(Akron/Tire Review – India Business Standard) With the Indian tyre market being flooded with cheaper Chinese bus and truck tyres, the domestic tyre industry is up in arms about the under-invoicing of these imports and their inferior quality.
The un-audited financial results released by JK Tyre & Industries Ltd for the quarter ending June 30, 2007 – the third quarter of India’s financial year – reveal good news for shareholders and paint a picture of a company in a strong position.
Revenues of Rs 8,178 billion (£100 million) were recorded for the quarter and the company reported EBIDTA of Rs 725.3 million (£8.8 million), up from the Rs 444.9 million (£5.4 million) achieved last year. Pre-tax profit rose to Rs 312.3 million (£3.8 million), a huge jump from a year ago when profits before tax stood at Rs 56.1 million (£683,700). The earnings per share for the quarter stands at Rs 6.56 (£0.08).
According to India’s Economic Times, tyre companies in the subcontinent plant to invest around £670 million in their operations over the next two or three years. The financial daily reports that this sizable sum will be spent by a number of players including MRF, JK Tyre, Apollo, BKT, Ceat, Birla and Bridgestone. Birla alone is reportedly spending £120 million, while Ceat is said to be making investments worth £97 million and JK Tyre £45 million.
Such a large investment is expected to increase industry turnover from its current £2.3 billion up to £3.9 billion, and much of the increase may come from the production of TBR tyres. While radialisation in the passenger car sector has reached over 95 per cent in India, TBR market penetration remains a paltry 2 to 3 per cent.
It is hoped that JK Tyre and Industry’s Rs 11 billion (£135 million) capital expenditure and capacity increase from 9 million to 12 million units will help towards the company achieving a turnover of Rs 50 billion (£610 million) within three years, claims chief financial officer A K Kinra. Mumbai based publication DNA has reported Kinra as stating “We are aiming to grow by 20 per cent annually over the next 3-4 years. We hope to be a Rs 5,000 crore (£610 million) company by 2010.” Currently JK Tyre has an annual turnover of Rs 30 billion (£366 million).
Kinra added that the current slowdown in India’s car industry was not of concern to JK Tyre as OE contracts only make up about 10 per cent of the tyremaker’s business, with the rest coming from the replacement and export markets. “The slowdown has only a marginal impact on us. In the aftermarket space, we see a robust demand,” he said.
JK Tyre has released additional details of the company’s expansion plans, and it appears far more money than previously reported will be invested in increasing production capacity. The Indian tyremaker plans to inject Rs 11 billion (£135 million) into capacity expansion during the next three years. According to India’s Economic Times, JK Tyre finance director A K Kinra has stated that both capacity for OTR tyres and for radials will be expanded in order to meet with increased demand – passenger radial capacity will be increased from its current 4.5 million units to 7 million units, and TBR capacity will be boosted from 400,000 to 1 million units per annum – and the planned expansion projects will be funded through a combination of loans and internal accruals.
Kinra added that growth in these three sectors will form the basis of JK Tyre’s future expansion, and he expects the company to achieve a revenue of Rs 50 billion (£615 million) within a three-year window. The previous financial year saw the company achieve revenues of £365 million.
Vietnam’s Southern Rubber Industry Joint Stock Company, who trade under the name Casumina, has signed a cooperation contract with India’s JK Tyre and Industries Ltd. to export truck tyres and tubes. Under the terms of the contract signed on June 7, Casumina will sell 180,000 truck tyres and tubes to JK Tyre and Industries for US$17million. These products will initially be sold under the JK Tyre brand name and later, following consumer feedback on quality, they will be sold as Casumina branded products. As part of the agreement JK Tyre will provide its latest technology to Casumina.
Casumina manufactures tyres and tubes for trucks, passenger cars and two-wheel vehicles, and began production of radials in 2005. At present the company claims to be experiencing annual growth of 38 per cent, with turnover reaching $14 million last year. In 2006 the company signed a contract with Continental to produce light truck and motorcycle tyres and tubes for the Asian market. These products were produced in Malaysia under the Sime Tyres label.
According to news published in an Indian business daily, JK Tyre & Industries is considering a return to producing tyres for the two and three wheel vehicle market after a long absence. Company president Arun K Bajora told the Financial Express “We are examining the possibility of entering into the two-wheeler and the three-wheeler space. We want to offer a complete package to the dealers and customers.”
