CATL's Global Bill Comes Due
Profit soared 48.5% last quarter. Operating cash flow crept up 2.5%. The spread tells the real story of expansion.
Editor’s Note: This is FlashPoint, Hello China Tech’s premium quick-strike column on one market-moving China tech event and why it matters.
Today’s column examines CATL’s Q1 earnings, which beat analyst consensus by 40% on revenue and delivered Rmb20.7bn in net profit. When 12 brokerages miss by that margin, the surprise is not just in the numbers. It is in what the models were failing to capture.
CATL, the Chinese battery group that commands roughly 40% of the global EV battery market, posted Q1 revenue of Rmb129.1bn ($18.9bn), up 52%, with net profit rising 48.5% to Rmb20.7bn. The revenue surprise, 40% above the median forecast of 12 brokerages, suggests the sell-side was still modelling a battery supplier. The results read more like those of an energy conglomerate in formation.
Two fronts drove the beat. Domestic EV battery share crossed 50% for the first time in 5 years. Energy storage, where margins run about 3 percentage points above those on EV cells, rose to roughly a quarter of Q1 cell shipments; April production schedules show storage climbing to 41.3% of cell output, up from less than 20% a year earlier. The Hungary plant, a €7.3bn investmentserving Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Stellantis, and Volkswagen, began mass production. About a third of revenue now comes from outside China.
