Wheels India Ltd. has reported a net profit of ₹19.7 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2019 as compared to ₹19.5 crore in the same quarter of the previous year. Revenue for the quarter stood at ₹855.1 crore (₹705.1 crore).

The company registered a 5.4% rise in net profit for the year ended March 2019 at ₹75.7 crore as compared to ₹71.8 crore in the previous year. Revenue for FY19 increased by 26.7% to ₹ 3,188.8 crore (₹2,517.1 crore). The board has recommended a final dividend of ₹4.75 per share.

“If you take away the one-time gain of ₹12 crore last year due to slump sale of our passenger car steel wheel business, the profitability in FY19 is in line with the strong revenue growth,” said Srivats Ram, MD.

“While we had targeted ₹122 crore last year in capital expenditure, we actually ended up investing ₹144 crore, driven by demand from our customers in all our business segments. The growth was fuelled by additional capacity that came on stream. Even though there was a slowdown in the second half of last year, we did not cut down on our investments. We will continue to invest in our business,” he said. “We saw very good growth in the first 7-8 months of last year, whereas typically Q4 is the period when one sees volume growth. There has been a slowdown since November.

“The first half of this year may not be dramatically better than last year. Change in emission norms next year could result in some amount of pre-buy,” he said.

Stating that the sentiment had been poor in the recent past, he said, “with the majority government, the uncertainty is over and there is definitely hope.” He said that continued investment in infrastructural development could result in positive sentiment and that could have a multiplier effect on the commercial vehicle segment and spur growth again.