Chinese automaker BYD has had some great news regarding its revenue lately. On 1 November, it released its financial report for Q3 2024. The quarterly revenue was 201 billion RMB (28.29 billion USD). This equates to a 24.04% growth year-on-year (YoY) and also overtook Tesla’s 25.1 billion USD revenue in Q3, marking the first time in nearly 3 years that BYD has surpassed its American rival.
However, the market reacted to the report with drops in share prices, meaning BYD lost over 30 billion RMB (4.22 billion USD) of market value. This is due to a slowdown in the growth of profit, as the 11.61 billion RMB (1.63 billion USD) net profit means only 11% YoY growth, compared to the average 18% growth in the first 9 months of the year.
But soon, BYD received another wave of good news. It was reported on 4 November that the monthly sales of BYD vehicles reached over 500,000 for the first time at 502,700, just a month after reaching the 400,000 threshold. It also makes BYD the first Chinese automotive group to reach the 500k mark and has doubled Tesla’s best month record of 211,000. Both Mainland and Hong Kong stock markets reacted with an over 5% share price increase for the company.
Pundits believe that BYD’s long-term investment in R&D has contributed to its impressive sales numbers. With 33.32 billion RMB (4.69 billion USD) invested in R&D during the first 9 months of 2024, growing 33.6% YoY, this helped the brand to differentiate itself from competitors and future-proof its products. That being said, October was actually a very good month for Chinese EVs in general, with 11 companies breaking their own sales records, including Geely, Xiaomi and XPeng. The combined effects of a positive market and BYD’s own investment are likely the reasons it has made such progress.
