India's Tata Motors quarterly profit up 12.2%

India's top vehicle maker Tata Motors said Thursday quarterly net profit rose 12.2 percent helped by strong sales of British brands Jaguar and Land Rover, but missed forecasts. The auto giant reported consolidated net profit of 22.44 billion rupees ($408 million) for the three months to June, up from 20 billion rupees a year earlier. The company, part of the salt-to-steel Tata conglomerate, undershot analysts' expectations of profit of around 27 billion rupees. Revenues for the first financial quarter climbed 30 percent to 431.7 billion rupees, the company said. Tata Motors, which also makes utility vehicles and the low-cost Nano car, said it suffered a foreign-exchange loss of 4.41 billion rupees in the quarter, around eight times more than the size of its currency loss of 570 million rupees a year earlier. Net revenue for the Jaguar and Land Rover brands rose 34.6 percent to 3.63 billion pounds ($5.68 billion) and net profit jumped to 236 million pounds ($369 million). Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor in 2008 for $2.3 billion as part of plans to expand its reach beyond Asia. The deal vaulted Tata Motors from a commercial vehicle and small-car maker into a global player with luxury brands in its range of offerings. Jaguar and Land Rover sold 83,452 units in the last quarter, a jump of 34.4 percent from a year earlier.