Maruti net down 30%

The company's net profit for the fiscal stood at Rs 1,218.74 crore ($244 million), down 29.6 per cent from Rs 1,730.82 crore in 2007-08, an official statement said on Friday.

However, Maruti's turnover rose 14.28 per cent to Rs 21,453.86 crore last fiscal from Rs 18,773.27 crore in the year before.

"During the year, commodity prices went up sharply and remained high for most part of the year, forex fluctuations were also adverse and impacted the bottom line significantly," the Maruti chief executive officer and managing director, Shinzo Nakanishi, said.

The consolidated net profit for 2008-09 stood at Rs 1,227.45 crore, down 31.4 per cent from Rs 1,789.87 crore the year before.

However, the automaker managed to gain an additional 0.6 per cent market share during the year, taking its total share to 46.5 per cent of the Indian passenger car market.

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Maruti, which introduced two new models last fiscal, sold 792,167 vehicles (domestic and exports) in the year, up 3.6 per cent from 764,842 units it sold in 2007-08. The export growth during the period was 32 per cent, the statement added.

Nakanishi added that the company was looking at higher export figures in the current fiscal.

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Maruti is currently the second largest car exporter in the country after South Korean company Hyundai.