Jaguar Land Rover headed for revenue record on Defender, Range Rover demand

LONDON -- Jaguar Land Rover will break its revenue record this financial year as it continues to focus on high-profit models such as the Range Rover and Land Rover Defender, CEO Adrian Mardell said.

JLR has seen a turnaround in its fortunes after posting two consecutive quarterly profits because of strong sales of its three most profitable SUV models: the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Land Rover Defender.

The company posted a 64-million-pound ($80 million) loss before tax for the year, ending March 31, as supply-chain shortages slowed production in the first two quarters.

The average selling price for JLR models was more than 70,000 pounds for its financial year ending March 31, compared to just under 45,000 pounds in the previous financial year, according to JLR figures.

Of the company’s 200,000-strong order bank, 76 percent of the models are Range Rovers, Range Rover Sports and Defenders.

The high prices JLR fetches for those models will be the contributing factor if the company beats its revenue record this financial year, Mardell told journalists on a media cal lthis month.

“Our modern luxury repositioning is a revenue model rather than a volume model,” he said. “I think we will break our all-time revenue record in the 2024 financial year [ending March 31].

JLR posted revenue of 22.8 billion pounds for its 2023 financial year, up 24 percent. The revenue boost came despite reduced retail volumes of 354,000 vehicles against 376,000 for the financial year before.

JLR expects to sell around 400,000 vehicles in the current financial year as shortages of chips and other parts ease, Mardell said.

The new sales target is well below the 614,309 cars JLR sold in the 2017/18 financial year, but the company expects to compensate for the shortfall with higher revenue per car.

In China, imported JLR products achieved net revenue per car of 101,000 pounds, the company said, helping push up JLR’s profits in its key market to the highest level in five years.

JLR will continue to focus on its higher-profit models even as chip supply returns, Mardell said.

Its plan is for a third of its sales to be Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models, a third Defenders, and a third its cheaper models such as the Range Rover Evoque and Land Discovery Sport.

“If we keep a proportion of our business two thirds of those three nameplates then we will not significantly deteriorate the mix of our business as we grow volumes,” Mardell said.

Mardell, formerly the company’s chief financial officer, said the company would keep its production breakeven point at 300,000 units annually.

Mardell has previously said JLR’s recent financial woes where triggered when high spending pushed the company’s breakeven point to 600,000 vehicles in the 2019 financial year.