Jaguar Land Rover have announced a disappointing set of financial results for the year ending March 31st 2020.
The British company posted a £422 million loss, blaming a disastrous fourth quarter slump brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. JLR’s sales fell by a significant 31% year on year for the period from January to March and this was underlined by the fact that in the first quarter alone they made a pre-tax loss of £501m.
Prof Sir Ralf Speth, Jaguar Land Rover Chief Executive, said: “Jaguar Land Rover’s early action to transform its business meant that as a company we were on track to meet our full-year expectations and operational and financial targets before the pandemic hit in the fourth quarter.
“We also reacted quickly to the disruption caused by Covid-19. Our immediate priority has been the health and wellbeing of our people – and this remains the case as we have now begun the gradual, safe restart of our operations.”
The last 12 months hasn’t all been bad news, the company has seen big success with their multi-award winning Jaguar I-Pace achieving a sales boost of 40 per cent, while the Range Rover Evoque was in demand with a rise of 24.7%.
Despite these small pockets of optimism, there are still worries for the next financial year, with Covid-19 decimating both sales and output. Global demand slumped by 62.5 per cent in April, followed by a 43.3 per cent drop in May. The expectation is that sales will bounce back, but the company has had to reduce their contract agency staff over the coming months, losing 1100 of its workforce.