of excitement in the Tata Motors showrooms and also on the sales charts. The rising blue bars in the neighbouring chart is giving enough evidence of the same. The Cars + UVs business did volumes of about 1,57,300 units in FY'17. The same has now jumped to about 1,89,700 units in FY'18, a growth of about 20%. This growth has helped Tata Motors grab the No.4 position in the Indian passenger car business, jumping over Toyoto and Honda in the last 12 months. After taming the 2 Japanese giants, Tata Motors is now aiming for the No.3 spot, which is currently held by another Indian UV giant Mahindra & Mahindra. For doing so, Tata Motors might need more than just the numbers from the Nexon and the Tiago. Can Tata Motors launch another strong model in FY'19, to help it climb the ladder further? Let's wait & watch.
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