When Mercedes-Benz and BMW increased against the wind, and Lexus sold a markup, Jaguar Land Rover, who had been struggling for several years, could finally tear off the shame of the shame around its neck.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has just released the third quarterly report for fiscal year 2019/20 (Accounting period October-December 2019, JLR’s fiscal year is out of sync with the natural year) , quarterly revenue increased by 2.8% year-on-year to GBP 6.398 billion. Although the increase was small, Jaguar Land Rover finally achieved revenue growth for two consecutive quarters in 2019. And, with this quarter’s performance, Jaguar Land Rover finally regained a natural year with positive annual revenue growth (2019) .
Correspondingly, profitability is improving. Last quarter, Jaguar Land Rover’s profit before tax was 318 million pounds, compared with a loss of 273 million pounds in the same period last year. If calculated on a natural year basis, in 2018, Jaguar Land Rover’s loss after deducting non-recurring gains and losses was GBP 263 million, and in 2019 it achieved a profit before tax of about GBP 350 million. The amount is not much, but it is back to normal.
2018 is the year of Jaguar Land Rover’s death. After both global and Chinese sales hit record highs in 2017, Jaguar Land Rover global sales fell by 4.6% in 2018. The main reason is the poor performance of the Chinese market, which accounts for nearly one-fifth of its total global sales. In 2018, Jaguar Land Rover sales in China decreased by 21.6%: the cumulative sales volume for the year was about 115,000, compared with the previous year’s figure of 146,000.
Frequent recalls caused by product defects and the aging of the main products sold are considered to be Jaguar Land Rover’s main troubles in 2018. 2018In the middle of the year, Land Rover’s first hybrid model, the Range Rover Sport P400e, which had been on the market for more than half a year at that time, caused a sensation over the rights of owners due to various power system failures. Although the P400e’s problems were finally resolved, the impact on Jaguar Land Rover’s quality reputation was difficult to heal.
On the other hand, Land Rover brand’s two domestic sales in the Chinese market are the mainstays, Range Rover Aurora and Discovery. The former was listed as early as 2011, and it is the end of its life cycle by 2018. During the eight years, it also experienced huge price fluctuations from import price increases to domestic discounts, as well as the plagiarism of the appearance of independent brands, and it has been difficult to face market competition. When the latter was listed in 2016, there were already concerns about insufficient internal technology allocation, and it was necessary to wait for the mid-term restructuring to be completed, and the time window for the mid-term restructuring also had to wait after 2018.
The problems encountered by the Jaguar brand are more chronic. The first is that the flagship XJL has been around for almost a decade. (Discontinued after 2018) urgently needs to be updated, but Jaguar ’s definition of its successor model is one This pure electric vehicle cannot be replenished in a short time. The market price of XJL in the later period was drastically lowered, which squeezed the living space of XFL and XEL models below. Due to the existence of the Land Rover brand, although Jaguar is also developing SUV product lines, it must always consider the impact on the Land Rover brother models. In addition, the quality crisis encountered by Land Rover will inevitably have a negative impact on Jaguar sales in the same store.
The various difficulties encountered by Jaguar Land Rover, especially the troubles in the Chinese market, continued to gradually improve until the first half of 2019. In the first and second quarters of 2019, Jaguar Land Rover sales in China decreased by 45% and 27% year-on-year, respectively. By the third quarter, sales in the Chinese market began to show a slight year-on-year growth. (0.5%) . In the fourth quarter, the last quarter just passed, Jaguar Land Rover China sales have reached 24.3% year-on-year increase. Although from the perspective of full-year sales, Jaguar Land Rover sales in China are still declining in 2019, but in fact, there has been a clear upward trend since the second half.
In the second half of 2019, Land Rover and Jaguar successively launched a new generation of Range Rover Aurora and the new XEL in the mid-term. The former, after eight years of highlights and falling behind, has finally ushered in a new generation of cars in the true sense, while the latter is a routine product power-up action in the middle of the model’s life.
Jaguar Land Rover’s third quarter financial report (Note: Refers to the fourth quarter of 2019) , the Chery Jaguar Land Rover responsible for domestic models, in During the quarter, 15,400 new cars were sold, a slight increase of 6.2% compared to the same period last year. However, the sales revenue from these sales reached 427 million pounds, a year-on-year increase of 28.6%. This means that from October to December 2019, the average transaction price of domestic models sold by Jaguar Land Rover in the Chinese market has increased significantly. This is particularly important for Jaguar Land Rover, which was in a high discount situation some time ago.
In early 2020, the domestic Land Rover will usher in a new model called the Discovery Sports Edition, and the Discovery Sports Edition is actually the mid-term modification of the previous Discovery, but just took the opportunity to change its name. As for Jaguar, the new XEL, which was launched at the end of last year, will become a sales focus in 2020. Chery Jaguar Land Rover’s product line is not complicated, but there are only five models (Jaguar 3, Land Rover 2) , while domestic models of Jaguar Land Rover have sales It accounts for more than half of its total sales in China, so the update of main models will have a more significant impact on total sales.
Jaguar Land Rover has reached an important cooperation with BMW. On the one hand, it will cooperate with the latter to develop and use new internal combustion engines, which will liberate Jaguar Land Rover’s ongoing R & D costs for gasoline vehicles in the short term. On the other hand, Jaguar will borrow BMW’s FAAR front-wheel drive platform (used by BMW 1 Series, etc.) to develop new entry models with lower barriers. It is never a cost-effective choice for luxury car brands to build entry-level models. Sharing the platform with BMW will be a low-cost solution, but the final result requires Jaguar to make an accurate trade-off between personality and cost. A little carelessness may lead to the consequences of Infiniti’s borrowing of the Mercedes platform that year: a new entry car is available, but it is meaningless.
The more important content of the cooperation is that both parties will jointly develop the future pure electric vehicles. Considering that Jaguar and BMW had previously fought in electrification and did not have cooperation experience in this field, the new electric vehicle technology developed in cooperation should not come soon. Jaguar Land Rover is one of the earliest luxury brands that tried to break the game by being the first to fully electrify. Today, this has become the common choice of many luxury brands outside the BBA. In 2020 Jaguar’s flagship XJ will return as a pure electric, but it may not be able to really enter the market before 2021.
From the middle of 2019, the arrival of new models has significantly improved the competitiveness of Jaguar Land Rover’s products, which has led to a reversal in performance. But on the other hand, a relatively sparse product line will also make the entire brand less resilient to negative environments. It is easy to appear that there is no new product supplement for a certain period of time. If negative conditions such as quality problems occur at this time, the entire brand may be in a trough. Luxury brands like Jaguar Land Rover, which are under development and have insufficient product line layout,In fact, it is even more necessary to actively respond to negative situations that may occasionally occur.