FY27 base-case growth 15-20%

JLR VME (Vehicle Marketing Expenditure %) — VME fell sharply from ~4.5% post-COVID to a historic low of 2.6% in FY24 as pent-up demand absorbed available production; it has more than doubled in H1 FY26 to 6.9%, driven by a new luxury tax in China, weak China demand, fragile retailer base, and tariff-driven volume constraints in North America. Management has explicitly guided that elevated VME will persist for some time — this is the primary structural headwind to JLR's margin recovery and the variable most likely to determine whether FY27 EBIT returns to 8%+ or plateaus below.