Apollo Tyres Reports Record Fourth Quarter

India’s Apollo Tyres has reported that it achieved record sales in the fourth quarter of its 2004/2005 financial year. At the same time the company announced a 45 per cent dividend. For the 2004/2005 year Apollo Tyres Ltd posted a gross turnover of 26.56 billion rupees (£332 million), a 15 per cent growth over the previous year. The company also registered the highest quarterly sales achieved in its history – over 7.5 billion rupees in the last fourth quarter. This represents 21 per cent growth over the same period last year. At the same time the company maintained three per cent net profit.

Onkar S Kanwar, chairman and managing director, Apollo Tyres Ltd said: “Apollo’s performance reflects our ability to consistently deliver high performance by providing quality products to our customers. Our sales growth has allowed us to maintain a robust bottomline even in a very tough year. The demand outlook for the industry continues to remain healthy and we believe we are best positioned to convert these opportunities into reality. For the coming year, we will continue to focus on new products, on increasing efficiency across facilities and on expansion of our existing markets and operations.”

Chief operating officer, Neeraj R S Kanwar, also gave details of how the company resisted the effects of raw material price increases. “Managing rising raw materials costs has been a huge challenge this year and this is reflected in the erosion of our net profit. However, we continue to remain, by far, the most profitable tyre company in India due to various measures that we have undertaken over the course of the year, including achieving double the industry growth rate in the light commercial vehicle (LCV), farm and passenger car radial (PCR) tyre segments.”

The company reported that it had outperformed the industry average across the board. In 2004/2005, the Indian industry’s LCV tyre production grew by 21 per cent compared to Apollo’s 44 per cent; farm tyre production went up 30 per cent while Apollo reports that is grew by 78 per cent in this segment; and the PCR tyre segment grew by 19 per cent in 2004/2005, while Apollo claims a growth of 58 per cent in the same period.

“Our increasing market share in the passenger car replacement and OEM segments is a telling story of the success of Acelere, India’s first range of H-rated tubeless tyres that we launched last year. It is apparent that Indian customers are as savvy as their counterparts abroad and keen to use high technology products. We will continue to fulfil this need,” added Neeraj Kanwar.