Looking at recent Chinese auto stocks, one of the hottest companies is none other than BYD.
Since October, BYD's share price has remained high, and on October 28, its A-shares and H-shares rose sharply at the same time.
So far this year, BYD has been much sought after by the capital, with its share price rising by more than 232% during the year. On October 30, BYD closed at 159.81 yuan in the A-share market, with a market capitalization of 436 billion yuan, another record high since its IPO, holding first place in A-share automakers.
BYD's total market capitalization is more than the combined market capitalization of SAIC and GAC, as well as that of Nio and Li Auto combined, the two new carmakers that have been on fire recently.
BYD, whose market capitalization and share price have been soaring, has gradually become the leader of China's new energy vehicles (NEV). So what is the core support behind BYD's super-high valuation and glowing financial report?
Han, Tang drives sales rebound
For the reasons for the rise in results beyond expectations, BYD explained that, first, sales of new energy vehicles in the second half of the year to achieve a rapid rebound; second, the further expansion of the scale of mobile phone components and assembly business, profitability further improved.
In the first half of 2020, BYD's sales of new energy vehicles fell by about 58% due to the impact of Covid-19 and the decline in subsidies.
When the impact of Covid-19 gradually diminished, the company's new energy vehicle sales growth rate quickly turned positive in the third quarter, recording a positive growth of 7% year-on-year.
According to BYD's sales snapshot, since July this year, the decline in new energy vehicle sales began to narrow rapidly (July - 8.9%, August - 8.6%).
In September, it recorded 19,881 sales of new energy vehicles, a big increase of 45.3 percent year-on-year, and 30.1 percent over the previous month.
In the first three quarters of this year, BYD sold a total of 110,941 new energy vehicles. Among them, 12,212 pure electric passenger cars were sold, up 65.95 percent year-on-year, and 29.72 percent from the previous month.
BYD's new flagship sedan "Han" and the new 2021 Tang have played a significant role in the company's impressive sales performance.
The "Han" that went on sale in July this year is the representative model in BYD's eyes and is also the first BYD model to be equipped with a blade battery, which has significantly improved its power performance, mileage, exterior and interior design, and technology configuration.
Since its launch, its orders have both been rising. According to BYD's earnings report, Han delivered 5,612 units in September, a huge 40.3% increase from August.
Another major sales growth driver is the newly revamped flagship model "Tang", which has an optimized electric motor and upgraded electric front-wheel drive assembly and electric rear-wheel drive assembly.
The 2021 high-performance all-wheel-drive version of the Tang DM takes 4.5 to 4.3 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h, up from 4.5 seconds, and the all-wheel-drive performance version is up from 5.3 to 5.1 seconds.
In terms of performance, interior, exterior value, and smart features, the 2021 Tang DM has been significantly optimized over the previous model.
Because of this, the 2021 Tang DM has reached 3,000 units delivered in less than a month and a half, making it the best-selling model in its price range with rapid growth.
According to data released by BYD, the Tang family achieved sales of 5,085 units in September, up 54.7 percent from the previous month.
Technology creates a deep moat
In addition to skyrocketing sales of new energy vehicles, the core of BYD's profitability also lies in its ability to promptly occupy the high ground of new energy vehicle technology, becoming the only comprehensive car company in China to have mastered the core technology of electric vehicles.
BYD's bladed battery, launched this year, is seen as an important achievement in accelerating BYD's battery outbound supply.
"Almost every car brand you can think of is exploring cooperation options with us based on the 'bladed battery' technology," BYD vice president He Long has revealed.
The ultra-long, ultra-thin aluminum blade battery with an aspect ratio of 10:1 and a thickness of 0.3mm breaks through the constraints of the traditional deep drawing/extrusion process and tackles ultra-thin aluminum case welding technology, completely breaking the module concept of traditional battery systems.
It makes use of the unique aspect ratio feature, realizing the compact arrangement of ultra-long size cells and achieving more than 60% volume integration efficiency.
Compared with the 40% volume efficiency of the traditional battery system, the volume integration efficiency of the blue battery increased by 50%, making the pure electric vehicles equipped with lithium iron phosphate system range of more than 600km.
At the same time, based on the inherent safety advantages of lithium iron phosphate, blade battery's tight grouping design, multi-functional integrated envelope design, and system sandwich structure design can guarantee the safety of the power battery system from multiple levels and dimensions.
blade battery release to a certain extent can be said to achieve BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said "redefine the safety standards of new energy vehicles."
It is reported that the BYD blade battery Fodi Chongqing factory will be completed at the end of this year, eight production lines to achieve the annual production capacity of more than 20GWh target. This year and next year plans to add 26Gwh blade battery capacity to meet its own product switch.
Research and development of pure electric vehicle platform
MCU is the key to realize vehicle intelligence. However, due to the long R & D cycle, high design threshold, and large capital investment, many manufacturers are usually discouraged at the door of the car-regulation level chip.
BYD has made many years of effort in the field of chips and electronic components to achieve the leap from consumer semiconductor product technology to vehicle-grade semiconductor technology, and won the IGBT, MCU, and other electric vehicle industry one after another "peak", breaking the international giant's technology monopoly.
So far, BYD semiconductor vehicle-grade MCU has been installed more than 5 million, industrial-grade MCU total shipments of more than 2 billion, to achieve a major breakthrough in the market of domestic MCU.
According to BYD, in this year's release of high-end flagship model BYD "Han" headlights, taillights, interior lights, air conditioning control panel, as well as mirror control and many other applications, BYD semiconductor MCU chips are playing a very critical role.
In the recent past, BYD has said that BYD Semiconductor will seek the right time to spin off the company in order to continuously improve the overall value of the company.
Today's BYD is also constantly broadening the boundaries of research and development in the field of new energy vehicles.
BYD senior vice president Lian Yubo recently revealed that BYD is pre-researching the next generation of high-performance, high-safety pure electric platform.
The new platform will apply a large number of innovative technologies, will give full play to the advantages of electric vehicles in space, driveability, intelligence, safety, cost, range, and other aspects of fuel vehicles to the same level.
The first model based on the new all-electric platform will be unveiled for the first time at the Shanghai Auto Show next year.
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