Hinduja Group flagship Ashok Leyland (ALL) on Wednesday reported a net loss of Rs 389 crore for the first quarter of FY21 compared with a net profit of Rs 230 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal. The Chennai-based commercial vehicle major registered a lower revenue of Rs 651 crore against Rs 5,684 crore. After virtually no operations or revenues in Q1 owing to the lockdown, the company is now seeing demand gradually picking up as the lockdown is being eased, ALL said in a release. During the quarter, the company had introduced its AVTR range of modular vehicles in the heavy commercial vehicle segment as also a completely differentiated intermediate CV range of vehicles.
ALL MD & CEO Vipin Sondhi said: “With the pandemic hitting us, this has been one of the most challenging quarters for the industry. We saw a significant decline in volumes, consequently, Ashok Leyland also saw a reduction in volume, affecting the financial performance of the company adversely. Despite the challenging times we went ahead and launched the unique modular business platform AVTR, which gives our customers the flexibility to choose vehicles as per their requirements. This will be a game changer in the industry and we have already rolled out over 2,000 of these vehicles till date this year and together withour LCV range we have already rolled out 10,000 BS-VI vehicles. This is indeed a very encouraging sign for the quarters to follow.” ALL had reported a 56% decline in total commercial vehicle (CV) sales at 4,775 units in July 2020 against 10,926 in the same month last year. The domestic sales stood at 4,282 units against 10,100 units in the year-ago month, down by 58%.
Commenting on the results, ALL wholetime Director & CFO Gopal Mahadevan said: “This is an exceptional quarter not just for the industry but also for the entire economy. We have used this time to drive disruptive cost efficiencies and productivity measures. The focus was also on maintaining liquidity, not just of the company but also our dealers and vendors. There have been tremendous learnings for us in doing business efficiently without dropping the ball on growth initiatives. We will come out of this much stronger.”
