Tata Motors net profit falls 36.7 pct, beats forecasts

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Tata Motors Ltd posted a 36.7 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit, a smaller-than-expected drop, as a jump in sales at its Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) subsidiary offset falling profit at its domestic business.

Tata Motors, part of the salt-to-steel Tata conglomerate, said net profit for the January-March quarter was 39.45 billion rupees, down from 62.34 billion rupees the previous year, with revenue up 10 percent at 560 billion rupees.

A one-off tax gain contributed to a significantly higher net profit in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts, on average, expected net profit of 28.86 billion rupees on revenue of 518.51 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters Starmine.

Shares in Tata Motors closed 2.7 percent higher at 303.80 rupees before the quarterly numbers were released. The Nifty fell 0.1 percent and the auto sector index rose 0.3 percent.

($1 = 0.6622 British pounds)

($1 = 55.9250 rupees)

(Reporting by Aditi Shah; Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Tony Munroe)