This article is transferred from: CBN
On the evening of April 21, the Ningde era (300750. SZ) announced its 2021 financial report. According to the financial report, last year, CATL achieved a total operating income of 130.356 billion yuan, an increase of 159.06% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the mother was 15.931 billion yuan, an increase of 185.34% year-on-year.
This is the first time that the operating income of the Ningde era has exceeded 100 billion yuan. At the same time, CATL previously predicted that the company's profit in 2021 would be about 14 billion to 16.5 billion yuan, and the actual profit situation was close to the upper limit of the forecast. In addition, a number of institutions had an average of 11.23 billion yuan in profit forecasts for CATL last year, which also means that the performance of CATL exceeded market expectations.
Affected by this news, as of the noon break on April 22, the stock price of CATL was 417.5 yuan, up 2.05%, and the total market value was 973.1 billion yuan.
Gross margin continued to decline
Last year, CATL's performance exceeding expectations was mainly based on its continuous growth in power battery sales.
According to SNE Research statistics, the global power battery industry maintained a high-speed growth trend in 2021, with an annual installed capacity of 296.8GWh, an increase of 102.3% year-on-year. Among them, from 2017 to 2021, the installed capacity of power batteries in the Ningde era ranked first in the world for five consecutive years, and the global market share of the Ningde era in 2021 was 32.6%.
According to the financial report, last year, according to the product classification, the operating income of the power battery system of the Ningde era was 91.5 billion yuan, an increase of 132.06% year-on-year, accounting for more than 70% of the total operating income; the operating income of lithium battery materials and energy storage systems achieved a large growth rate, with a year-on-year increase of more than 3.5 times and 6 times to 15.46 billion yuan and 13.62 billion yuan respectively.
Last year, CATL's overseas business also achieved higher growth, up 2.5 times year-on-year to 27.87 billion yuan.
Although the performance achieved more than expected growth, due to factors such as rising raw material prices, the gross profit margin of cataline times has declined year after year.
In 2021, the operating cost of CATL was 96.094 billion yuan, an increase of 164.36% year-on-year, which exceeded the growth rate of operating income, which also led to a year-on-year decrease in gross profit margin of CATL by 1.48 percentage points to 26.28%. Among them, the gross profit margin of the power battery system was 22%, down 4.56 percentage points year-on-year, and the gross profit margin of the energy storage system was 28.52%, down 7.51 percentage points year-on-year.
Last year, the operating cost of direct materials for lithium batteries in the Ningde era was 77.875 billion yuan, accounting for more than 84% of the total operating costs, an increase of 2.87 percentage points year-on-year.
The reporter noted that since 2017, this is the fifth consecutive year that the gross profit margin of the Ningde era has declined. The gross profit margin of CATL reached the highest value in 2016, at 43.7%.
CATL said in the financial report that the main raw materials required for the company's production and operation include cathode materials, anode materials, diaphragms and electrolytes, etc. The above raw materials are greatly affected by the prices of bulk commodities such as lithium, nickel and cobalt or chemical raw materials. Affected by the price changes of related materials and the supply and demand of the market, the purchase price and scale of the company's raw materials have also fluctuated to a certain extent. At the same time, the price of raw materials represented by lithium carbonate has risen sharply, putting greater pressure on costs.
In order to cope with the rise of raw materials, CATL has established an information system that tracks the supply and demand and price changes of important raw material markets in a timely manner, and ensures the supply of raw materials and controls procurement costs through advance procurement and other measures. In addition, CATL has taken measures such as signing long-term orders, investment cooperation, recycling, and self-mining to ensure the security of the supply chain, and dynamically adjust the prices of some battery products accordingly, which to a certain extent transmits the pressure of raw material price increases.
Previously, the relevant person in charge of a new energy vehicle company told the first financial reporter that since the second half of last year, the price of the power battery in the Ningde era has increased twice, and according to the battery cost of a new energy vehicle, the two price increases have increased by a total of 20,000 yuan.
After the market hours on April 19, there were market rumors that the performance of CATL in the first quarter of 2022 was less than expected, and may not reach 5 billion yuan. Some researchers pointed out that the accuracy of the rumors is difficult to assess, if true, the reason why the performance of the CATL era is lower than expected or the price increase of lithium carbonate is not timely.
On April 20, the stock price of CATL plunged 7.55% to 407 yuan, the total market value fell directly below one trillion yuan, and on April 21, the lowest share price of CATL fell below 400 yuan, and finally closed slightly up to 409.11 yuan.
Tesla purchased more than $13 billion last year
According to the financial report, in 2021, the total sales of the top 5 customers of the Catalonia era accounted for 31.32% of the total sales, an increase of 1.62 percentage points compared with 2020, of which the sales of the first major customer were 13.04 billion yuan, accounting for 10% of the total annual sales.
Subsequently, CATL pointed out in the annual report that last year, the purchase contract performance amount between the company and Tesla was 13.04 billion yuan, which means that the largest customer of CATL is Tesla.
CATL and Tesla signed two cooperation agreements, one in February 2020, with a locked supply period from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022, and another in June 2021, locked in From January 2022 to December 2025. These two times are the time when the batteries of the Ningde era began to be supplied to the domestic Model 3 and Model Y in batches.
In 2020, CATL's sales to Tesla were 1.626 billion yuan. By the end of 2021, CATL has supplied Tesla with a cumulative supply of 14.665 billion yuan.
At present, in terms of factory construction, CATL is also closely following its biggest customer Tesla. On April 6, CATL announced that its first overseas factory in Thuringia, Germany, has officially obtained a license for the production of batteries, which is only more than 300 kilometers away from Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory. CATL once told the first financial reporter that the German factory is located in the heart of Germany and will provide products and services for major automakers in Germany.
In addition, just 3 kilometers away from Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory, CATL planned its Shanghai Lingang production base. In late March, the market reported that CATL was considering spending $5 billion (about 31.8 billion yuan) to build a battery factory in North America to supply customers, including Tesla.
In terms of power battery customers, CATL said in the financial report that in addition to Tesla, the company also has in-depth cooperation with global customers such as Hyundai, Ford, Daimler, Great Wall Motors, Ideal, and Weilai.