Major Chinese electric carmaker BYD Co (比亞迪) yesterday reported lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter of the year, as an aggressive domestic price war and Western regulatory pressure weighed on the company’s growth.
BYD posted an operating revenue of 124.94 billion yuan (US$17.25 billion) for the first three months of the year, up 3.97 percent from a year ago, according to a stock exchange filing.
Bloomberg analysts had predicted a quarterly revenue of 132.53 billion yuan.
Photo: Pedro Pardo, AFP
The Shenzhen-based company is moving quickly overseas — including into Southeast Asian countries but also further afield in Latin America and Europe — as a price war continues to be waged in China, the world’s largest automotive market.
BYD overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc in the fourth quarter of last year to become the world’s top seller of electric vehicles (EVs). Tesla reclaimed that title in the first quarter of this year, but BYD remains firmly on top in its home market.
The Chinese automaker recorded a record annual profit of 30 billion yuan last year.
Its profit in the first quarter was 4.57 billion yuan, up 10.62 percent from a year ago, BYD said.
BYD said its research and development and marketing expenses had shot up in the first quarter due to an "increase in advertising and exhibition expenses and depreciation and amortization", as well as higher "material consumption."
China has led the global transition to electric vehicles, with almost 1 in 3 cars on Chinese roads set to be electric by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual Global EV Outlook published last week.
There are a staggering 129 EV brands in China, but just 20 have managed to achieve a domestic market share of one percent or more, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Rival brands have sought in recent months to undercut each other’s prices, offering customers built-in gadgets and trendy customisation options at lower and lower pricetags.
Meanwhile, European regulators are raising the alarm on what they describe as Chinese industrial "overcapacity" created by excessive state subsidies, which could flood global markets with cheap vehicles.
The EU launched an investigation last year into the subsidies, which it said had given Chinese
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
ABOVE LEGAL REQUIREMENT: The Ministry of Economic Affairs is prepared if LNG supply is disrupted, with more than the legal requirement of 11 days of inventory Taiwan has largely secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies through May and arranged about half of June’s supply, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Since the Middle East conflict began on Feb. 28, Taiwan’s LNG inventories have remained more than 12 days, exceeding the legal requirement of 11 days, indicating no major supply concerns for domestic gas and electricity, Kung said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. The ministry aims to increase the figure to 14 days by the end of next year, he said. While one or two LNG or crude oil shipments for May
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS