Tata Motors on Wednesday narrowed its consolidated net loss by nearly five times to Rs 898 crore for the three months ended September. With this, the company has posted losses for seven consecutive quarters but it was also the lowest in as many quarters. Stronger model mix and pricing across its portfolio aided in margins improvement, even as residual commodity inflation and lower-than-expected supply of specialised chips from one supplier to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) hurt operations.

Total consolidated revenue from operations grew 30% to rS 79,611 crore during the reporting quarter. The net loss numbers were lower than Bloomberg consensus estimate of 1,548 crore. On the revenue front, the company beat estimates of RS 76,725 crore. The company’s stock closed 0.44% down on the BSE on Wednesday at433.

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The growth in revenue is despite a 5% decline in retail volumes in JLR to 88,121 during the quarter. A company official attributed the revenue increase to better contribution of premium models like the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender. Commercial vehicle wholesales were up 15% to 103,100 units while that of passenger vehicles jumped 69% to 142,300 units. Tata Motors claimed that JLR has an order book of 205,000 units, while the standalone entity has an order book in excess of 100,000 units. Ebitda margins were up 9.7% during the September quarter as against 8.4% posted in the same quarter last year.

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PB Balaji, CFO, Tata Motors, said, “We aim to deliver a strong improvement in Ebit and free cash flow in the second half of the year. The semiconductor visibility is definitely starting to improve. The number of issues we deal with has come down quite significantly and therefore we expect a strong improvement in profits and cash in the second half. On a full-year basis, we intend to be close to break-even cash flows at JLR.”

In the passenger vehicle segment, the firm is working at nearly 100% production capacity, which has forced it to go for further debottlenecking of its factories, which will generate an additional 5,000 units a month bef-ore going for the Ford plant capacity. “We are producing about 50,000 units in PVs, which we will debottleneck to reach 55,000 and thereafter the new plant will need to come in. The new plant (Ford) can bring 25,000-30,000 units a month,” Balaji added.

The company hopes to conclude all transactions for the takeover of the Ford plant in Gujarat later this year or early next year.

“We have a positive stance on Tata Motors, given that the PV business is likely to gain further market share, led by new product launches and expanding portfolio, CV volumes will benefit from cyclical upturn, improving fleet utilisation and freight rates and new refreshes in Land Rover and strong order book,” said a note from Prabhudas Lilladher.