Text丨Peiqi
A few years ago, Tesla entered the domestic market and was regarded as a catfish, stimulating the vitality of the domestic new energy vehicle industry. Nowadays, the catfish in the new energy vehicle industry is more like BYD, whether it is a joint venture car or an independent brand, it depends on BYD's eyes.
In 2023, most new energy vehicle companies are still worried about losing money by selling cars, and BYD has not only begun to make profits, but also made a lot of money.
On the evening of March 26, BYD released its financial report, which showed that in 2023, BYD will achieve revenue of about 602.315 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.04%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of about 30.041 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80.72%.
You must know that 2023 is the first year of the withdrawal of subsidies for new energy vehicles, and the price war is full of gunsmoke, some car companies are not doing well in this year, and even fade out of the market, while BYD has no trouble of "living".
BYD's battlefield is not only in the country, but in the world, after the domestic market to the top, what will BYD's future do?
Having more children is good for fighting
BYD Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "BYD") is currently mainly engaged in the automobile business mainly of new energy vehicles, mobile phone parts and assembly business, secondary rechargeable battery and photovoltaic business, and urban rail transit business.
According to the financial report, BYD's new energy vehicle business is the main pillar, with revenue of about 483.453 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 48.9%. followed by mobile phone parts and assembly business, with annual revenue of about 118.577 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.0%. Overall, the two major businesses of new energy vehicles, mobile phone parts and assembly accounted for 80.27% and 19.68% of BYD's total revenue, respectively.
In the past year, the high growth of BYD's new energy vehicle business was due to the increase in domestic and foreign sales. According to the financial report, BYD's sales in 2023 will be about 3.024 million units, a year-on-year increase of about 67.8%. Among them, overseas sales were about 252,000 units, a year-on-year increase of about 457.7%.
Domestically, last year, BYD gradually formed a multi-brand gradient layout composed of BYD, Denza, Yangwang and Equation Leopard, covering the needs of full-scene cars from home to luxury, from mass to personalized. Having more children is good for fighting, judging from the performance of the whole year, the offensive brought by BYD's multi-brand strategy has begun to bear fruit.
Last year, the BYD brand launched the "oil and electricity parity" strategy, and on this basis, a number of Dynasty Champion Edition models were launched one after another, which made BYD improve its product strength in the B-class sedan, B-class SUV, A-class sedan, A-class SUV and other markets. The Ocean series, last year, successively launched models such as Seagull, Destroyer 05 Champion Edition, and Seal Champion Edition, further enriching the product matrix. It is worth mentioning that as another masterpiece of BYD to less than 100,000 yuan, Seagull's sales have been soaring since its launch in April last year, and it once became the A00 sales champion.
In terms of Denza, on the basis of the existing model D9 last year, DENZA launched the luxury hunting SUV DENZA N7 in July, but DENZA N7 did not increase quickly, but mainly relied on D9 last year, DENZA only completed 127,000 sales.
On other brands, Formula Leopard was officially released in August last year, its first super-hybrid hard SUV Leopard 5 was launched in November, public data shows that Formula Leopard sold 5086 units in December, although the contribution to BYD's annual sales is not large, but Formula Leopard as a personalized brand, this sales performance has been a good start. The high-end brand looked up to the first model in September last year to launch the first model to look up to the U8, the cumulative delivery of 2,001 vehicles in three months of listing, and the monthly delivery reached 1,593 units in December.
In addition to the domestic market, BYD has also actively accelerated its overseas layout in the past year. In its financial report, it said that in 2023, BYD's new energy passenger vehicles have entered more than 50 countries and regions such as Japan, Germany, Australia, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates, and have exported models such as Han EV, Tang EV, Yuan PLUS, Dolphin, and Seal overseas.
Not only that, in order to make the process of going to sea smoother, BYD also bought ships in a big way. It is reported that BYD's first car ro-ro carrier has been delivered and made its maiden voyage, and in the next two years, BYD will have another 7 ro-ro ships put into operation. In addition, BYD also has plans to build factories overseas, mentioning in its financial report that its first overseas passenger car production base was laid in Thailand in March last year, and announced in December that it would also build a vehicle manufacturing base in Hungary.
