``I expect the company to show a 55 per cent growth in net profits,'' said Anish Damania, automobile analyst at Jardine Fleming India Broking.

The company is a joint venture controlled by Munjal Group and Japan's Honda Motor Company Ltd. Each holds 26 per cent of the equity. It releases the results on Tuesday.

Analysts said the firm benefited from a shift in demand to motorcycles from scooters.

``We had solid positive growth from all the four zones in the country,'' Hero Honda's senior vice-president for sales and marketing, Atul Sobti, told Reuters.

He said sales jumped 42 per cent to 161,466 motorcycles in the three months ended June 30 from 113,568 a year earlier. Demand was highest in rural and semi-urban areas.

Sobti said a key factor to the growth was its strength in four-stroke motorcycles which it introduced ahead of rivals.

KotakSecurities in July forecast Hero Honda's EPA to outperform its rivals in the first quarter.

It projected first quarter EPS to jump 53.9 per cent year-on-year against an estimated 15.6 per cent growth for TVS Suzuki.

It forecast Hero Honda to make a net profit of Rs 3.53 crore against Rs 2.29 crore in the year-ago period.