Even as its India business significantly grew both revenue and profit due to federal tax cuts and a festive season rush, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd’s consolidated numbers in the October-December quarter were pulled down by the impact of a cyber attack on its UK-based subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
Even as its India business significantly grew both revenue and profit due to federal tax cuts and a festive season rush, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd's consolidated numbers in the October-December quarter were pulled down by the impact of a cyber attack on its UK-based subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
India's third largest carmaker saw a 22% rise in volumes of passenger vehicle sales in the country to 171,000 units, sending its standalone profit—before exceptional items owing to demerger related costs—soaring 90% to ₹127 crore, and revenue jumping 26% to ₹15,466 crore.
However, that did not help the overall numbers for the third quarter, as more than two-thirds of profit and revenue of Tata Motors PV comes from JLR. Its consolidated bottom line slipped into losses of ₹3,483 crore compared to a profit of ₹5,485 crore in the year-ago period, and revenue, too, declined 25% y-o-y to ₹71,575 crore.
A cyber attack on its facilities cost JLR around £64 million, and another exceptional cost of £196 million took its additional expenses to £260 million (over ₹3,000 crore) between July and December, which led to a severe hit to the profitability of its parent for two consecutive quarters.
Further, other issues including tariffs in the US also hit JLR, sending its retail sales to a three-year low to 368,000 in calendar year 2025. The British luxury carmaker resumed full production by mid-November, two months after the company disclosed that its manufacturing facilities were hit by a cyber attack.
Notably, in the July-September quarter, Tata Motors PV's consolidated revenue had fallen 13.5% on-year to ₹72,349 crore. The company reported a loss of ₹6,368 crore in Q2 against a profit of ₹3,056 crore a year earlier.
No impact anticipated on Q4
Richard Molyneux, chief financial officer at JLR, told reporters in a post-results earnings call that the company's plants are now operating at full capacity and there are no constraints to its production.
"The plants that produce the vehicles that underpin our performance, namely Solihull, which produces Range Rover Sport, and Nitra, which produces Defender, are operating at full capacity," Molyneux said. "We would not anticipate any exceptional items relating to the cyber incident to occur in Q4."
During the October-December quarter, JLR also saw P.B. Balaji take over as the new chief executive officer as the company rejigged its leadership.
Balaji's tenure began by dealing with the exit of chief creative officer Gerry McGovern and the loss of business due to the halt in production in September and October owing to the cyberattack.
In his first post-results remarks as chief executive, Balaji insisted that the company is focused on building back after the challenging past quarters.
"Thanks to the commitment of our dedicated teams, we returned vehicle production to normal levels by mid-November, and we are focused on building our business back stronger," Balaji said. "While the external environment remains volatile, we expect performance to improve significantly in the fourth quarter and we have clear plans to manage global challenges."
The costs, however, only refer to the direct expenses incurred by the company to deal with the cyberattack, with no specific estimate made available on how much the developments cost its overall business.
"These costs do not include the effect of the direct sales volume loss of 50,000 units. These lost sales are difficult to attribute…So I have got no specific number to how much you attribute to lost sales. However, it's fair to say that the bottom line number would be considerably higher than £300 million," Molyneux said when asked about what was the overall impact of the cyberattack on the company.
Total sales during the October-December period was 59,200 units which was nearly half of what the company sold in the same period a year ago.
Following the announcement of JLR's cyberattack, several estimates from independent agencies and experts pegged the overall impact of the cyberattack to be at least £500 million, with some going as high as more than £1 billion.
According to Cyber Monitoring Centre, an independent agency that tracks the impact of cyber hits on UK-based firms, Jaguar Land Rover would have suffered a loss of £540 million ( ₹6,300 crore) due to the loss in business owing to the cyberattack.
The hack is expected to cause a revenue loss of up to £2 billion as JLR did not have insurance against the cyberattack, the Financial Times reported in September.
Looking ahead
The company is now looking to put the cyberattack behind as it looks to get production and sales back on track.
"So despite a difficult period, we expect our performance to improve significantly in the fourth quarter and we're evolving our plan to succeed in a rapidly changing world," Molyneux said.
Tata Motors PV shares saw 0.040% gains during trading hours on Thursday as against 0.58% decline in Nifty Auto. The results were declared post trading hours.