Even with the fierce price war, BYD still made 300 small targets last year.
For the whole year of 2023, BYD's operating income surged 42% to 602.3 billion yuan, and net profit attributable to the parent company reached 30.04 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80.7%.
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Gross profit margin increased by 3.17 percentage points year-on-year to 20.21%, 2 percentage points higher than Tesla (18.2%).
However, judging from the trend throughout the year, due to the fierce price war in the fourth quarter, it still dragged down the financial data performance to a certain extent. The net profit in the fourth quarter declined year-on-year, and the gross profit margin also declined quarter-on-quarter.
It has been less than 3 years since the first 1 million new energy vehicles rolled off the assembly line in May 2021 to today.
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3 million vehicles and 30 billion
In 2023, both revenue and net profit hit new highs, with net profit increasing twice as much as revenue. BYD's profitability is getting stronger and stronger.
Specifically, BYD's automobile and battery business segment achieved revenue of 483.453 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 48.90%, accounting for 80.27% of the group's total revenue, an increase from 2022 (76.57%).
The revenue of mobile phone parts and assembly business was 118.577 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20%, accounting for 19.68% of the total revenue. Obviously, the revenue proportion of BYD's automobile-related segments further increased last year.
As revenue grows, BYD's profitability also continues to improve. The financial report shows that BYD's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies in 2023 will be 30.04 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80.72%, which is equivalent to earning 80 million yuan every day. In addition, last year, BYD's gross profit margin of automobiles, automobile-related products and other products reached 23.02%, a year-on-year increase of 2.63%.
BYD, which earns more than 82 million yuan a day, also plans to increase the amount of dividends and distribute a cash dividend of 30.96 yuan to all shareholders for every 10 shares. The estimated dividend amount is 9.012 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 173%. Total earnings per share were 10.32 yuan, an increase of approximately 81%; the weighted average return on equity was 24.4%, an increase of 8.26%.
Behind the gratifying numbers is the “surging” sales volume. Last year, BYD sold 3.0244 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 62.3%, and its market share increased by 4.8 percentage points year-on-year. Among them, BYD exported 242,800 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 334.2%.
Everyone says that selling cheap cars has low profits, but BYD used 3 million sales in exchange for a small target profit of 300.
Similarly, BYD has also achieved many historic achievements in 2023, such as surpassing Volkswagen to become the first independent car company sales champion in the Chinese market; retaining the global new energy sales champion, and surpassing Tesla in the fourth quarter of last year to become the global Pure electric sales champion.
The most important thing is that BYD, which launched the slogan of “same price for petrol and electricity” in 2023, won the first sales championship in the self-owned brand sedan market segment, breaking the joint venture brand's 39-year monopoly on A-class sedans in the Chinese market. status.
But it must be mentioned that since March last year, the domestic price war has begun. From traditional independent brands to new car-making forces to multinational brands, prices have been reduced across the board. The prices of new cars have continued to drop, causing the profitability of car companies to enter a downward trend. Range, taking Tesla as an example, last year's gross profit margin fell by 7.35% year-on-year.
Although BYD earns more than 82 million yuan a day, its revenue growth has also slowed down significantly, with the growth rate shrinking by 54.2 percentage points from the previous year's 96.2%.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD's net profit fell for the first time in the year, with net profit attributable to the parent company of 8.674 billion yuan, a decrease of 16.7% compared with the profit of 10.41 billion yuan in the third quarter. The gross profit margin for the quarter was 21.22%, a year-on-year increase of 2.22 percentage points, but it also decreased by 0.9 percentage points month-on-month.
During the same period, the cost and price of BYD bicycles were 113,000 yuan and 151,000 yuan respectively. BYD's gross profit from selling a car was 38,000 yuan, a decrease of about 1,500 yuan from the previous quarter. Affected by the price war throughout the year, BYD's average bicycle sales in 2023 The price was approximately 156,000 yuan, a decrease of 14,000 yuan from the previous year.
When the total sales volume reaches a certain volume, the improvement of product structure becomes the top priority. However, as intelligence is a must-win for mid-to-high-end models, Dizi realizes that intelligence is a lesson that he must make up for.
In 2023, BYD invested 39.57 billion yuan in R&D, more than double the 18.66 billion yuan in the previous year. This key data is even 11.18 billion yuan more than Tesla. In 2022, R&D expenses , Tesla is more than 2 billion yuan higher than BYD. Moreover, the number of R&D personnel increased by 47.6% to 102,844.
