Jaguar Land Rover IPO speculation grows as values rise

MUMBAI (Bloomberg) -- When Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008 for $2.5 billion from Ford Motor Co., investors greeted the announcement by selling its stock.
Those who held on may be sitting on a jackpot.

The two British luxury car brands are worth $14 billion, according to the average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News, more than Fiat or Suzuki.

With a planned $12 billion in capital spending and product development over five years and a proposed partnership with Chery Automobile to expand in China, conditions are right for an initial share sale, according to FIM Asset Management Ltd. and Kim Eng Securities Pvt.

But while the pressure is mounting for Tata to launch an IPO for the two British luxury brands, the company has given no indication that this is being planned.

Tata Motors expects to fund Jaguar Land Rover's capital expenditure and product development needs through internal cash accruals, Debasis Ray, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. "However, we will continue to consider opportunities for capital structure management as done in the past."

After acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, Tata Motors hired KPMG International and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants to help cut costs at the luxury unit.

The company introduced new models including the new Jaguar XJ sedan, the Range Rover Evoque compact SUV and the Jaguar XF sedan and began targeting new emerging markets such as Russia and China.

"By listing Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Motors will allow investors who aren't focused on India to invest in the company," said Taina Erajuuri, a Helsinki-based money manager at FIM Asset Management that oversees about $1.2 billion including Tata Motors shares. "The new models planned for JLR require a large amount of investment, especially if the company wants to follow on the success of the Evoque."

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Jaguar Land Rover to open engine plant in England, report says

LONDON (Reuters) -- Jaguar Land Rover is set to open a new engine plant in England, a newspaper report said.

The factory would be built in Wolverhampton, central England, and create some 2,000 jobs, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

JLR's engines are currently supplied by Ford Motor Co., which sold the brands to India's Tata Motors in 2008. JLR has three assembly plants in central England.

The company could make an announcement as early as Monday in conjunction with British business secretary Vince Cable, the paper said on Sunday, citing a source with knowledge of the company's plans.

The plant would cost 400 million pounds ($632 million) to open and Britain's coalition government has offered around 10 million pounds of support, the paper said.

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Tata Motors may develop engine with Jaguar Land Rover

Tata Motors Ltd. will consider a joint engine-development program with its Jaguar Land Rover unit, according to a company report released today.

"To optimize the synergistic strengths between JLR and Tata Motors in India, an examination is also under way on a joint engine development program which would have manufacturing facilities both in the U.K. and India," Ratan Tata said in a statement released in the company's annual report for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which ended on March 31.

Currently, Tata, India's leading automaker by sales, obtains engines for Jaguar and Land Rover models from the brands' previous owner, Ford Motor Co.

Joint engine manufacturing would be another step closer to establishing the brands' independence from Ford. Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in 2008.

Tata Motors said its Pune, India, plant, which began manufacturing the Land Rover Freelander in late May, could assemble other products and variants from the brands, according to The Wall Street Journal. A report from the Birmingham Post claims that Wolverhampton, England, plant has been chosen for Jaguar and Land Rover engine manufacturing.

Globally, Tata Motors sold 62,090 Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles for the fiscal year, up 9 percent from the previous year, the company said.

Jaguar Land Rover N.A. sold 23,702 vehicles in the United States in the first six months of 2011, a 13.9 percent increase over the first six months of 2010.

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Jaguar Land Rover drops plans to close a UK plant

Ford Motor Co. sold to India's Tata Motors in 2008, said it would be significantly increasing the number of models in its range and creating thousands of jobs over the next decade.

Last year, Tata said it would merge two JLR plants in England as part of a business plan to tackle the impact of the economic downturn on demand for vehicles, which had seen its manufacturing running at less than 60 percent of capacity.

Jaguar Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth said on Friday the company is now seeing a "great turnaround" in its business.

The carmaker will keep a Jaguar plant at Castle Bromwich and a Land Rover factory in nearby Solihull, both in central England, as well as its Halewood facility near Liverpool in northwest England.

Speth said the company had already begun hiring 1,500 new employees at its Halewood factory to help with production of the Range Rover Evoque, a new small SUV that launches next summer.

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Tata Brings In a German A-Team to Make Sense of Jaguar/Land Rover

A flurry of snickers went through the crowd of assembled journalists at the Paris auto show when the new CEO of Jaguar/Land Rover took the stage. Instead of the dulcet lilt of an English brogue, the new boss of some of Blighty’s oldest and most revered brands, Dr. Ralf Speth, chiseled through his speech with the oompah-oompah beat of a thick Bavarian accent.

Since January 2010, an executive shuffle at the top of the newly combined Jaguar and Land Rover operations has put German executives firmly in charge. Welcome to the globalized auto industry, which doesn’t let a little bit of historical irony get in its way.

Take, for example, the 2008 purchase of both Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford by an industrial conglomerate headquartered in one of England’s former colonies. Everybody who has met Ratan Tata, chairman of the Mumbai, India–based Tata Group, says he’s very polite, intelligent, and down-to-earth considering he’s a billionaire many times over.

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Land Rover to be built in India says Tata CEO

Tata might be most famous for building the world's least-expensive car, the $2500 Nano, but the Indian company bought Jaguar Land Rover from Ford in 2008 and has been running the two brands since.  Tata already sells Land Rovers in India, and according to Tata CEO Carl-Peter Forster, Tata CEO, the company will put an unspecified number of Land Rovers into production in India as early as next year.

Forster didn't reveal which models would be produced there.

In addition to beginning production in India, Forster hinted that production of  Jaguar and Land Rover models could begin in China. He said that JLR is currently in talks with a Chinese company about a joint venture. This marks the second former Premier Automotive Group (Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, and Aston Martin) brand to put vehicles into production in the Far East.

Read More: http://blogs.automotive.com/6674467/miscellaneous/land-rover-to-be-built-in-india-says-tata-ceo/index.html

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Jaguar Land Rover parent Tata seeks successor for Ratan Tata

MUMBAI (Bloomberg) -- Tata Sons Ltd. is searching for a successor to Chairman Ratan Tata, whose acquisitions of Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Group Plc charted India's emergence as a global economic power.

The 72-year-old Ratan, who built the group into India's biggest with revenue of more than $70 billion, will retire at the end of 2012 after two decades running the Mumbai-based company. A five-member committee will vet candidates for the role, Tata Sons said in an e-mailed statement this week.

The successful candidate will control a group whose 96 companies make cars from the $72,500 Jaguar XJ to the $2,500 Nano, produce steel and grow tea served at the Tata-owned Boston Ritz-Carlton. Tata accounts for almost 7 percent of India's gross domestic product.

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Jaguar owner Tata's shares hit 19-year high after quarterly profit report

MUMBAI (Bloomberg) -- Shares in Tata Motors Ltd., the Indian owner of Jaguar and Land Rover, today rose to their highest level in more than 19 years after the company posted a first-quarter profit on demand for luxury SUVs and sedans.

The automaker posted net income of 19.9 billion rupees ($430 million) in the three months ended June, compared with a loss of 3.3 billion rupees a year earlier. Sales rose 64 percent to 268.8 billion rupees.

Shares in Tata Motors, valued at $11 billion, closed up 4.2 percent at 957.30 rupees, outperforming the benchmark BSE index which fell 0.4 percent. It earlier hit 967.30 rupees -- their highest level in more than two decades, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Tata shares have soared some 660 percent since their lows of 126 rupees in February 2009 and have risen about 21 percent so far this year, outpacing a 4 percent rise in the main index and a rise of about 16 percent in the sector index.

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