According to BYD's 2023 financial report investor communication meeting, BYD is confident in the expansion of overseas markets, and its overseas sales in 2023 will be about 250,000 units, but it is expected that the overseas sales target will reach 500,000 units this year and 1 million units next year, which means that overseas sales will increase exponentially in the next three years.
The killer feature of "Catfish".
In today's fierce competition in the new energy vehicle industry, BYD's scale has reached the top in China. In 2023, according to the statistics of the passenger association, BYD's retail sales this year will be about 2.706 million vehicles, ranking first among all car companies, accounting for 35% of the market share, while Tesla's retail sales in China will be about 604,000 vehicles, which means that BYD will exceed Tesla by more than 2 million units, and it is currently the only domestic company in the new energy vehicle industry with sales exceeding one million.
There is a saying that the essential difference in the competition in the new energy vehicle industry is to see which new energy vehicle company is the first to break through 1 million, which shows that who has the advantage of scale, who has the sword to launch an offensive and defeat the opponent.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman and president of BYD Group, has also expressed a similar view, he believes that China's automobile industry has experienced 70 years of development, has entered a structural adjustment, industrial concentration is a necessary stage, on the other hand, China's new energy vehicles have entered the stage of cyclical adjustment, enterprises need to form a scale effect and brand advantage as soon as possible.
As he said, BYD also practices this. Last year, relying on the advantages of scale and supply chain, BYD launched the slogan of "the same price of oil and electricity", and a series of champion models were launched, which brought certain pressure to fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles of the same level. This year, BYD has launched an offensive of "electricity is lower than oil", and the price of the product has dropped even lower. Taking BYD Qin as an example, in just two years, the car price has been reduced by about 70,000 yuan after two renovations, which is difficult for new energy car companies that are still small in scale and have a high cost per vehicle.
Whether it is "the same price of oil and electricity" or "electricity is lower than oil", BYD is like a catfish, using the advantages of scale and supply chain to stir up the market, prompting car companies of the same level to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and at the same time use low-cost new products to stimulate consumers' enthusiasm for buying new energy vehicles.
With the advantage of scale, BYD's gross profit margin is also improving. Wang Chuanfu said in the financial report communication meeting that with the deepening of the price war, the gross profit of bicycles will decline, and BYD will strive to maintain the overall profitability by increasing the scale.
In 2023, the gross profit margin of BYD Auto, automobile-related products and other products will reach 23.02%, with a year-on-year growth rate of 2.63%, which is two percentage points higher than the 21.5% gross profit margin of Li Auto, which focuses on luxury cars. In addition, BYD's multi-brand strategy, going overseas, and high-end brands will also contribute to the improvement of its gross profit.
In fact, in order to consolidate the scale advantage, BYD has put a lot of effort into technology and R&D, and it is significant that BYD's R&D investment will increase significantly in 2023. According to the financial report data, BYD's total R&D investment last year was about 39.918 billion yuan, an increase of 97.39% compared with 2022. In addition, the number of R&D personnel increased from nearly 70,000 in 2022 to 103,000 in 2023.
In terms of technology, according to the financial report, BYD has developed a blade battery, DM hybrid platform, Xuanji architecture, "Eye of the Gods" high-end intelligent driving assistance system, Yi Sifang platform, Yunyuan intelligent vehicle control system, etc. It is reported that in May this year, it will also launch the fifth-generation DM hybrid technology, which will reduce the fuel consumption of electric vehicles to 2.9 liters / 100 kilometers, and the full fuel and full battery range will reach 2000 kilometers.
At present, Huawei and Wei Xiaoli have started a high-end intelligent driving battle, and BYD is relatively calm. Wang Chuanfu once said that automatic driving is blind and flickering, and only the intelligence of the whole vehicle is really intelligent.
In terms of intelligence, Wang Chuanfu has made the latest statement in the financial report communication meeting, he said that BYD will launch a batch of models equipped with urban NOA within 200,000 in the second half of this year, which includes supplier solutions and BYD's own solutions. Wang Chuanfu said that BYD's advantage lies in scale, and it can get the best resources and prices from global suppliers, including TI, Huawei, Nvidia, and Horizon. In addition, BYD has established an intelligent driving team of more than 4,000 people, and has made a lot of investment in chips, algorithms, perception, etc., and will continue to show its advantages over time.
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