Recently, the power battery giant CATL released its semi-annual financial report for 2019. The report shows that the company’s total operating income was 20.264 billion yuan, an increase of 116.50% compared with the same period of last year, the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 2.102 billion yuan, an increase of 130.79%.
The main business of CATL includes power battery systems, energy storage systems and lithium battery materials. The company’s main source of revenue is the power battery, which includes batteries, modules and battery packs. According to statistics from China Automotive Research Institute, the production and sales volume of new energy vehicles in China in the first half of 2019 were 609,000 and 601,000, respectively, an increase of 60.1% and 85.6%. The surge in sales of new energy vehicles has led to an increase in the installed capacity of batteries. In the first half of 2019, the total installed capacity of power batteries was 30GWh, an increase of nearly 93.6% year-on-year; the sales revenue of the company’s power battery system was 16.892 billion yuan, an increase of 135.01%.
During the reporting period, the sales revenue of the energy storage system was 240 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 369.55%. Lithium battery materials sales revenue was 2.309 billion yuan, an increase of 32.14%. The rapid growth in sales revenue of lithium battery materials was mainly due to the strong market demand and the production capacity of the company’s new plants. CATL invested in the construction of the cathode material industrial park through its holding subsidiaries, and established a wet nickel smelting plant in Indonesia in cooperation with companies such as GEM and Qingshan Group.
As the world’s leading power battery company, in the 2,300 models listed in the effective catalogue of new energy vehicles announced by China MIIT in the first half of 2019, the models with power batteries that supported by CATL accounted for about 39%. However, behind the rapid growth of business volume, the CATL is also facing some unstable risk factors.
The China’s new energy automobile industry has developed rapidly in recent years, but it will meet the impact of subsidies decline and other policies, which will lead to a slowdown in growth. In this regard, CATL said that it will take advantage of its core technology and independent research and development capabilities, improve product performance, reduce costs, and reduce the impact of sales of new energy vehicles on the sales of power battery products.
In addition, as one of the core components of new energy vehicles, power batteries are increasingly competitive in the market. In the 2019 semi-annual report released by BYD in the previous two days, the revenue of secondary rechargeable batteries and photovoltaics, one of the company’s main businesses, was approximately 4.453 billion yuan, accounting for 7.16% of the company’s total revenue. In June of this year, BYD was selected into the Toyota Power Battery Supply System, and its competitiveness in power batteries is also rising.
