Tata Motors Ltd. reported a 5.5% year-over-year increase in fourth-quarter 2020 revenues, even as its executives flagged a variety of challenges facing the company. Its group CFO, Pathamadai Balachandran Balaji, noted that the company's dealer network is disrupted, stating: "We're locked down in the U.K. We're partially significantly locked down in Europe, less so in North America, very little in China/"

The company also faces manufacturing challenges, though "from an operating perspective, our sites still do remain open … obviously, suppliers are going through the same challenges." The latter have ranged from a shortage of semiconductors across the industry, noted in Panjiva's Feb. 3 report, through to logistics network congestion.

Panjiva's data shows U.S. seaborne imports linked to the company dipped just 14.6% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2020, slowing to a 7.8% decline in December 2020 alone. Before the pandemic, the company had experienced growth of 3.8% year over year in the 12 months to March 30, 2020. The slow recovery may be one reason for the company's recent intellectual property lawsuit against its competitors.

Tata Motors' shipments to the U.S. are mostly focused on the Jaguar and Land Rover brands. Imports of Land Rover vehicles inched 2.8% higher in December 2020, while Jaguar vehicles fell by 36.2% with the balance made up by shipments of parts across the two ranges. The earlier recovery in Land Rover vehicles reflects the wider outperformance of SUVs versus cars as well as new model launches including the Defender.

Eric Oak is a researcher at Panjiva, which is a business line of S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. This content does not constitute investment advice, and the views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Links are current at the time of publication. S&P Global Market Intelligence is not responsible if those links are unavailable later.