Tata Motors quarterly profit soars

India's top vehicle maker Tata Motors reported Friday a near four-fold rise in quarterly net profit, powered by higher demand for its British luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover and better domestic sales.
The company said its global operations, including Jaguar and Land Rover, showed a consolidated net profit of 24.2 billion rupees ($537 million) for the three months ended December, up from 6.5 billion rupees a year earlier.
The profit for the three months beat market forecasts of 22 billion rupees.
Revenues rose 22 percent to 316 billion rupees for the quarter.
"We saw robust demand growth in the domestic market and for our premium luxury brands," C. Ramakrishnan, chief financial officer of Tata Motors, told reporters.
He said he was "cautiously optimistic" about demand over the medium term.
However, he said that high commodity prices and input costs were a cause for concern along with mounting interest rates making it more expensive for consumers to take out loans for cars.
Tata Motors has said it would resort to hiking the prices of its cars in response to rising commodity prices as a last resort.
For the quarter to December, the Jaguar-Land Rover business showed a profit of $439.6 million, up from $87.9 million a year earlier as demand for cars improved across key markets.