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Tata Motors, India's largest automaker by revenue, reported a better-than-expected profit on Tuesday, helped by strong demand for cars in its luxury Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) segment.

The company posted a consolidated net profit of 32.03 billion rupees ($391.3 million) for the April to June quarter, compared with a loss of 50.07 billion rupees a year before.

Analysts on average expected a profit of 26.29 billion rupees, per Refinitiv IBES data.

Strong retail sales at the JLR unit drove up the UK-based automaker's free cash flow to 451 million pounds ($578.99 million) - a record for any first quarter, according to the company.

That, in turn helped improve JLR's profitability, with earnings margin before interest and taxes turning positive to 8.6%.

The turnaround in JLR's profitability and cash flow comes after years of reporting losses due to supply chain issues and a strict COVID-19 lockdown in its key market of China, which hurt production.

JLR, which usually forms two-thirds of the company's revenue, accounted for over 70% of first-quarter revenue that came in at 1.02 trillion rupees.

However, second-quarter production and cashflow at JLR is expected to be lower than the first due to an annual summer plant shutdown.

Meanwhile, Tata Motors said in a statement it would aim for a strong performance through the year, citing a healthy order book in JLR and "steady improvement in demand."

"We remain confident of sustaining this momentum in the rest of the year," PB Balaji, group chief financial officer of Tata Motors, said.

The company also said it would cancel its 'A' ordinary shares, which would reduce the number of its overall outstanding shares by 4.2%, to simplify its capital structure.

($1 = 81.8530 Indian rupees)

($1 = 0.7789 pounds)