This huge investment of nearly 40 billion has already achieved results. At BYD's Dream Day earlier this year, Wang Chuanfu revealed that the current size of BYD's smart driving team has reached more than 4,000 people, and demonstrated BYD's intelligent architecture – Xuanji architecture and all-round The “Eye of the God” high-end intelligent driving assistance system independently developed by Zhen.
It also stated that BYD will continue to invest 100 billion yuan in the field of intelligence in the future, and plans to achieve the goal of having 200,000+ high-end smart driving options for models and standard high-end smart driving options for 30W+ models in the third quarter of this year.
Make money from foreigners
In the 2023 annual report, Wang Chuanfu mentioned that he will continue to be optimistic about the strong growth momentum of China's new energy vehicle market, and predicts that the domestic new energy vehicle market will enter the tens of millions of units this year, and the penetration rate is expected to break through again.
Data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that in 2023, my country's new energy vehicle production and sales will be 9.587 million and 9.495 million vehicles respectively, a year-on-year increase of 35.8% and 37.9% respectively, and the market penetration rate is 31.6%.
Industry insiders believe that my country's new energy vehicle industry will continue to maintain a good development trend this year. The current production and sales scale of new energy vehicles given by the industry association is about 11.5 million units, with an increase of about 20%.
Although the domestic situation is excellent, BYD has already set its sights on overseas markets in times of crisis.
In 2022, BYD's overseas export sales for the whole year were 55,900 units. By last year, BYD's overseas new energy passenger vehicle sales exceeded 242,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 337%. In just one year, it increased 4.3 times, becoming 2023 The Chinese brand with the most exports of new energy vehicles.
With the great sales of its first global model ATTO 3 (i.e. Yuan PLUS), BYD has become the new energy sales leader in many countries.
When the semi-annual report was released last year, BYD was still operating in 54 countries and regions. So far, BYD has entered 78 countries and regions around the world. In addition, BYD has also invested and built factories in overseas regions such as Brazil, Hungary, and Thailand.
The number of exporting countries is increasing, and the selling price is much more expensive than domestic prices. For example, seals sell for 180,000 yuan in China, are priced at 370,000 yuan equivalent in the Netherlands, and are sold for more than 400,000 yuan in the UK.
In addition, when China is launching a price war with its Honor Edition, overseas BYD is increasing its price instead of lowering it. The popular ATTO 3 facelift is priced at 4.5 million yen in Japan, which is about 210,000 yuan, but domestically it is The Yuan PLUS Honor Edition starts at only 119,800 yuan.
Correspondingly, more money is made overseas. In 2023, BYD's overseas revenue will reach 160.222 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 75.2%, and overseas revenue will account for 26.6% of total revenue.
In order to continue to make money from foreigners, BYD has ordered multiple car roll-off ships to transport new cars, and the first BYD car roll-off ship has been delivered for operation.
The advantages of scale emerge
2024 will undoubtedly be a great year for BYD to continue its surge. At the beginning of the year, it launched the 79,800 Qin PLUS Honor Edition, shouting the slogan “Electricity is lower than oil”, and officially launched an attack on joint venture car companies. Later, Honor versions of Han and Tang models were launched, all with varying degrees of price reduction.
In this way, BYD kicked off the 2024 car rim price war, and many independent car companies followed suit.
It’s just that no one may be more confident than BYD in this round of price war. After all, the scale advantage of annual sales of 3 million vehicles and strong vertical integration capabilities cannot be matched by any car company.
Although BYD's bicycle revenue in 2023 will decrease by 13,900 yuan, or about 8%, from 173,800 yuan in 2022, the advantages of scale have also caused costs to decline.
Last year, the cost of BYD cars and related products was 372.157 billion yuan. Based on annual sales of 3.02 million units, BYD's single vehicle cost in 2023 was approximately 123,200 yuan, a decrease of approximately 10.99% from 138,300 yuan in 2022.
This means that although the price of BYD bicycles has dropped, profits have remained stable thanks to the advantages of scale.
In addition to building entry-level models priced at RMB 100,000, BYD can also build pure electric supercars and hard-core off-road vehicles priced at RMB 100,000. Official data shows that BYD looks up to its new energy off-road model U8, and recently achieved the delivery of 5,000 units in only 132 days.
Calculated based on a bicycle price of 1 million, the revenue of 5,000 units is 5 billion. There is no doubt that with the support of higher-priced bicycle models such as the Upward and Fangbao, BYD's revenue will reach a higher level this year.
And just the day before the financial report was released, BYD once again set a new record and announced that the 7 millionth new energy vehicle had officially rolled off the production line at the Jinan factory.
It has been less than 3 years since the first 1 million new energy vehicles rolled off the assembly line in May 2021 to today.
As the price war gets fiercer, how far is it from BYD's 10 million vehicles?