- JPMorgan believes that BYD will probably become the "Toyota" of the global EV market.
- The bank's analysts expect BYD's sales in 2025 to grow about 30 percent from 2024 to 5.5 million units.
Analysts at JPMorgan have raised their sales estimates for BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY), saying the Chinese company will probably become the "Toyota" of the global electric vehicle (EV) market.
Analyst Nick Lai's team expected BYD to deliver 6.5 million units globally in 2026 in a research note yesterday, up from the 6 million units they expected on July 9 last year.
The team expects BYD to deliver about 1.5 million units in overseas markets in 2026, the same as expected last July.
The latest forecast means that JPMorgan sees BYD's share in the global light-duty vehicle market, including fuel vehicles, expanding to 7 percent in 2026 from 3 percent in 2023, while its share in the new energy vehicle (NEV) market will remain at around 22 percent, according to the note.
The team expects 2026 to be an important strategic turning point and milestone in BYD's global expansion ambitions, as the company completes and gradually ramps up production at its four overseas production bases in Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and Hungary.
Despite the EU raising tariffs, the team believes BYD will aim to compete overseas through configuration or product, rather than prices.
BYD sold 4.27 million NEVs in 2024, up about 41 percent from 3.02 million in 2023, according to data compiled by CnEVPost.
It sold 4.25 million passenger NEVs and 21,775 commercial NEVs in 2024.
In overseas markets, BYD sold 417,204 NEVs in 2024, up 71.86 percent from 242,765 in 2023.
Lai's team expects BYD's sales in 2025 to grow about 30 percent from 2024 to 5.5 million units.
Higher volumes will translate into lower unit costs, which will help bolster unit margins, the team said.
In the past few years, major EV makers have typically cut prices significantly at the beginning of the year in response to seasonal weakness in the initial months. For example, early last year, BYD cut the prices of its major models through the Glory Edition model updates.
This year is a slightly different story, as BYD didn't cut prices at the start of the year, even though Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) fired the first shot at restarting a price war by offering an insurance subsidy for the Model 3 on February 5, the first working day of the Year of the Snake on the Chinese lunar calendar.
Unlike early last year, BYD held a vehicle intelligence strategy launch event on February 10 and brought Smart Driving edition updates to 21 models, but left prices unchanged.
Lai's team sees BYD's move as another form of price marketing or price war.
"In fact, at the beginning of every year since 2020 or 2021, we have seen two major price leaders -- Tesla and BYD -- launch similar price marketing in January, " the team wrote.
This year, that price war only erupted in February, largely due to the fact that, thanks to the trade-in incentives, most OEMs had very low inventories in January and had already secured sizable orders in December 2024, the team said.
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