Hero MotoCorp, the country’s largest two-wheeler maker is seeing recovery in its key product portfolio and is now aiming to further introduce new products in the premium segment where it has lost a lot of ground.
In Q1 FY2024, the company sold 13.55 lakh two-wheelers, revenue of Rs 8,989 crore, up 6 percent YoY. The net profit came at Rs 825 crore, versus Rs 624.52 crore for the same period last year, marking a 32 percent growth.
The two-wheeler maker says its financial performance is driven by softening of commodity costs, accelerated savings programs, and judicious price increases.
Focus on premiumisation
Niranjan Gupta, CEO, Hero MotoCorp said, “Our underlying margins in ICE business has returned to pre‐covid levels, providing us the necessary fuel for growth as we move forward. The singular focus as we move ahead will be growth and market share. We have begun strengthening our presence in premium segment and pre‐booking number for Harley Davidson X440 is a good start. We will see more launches of new models in this segment over next few quarters, as we intend to win big in premium segment.”
“Our EV presence is getting scaled up and we are on track to cover 100 cities by December this year. The key economic indicators are trending in positive direction, and a normal monsoon augurs well for demand, as we will soon enter the festive season. Reduced inflationary pressures moving forward, should result in more spending power in hands of consumers. Overall, we see a positive scenario on demand side, especially for second half of this year and onwards,” he concluded.
Sharing his views on the result, Himanshu Singh a Research Analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher said “The only pain point from the results would be the negative impact from the EV business which the company is looking to scale up aggressively in the coming quarters. The EV segment has shown a pretty significant loss at EBITDA level (loss of Rs 57 crore) which is likely higher than the revenues from the EV portfolio, as per calculation, which we need to investigate.”
