Maruti Suzuki India Ltd reported a 9.7% drop in fourth-quarter profit on Tuesday, as weak demand for vehicles during the Covid-19 pandemic and higher commodity costs hurt India's largest carmaker.
After a steep fall in car sales last year when the pandemic first hit, Maruti's sales picked up in India over the past two quarters as people opted out of public transport and poured their lockdown savings into big-ticket items such as cars.
Read: Top 5 best-selling car models from Maruti Suzuki stable in 2020-21, says company
Still, as the carmaker dealt with rising costs of steel and copper that threatened margins, it passed on some of those costs to customers. Maruti, which sells every second car in India, has already bumped up the prices of its cars twice this year.
For the quarter ended March 31, Maruti's net profit fell to 11.66 billion rupees ($156.19 million) from 12.92 billion rupees a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing.
This missed analysts' estimates of 17.39 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Revenue rose 32% to 240.24 billion rupees and the carmaker recommended a dividend of 45 rupees per share.