At present JK Tyre specialises in supplying both radials and bias tyres for passenger car, truck and agricultural vehicles in its homeland and holds a 25 per cent market share in the almost £2 billion per annum domestic market. Of this motorcycle and three-wheeler production in the 2006-07 year stood at around 26 million units, an increase of 24 per cent over the previous year. This is higher than any market segment apart from tractor trailer tyres, and perhaps too tempting a growth not to capitalise on. In contrast, the overall Indian tyre market only grew by 11 per cent during the same period.
India’s third largest tyre manufacturer, JK Tyre & Industries Ltd (JK Tyre), has made no secret of its plans to increase domestic market share in key segments and to seek out new export markets, but bringing these goals to fruition requires the expansion of the company’s existing production capacities. Therefore JK Tyre has its eye on making an investment of somewhere between £60 million and £75 million in this area over the next three years.
President of JK Tyre, Mr. Arun K. Bajoria, recently spoke to the respected Indian daily publication Hindu Business Line regarding the steps his company was making towards realising its aims. “The expansion will be across the four existing facilities and the investments would be spread over the next three years,” he stated. “But in the next 12 months we would be first investing around Rs 120 crore (£15 million) for increasing the capacity by around 50 per cent in the off the road tyres segment used by the mining, cement, coal and earth-moving sectors.”
India’s third largest tyre manufacturer, J.K. Industries, have announced that their company name is to change to JK Tyre and Industries, with effect from May 23,2007.
For the quarter ending March 31, 2007 JK Tyre & Industries Ltd posted a net profit of £2.64 million as compared to £435,460 in the corresponding previous quarter. Net sales for the period increased 19.48 per cent to £91.35 million from £76.45 million a year earlier. The company’s net profit during the first half of the current fiscal year stood at £1.68 million, compared with £439,000 during the first six months of 2005-06. Net sales rose 17.13 per cent to £194.73 million from the previous year’s total of £165.26.
At present JK Tyre is the undisputed leader of India’s truck and bus radial market with a market share of close to 80 per cent. The company’s light truck and passenger car radial market segments, while not reaching these levels, are still a healthy 25 and 24 per cent respectively. JK Tyre also enjoys a market share approaching 23 per cent in the nylon truck tyre segment.
(Akron/Tire Review) India’s MRF received the highest customer satisfaction scores in the recent JD Power & Associates Asia Pacific 2007 OE tyre survey.
The study considers new-vehicle buyer perceptions of OE tyre appearance, durability, ride quality, traction and handling.
MRF ranked highest overall, scoring 840 points out of a possible 1,000 points. It marked the fifth time MRF topped the OE study list.
JK Tyre followed in the rankings with 822 points, while Apollo garnered 812 points.
JK Industries Ltd. plans to invest up to 1.2 billion rupees (£13.9 million) doubling production of OTR tyres over the next 18 months, according a senior official from the company. This decision is a logical one for the tyremaker, owing to the fact that the net profit margin for the OTR segment is 6 per cent, nearly three times that of truck and passenger car tyres.
Mr Raghupati Singhania, vice chairman and managing director of JK Industries Limited has received an honorary doctorate in science at the seventeenth convocation of Mohanlal Sukhadia University at Udaipur by Her Excellency, Smt. Pratibha Patil, Governor of Rajasthan. The degree was conferred in recognition of Mr Singhania’s contributions towards encouraging education, training and research activities in Rubber and Allied industries in India.
According to JK Tyres’ CFO, A K Kinra, a 7 – 8 per cent price increase should offset increased rubber costs. “The increase in the cost is very high. There is no way the tyre industry can sustain on its own, so to take care of that cost increase, it has to go for a price increase. That has compelled us to increase tyre prices also,” Mr Kinra told India television news sources.
In India, Mr. A K Kinra, Chief Financial Officer of JK Tyre, has said that the company will increase tyre prices by up to eight per cent from 1st June, explaining that the step was necessary to offset growing raw material costs, notably the rising price of rubber. He said that, in Malaysia, the price of rubber has risen by 85 per cent in a year and, as rubber constitutes up to one third of the cost of raw materials, the price increase was inevitable.
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