Battery Giant CATL’s Q3 Profit Increases by 188.42% YoY

Chinese battery giant CATL disclosed its third-quarter financial report on October 21, showing its revenue reaching 97.4 billion yuan ($13.4 million) in the third quarter and 210.34 billion yuan ($29 million) in the first three quarters. Its net profit in the third quarter and the first three quarters were 9.424 billion yuan and 17.59 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 188.42% and 126.95% respectively.

As for the reasons for the performance growth, the company once stated that the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry boosted the battery and energy storage industry.

In fact, the sharp decline in CATL’s gross profit margins has caused some concern. According to the first-quarter financial report, the company’s gross profit margin dropped to 14.48%, down 11.8 percentage points from 26.28% in 2021.

At that time, CATL attributed it to the price increase of raw materials. In order to solve the imminent cost pressure, CATL decided to gradually complete the price increase of batteries from the second quarter of this year. The gross profit margin recovered to 18.68% in the first half of this year.

At present, the gross profit margin of 19.7% in the third quarter showed a slight increase, but there is still a gap from the 26.28% in 2021.

The transcripts of CATL reflect the high prosperity of the global battery market. According to SNE Research’s data, from January to August 2022, the total battery loading of electric vehicles in the world was 287.6 GWh, up 78.7% year-on-year. Among them, the cumulative installed capacity in CATL reached 102.2 GWh, which exceeded that in 2021, and its global market share from January to August reached 35.5%.

Recently, on an investor interaction platform, the company said that it has formed a product mix including ternary high nickel batteries with high energy density and lithium iron phosphate batteries with high cost performance. It is promoting the research of sodium ions batteries, M3P batteries, condensed batteries, cobalt-free batteries, and all-solid-state batteries. The industrialization of sodium-ion batteries should be realized in 2023.

SEE ALSO: CATL Reportedly Holds Patent Covering Cell-to-Chassis EV Technology

In addition to batteries, energy storage has also become the engine of performance growth for CATL. The company previously reached an agreement with FlexGen, a US energy storage technology platform and solution provider, and will supply it with 10GWh of energy storage products over the next three years. Meanwhile, CATL’s secretary of the board of directors said in September that the gross profit margin of energy storage products will improve compared with the first half of the year.