Bajaj Auto posts flat first-quarter profit

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bajaj Auto, India's second-largest motorcycle maker, reported a flat quarterly profit, lagging expectations, hurt by sluggish sales volumes in the domestic market.

Bajaj said on Thursday standalone net profit was 7.4 billion rupees ($123 million) for its fiscal first quarter to end-June, compared with 7.38 billion rupees a year ago. Net sales rose 6.7 percent from a year earlier to 51.33 billion rupees.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of 8.16 billion rupees on revenue of 51.99 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sales volume of Bajaj's motorcycles slumped 16.5 percent between April and June, hit by sluggish sales in the domestic market. This has put Bajaj behind its rival TVS Motor Co , which moved up a notch to become India's third-largest two-wheeler company by unit sales.

Bajaj, valued by the market at $10.4 billion at Wednesday's close, is the worst performer so far this year among Indian automobile companies.

The stock has gained 12.2 percent so far this year at Wednesday's close, underperforming the automobile sector index, which was up 32.3 percent over the same period.

(Reporting by Aditi Shah; additional reporting by Tripti Kalro in Bangalore; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)