Apollo sales jump 63 percent in year to March
Gurgaon, Haryana, India - Apollo Tyres has reported net sales of of Rs 42 900 million (€765.5 million) or just over $1000 milllion for the 12 months to 31 March, 2007. This is a 63 percent increase on last year's figure of Rs 26 300 million.
Operating profit increased by a similar percentage, to Rs 4000 million (€71.4 million), from Rs 2300 million a year earlier, meaning that operating margin increased slightly to 9.3 pecent, compared with 8.75 percent a year ago.
The increase in sales was largely due to the acquisition and integration of Dunlop Tyres International in South Africa, but new product launches also helped toboost sales.
Commenting on the results, Onkar Kanwar, Chairman & Managing Director, Apollo Tyres Ltd, said: “Once again we have achieved a huge revenue growth of more than 16 percent in South Africa and 25 percent in India, coupled with significant improvement in profitability. This was achieved under difficult circumstances of high raw material costs and escalating natural rubber prices. We managed to strengthen our bottomline, due to a continuous focus on increasing internal efficiencies and undertaking de-bottlenecking activities across all our production facilities.â€
The company said it was planning to permit foreign institutional investors to own up to 30 percent of the company
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