Even though the Chinese market has been in a prolonged slump, contributing to Jaguar Land Rover’s massive $4.4 billion loss in Q1 of this year, the automaker has seen its numbers improve in the past three months.
China sales for JRL cars went up 18% in September to 8,779 units, 17% in August to 8,783 units and 40% in July to 8,661 units. In turn, this has prompted JLR CEO Ralf Speth to feel optimistic about the future, given his company’s double digit growth, reports Autonews Europe.
Meanwhile, JLR chief commercial officer Felix Braeutigam is feeling both optimistic as well as cautious, refusing to state that their financial turnaround is now complete.
When things were good, JLR was making roughly $77,000 of profit on each of its luxury Range Rover SUVs sold in China, according to analyst Max Warburton. Those figures however crashed last year, during a general market downturn.
“One reason we had a difficult year last year was that we took a conscious decision that we don’t want to compensate for the overall slowdown [in China] by pushing volume at any cost,” said Braeutigam.
He went on to say that in the future, it will be even harder to do business in the world’s largest premium market.
“There is a lot of gold, but it will be more and more expensive to extract it,” added Braeutigam. “It’s becoming probably the most aggressive and most fought-for premium automotive market.”
Also read: Jaguar Land Rover China Woes Caused By Poor Quality Control
Based on figures from JATO Dynamics, it’s the Land Rover brand that needs to take center stage in China, given its 36% sales rise in August, reaching 6,565 units – compared to a 39% decline for the Jaguar brand to 2,028 units.
