Tata (TTM) is India’s largest automaker. Even though they are Fiat’s exclusive distributor, Tata has a full line of their own autos. Tata is listed on the NYSE for the past two years, and from this gained a fair amount of cash from ADRs. Once those investment dollars came in, Tata took that cash, and invested globally by acquiring Daewoo’s truck plants in South Korea and a 21% stake in Spanish bus maker Hispano Carrocera. Tata also has defense contracts with the Indian government to provide troop carriers.
Aside from the preliminary information, Tata Motors has made moves to start selling in China. China, along with India, doesn’t have a lot of cars on the road at the moment, allowing Tata to tap into the two largest markets for vehicles in the world. Vehicle sales were up 28% for the quarter. Tata’s Q3 net profits were up 12% as well.
Like all Indian stocks, this stock isn’t being bought by the major financial institutions. Why you might ask? A lot of institutional investors don’t want to take the risk, and invest in ETFs instead. Thus, they ignore the tendency to buy up these off shore stocks because of “risk.” It makes me angry that US investors don’t do this because they could make so much money.
Keep in mind when I recommend these stocks, especially international stocks, I would tell you to hold off on buying. When I recommend it and don’t say anything, please assume I mean you to buy right now. Tata is near its high, so watch it over the next couple of days, and buy when it hits a small bump. However I assure you it will grow gradually over the course of 2007.
Tata Motors 3-Year Chart
This post was contributed by Ryan Donnell.
I’ve never heard of them. I’m going to go find a picture right now. Thanks for the info.
This is really interesting I’ve never heard of them before. Over the past year I’ve really gotten into investing and I think this would be a good one to add to the portfolio. One question what are ETF’s I’m not familiar with the term.
ETFs are a basket of stocks that resemble mutual funds, yet trade like stocks. They normally exhibit low expense ratios when compared to mutual funds, and are great wealth building tools.
A lot of ETFs track the major stock indexes, which provides instant diversification at a low cost.