Ashok Leyland turnover at Rs 77 billion, up 7.8 p c

Chennai, May 8 (UNI) Ashok Leyland, the Hinduja Group flagship company, has registered a sales turnover of Rs 77,291.23 million during 2007-08 compared to Rs 71,681.76 million in the previous fiscal.

Announcing the company's annual results to newspersons here, Ashok Leyland Managing Director R Seshasayee said with other income of Rs 739.99 million (Rs 708.03 million), the total income was at Rs 78,031.22 million (Rs 72,389.79 million).

Net profit rose by 6.4 per cent to touch Rs 4,693.10 million (Rs 4,412.86 million).

''In terms of topline, we compensated for the slowdown in the truck market by significantly improving our share of the bus market, which registered high growth. International operations as also the engines and spares businesses contributed handsomely. Our bottom line was benefitted by some aggressive value engineering, sourcing initatives and higher productivity," he said.

''Despite rising input costs, we improved our operating margin by 60 basis points to 10.40 per cent,'' he added.

Mr Seshasayee said despite higher financial expenses of Rs 497.40 million (Rs 53.32 million) on account of higher capacity expansion, the company's profit from ordinary activities before tax grew 5.4 per cent to Rs 6,508.87 million (Rs 6,175.82 million).

Income tax claimed Rs 1,661.69 million (Rs 1,624.71 million) and fringe benefit tax at Rs 70.00 million (Rs 51.50 million), to give a net profit from ordinary activities after tax of Rs 4,777.18 million (Rs 4,499.61 million).

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