BENGALURU - Indian automaker Tata Motors reported a three-fold jump in fourth-quarter profit on Friday, helped by a tax credit surge and strong sales at its luxury unit Jaguar Land Rover.

The company said it expects JLR's earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margins in fiscal 2025 would be similar to the 8.5% it clocked in the previous fiscal year.

Britain-based JLR, known for the Ranger Rover and top-selling Defender SUVs, is key to Tata Motors' results, forming about two-thirds of its consolidated revenue.

JLR's earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margin came in at 9.2% for the quarter.

Tata Motors is India's second-biggest automaker by market value after Maruti Suzuki and dominates the country's small but growing EV segment.

Its consolidated net profit in the three months to March 31 more than trebled from a year earlier to 174.07 billion rupees ($2.09 billion).

The results come on the back of improving profitability and a plan to split and separately list its domestically-focused, market-leading commercial vehicle (CV) business and the passenger vehicle (PV) business that will also house cash cow JLR.

Tata Motors ranks third by sales volume in India's hotly-contested PV market and competes closely with larger rival Hyundai in the sport utility vehicle (SUV) space.

($1 = 83.4856 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)