At the end of August, major listed companies announced their semi-annual reports. In the context of the continuous price war and the sluggish growth of joint venture car companies, the revenue and profits of domestic mainstream car companies declined to varying degrees in the first half of this year. However, BYD is an exception, not only sales continue to soar, but also the performance is very impressive.
According to the semi-annual report, BYD's operating income in the first half of the year was 301.127 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.76%; net profit was 13.631 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.44%; The net profit after deduction was 12.315 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.03%. While all key financial indicators have increased significantly, its revenue in the first half of the year has surpassed SAIC, which has long ranked first in the automobile circle, and ranked first among domestic mainstream car companies.
The most profitable second quarter ever
Looking at BYD's financial report in the first half of the year, from the perspective of a single quarter, the second quarter of this year can be called the second quarter with the highest net profit in BYD's history. According to the financial report data, BYD's net profit attributable to the parent company in the second quarter of 2024 reached 9.062 billion yuan, an increase of 32.80% over the same period last year, and nearly doubled compared with the net profit in the first quarter.
From the perspective of business segments, in the first half of this year, BYD's main business of automobiles, automobile-related products and other products business revenue was about 228.317 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.33%, accounting for 76% of the total operating income.
At the same time, with the growth of the new energy vehicle business, BYD's gross profit margin in the first half of this year increased by 1.68 percentage points over the same period last year, reaching 20.01%, and the gross profit margin of automobiles, automobile-related products and other products reached 23.94%, an increase of 3.27 percentage points year-on-year.
From this point of view, despite the persistence of the price war, BYD can still rank in the forefront of the industry in terms of product gross profit margin with its strong supply chain integration capabilities and huge sales scale, which is also one of the key factors for its profit to grow significantly.
R&D investment ranks first in A-shares
In addition to the substantial growth in revenue and net profit, BYD's R&D support in the 2024 semi-annual report is also quite interesting.
According to the financial report, BYD's R&D expenditure in the first half of this year increased by 41.64% year-on-year to 20.177 billion yuan, exceeding the net profit of 6.6 billion yuan in the same period.
In the first half of this year, BYD's high R&D expenditure not only greatly exceeded the net profit in the same period, but also no one could match it in the entire automobile circle. From the 2024 semi-annual reports of mainstream listed car companies, it can be seen that BYD's R&D investment is higher than Tesla's (about RMB 16.1 billion), and it is almost equal to the sum of Great Wall, Ideal, Geely, and Changan.
With the deepening of the automotive industry in the field of smart electricity, R&D investment has become an important part of the expenditure of car companies. In recent years, independent brands have continued to increase their R&D investment, and SAIC, Great Wall, Ideal and other R&D investments have also been praised by the industry. However, in terms of R&D investment, the author who can best demonstrate the big money is BYD. In the first half of this year, BYD's R&D investment was more than three times that of Great Wall and more than four times that of Geely.
In addition, jumping out of the automobile circle, even in the entire A-share market, BYD's R&D investment is second to none. According to Wind data, among the more than 5,300 listed companies in the A-share market, BYD ranks first in R&D expenses and has become the "king of R&D" in A-shares.
It's no secret that R&D is the foundation for innovation in technology-intensive industries such as automotive. The reason why BYD has built a strong competitiveness from electrification to intelligence is naturally inseparable from the support of research and development. In the 14 years since 2011, BYD has invested more than net profit in 13 years, sometimes several times the net profit in the same period.
Up to now, BYD's cumulative R&D investment has approached 150 billion yuan. In the first half of this year, BYD also released the e-platform 3.0 Evo and the fifth-generation DM technology. The accelerated iteration of these innovative technologies is not only the result of BYD's continuous increase in R&D investment, but also the performance of its giving back to the market and users. With the large-scale application of various new technologies and its new products, BYD will provide users with more product value that is much higher than the price.
Sales have jumped to third in the world
With the rapid popularization of new energy vehicles, BYD has not only become the world's largest new energy vehicle company in the domestic passenger car market. According to the data of the Easy Car List, BYD's sales in July have jumped to the third place in the world, second only to Toyota and Volkswagen; Previously, according to MarkLines data, in the second quarter of this year, BYD's sales have surpassed Honda to become the world's seventh largest car company.
The latest sales as of August show that BYD's cumulative sales in the first eight months reached 2.328 million units, an increase of 29.9% year-on-year.
At the same time, BYD is also accelerating the layout of overseas markets. In July, BYD's Thailand plant was completed, and the 8 million new energy vehicles rolled off the assembly line were held here. According to public data, BYD sold 31,451 overseas vehicles in August, a year-on-year increase of 25.7%. From January to August, BYD exported more than 260,000 new energy passenger vehicles.
According to BYD's official disclosure, as of August 2024, BYD's new energy vehicle footprint has spread to 94 countries and regions around the world, and its passenger car footprint has covered 84 countries and regions around the world and more than 400 cities.
As a leading car company in the field of new energy vehicles, BYD has gone from China to the world, and has now become the third largest car brand in the global auto market after Toyota and Volkswagen, leading Chinese brands to truly achieve corner overtaking.
Looking at the global market, new energy vehicles are aggressively entering the hinterland of traditional fuel vehicles, and the trend of Chinese car companies represented by BYD rolling into overseas markets has been irreversible. In this case, whoever occupies a leading advantage in the field of technology and R&D will have more initiative, and BYD, which has always focused on technology and R&D investment, has become an industry benchmark in terms of scale and performance.