Weekly: Sales Of Top EV Companies Up 49% yoy/5% mom In September; In Line
The combined sales of China’s top eight EV companies (excluding Tesla) grew 49% yoy and 5% mom in Sep 23. BYD’s wholesale shipment grew 57% yoy/5% mom to a record high of 287,454 units in Sep 23. The Big Three are reported to be reaching a deal with UAW after 16 days of strike, boding well for Chinese auto part suppliers. The EU has started anti-trust probes into China-made EVs, which should not impact Chinese EV companies much. Maintain UNDERWEIGHT. Top picks: BYD, CATL and Li Auto.
WHAT’S NEW
- Combined sales of top eight Chinese EV companies up 49% yoy/5% mom in Sep 23. At least eight EV companies announced September sales data, which in descending order by sales included BYD, GAC’s Aion, Li Auto, Leapmotor, Nio, XPeng, Neta and Geely’s Zeekr. The combined sales of these eight companies reached 447,125 units (+49% yoy/+5% mom) in Sep 23 and 3,133,874 units (+68% yoy) in 9M23. These compare to CPCA’s estimated China’s passenger electric vehicle (PEV) retail sales volume of 750,000 units (+22.7% yoy/+7.4% mom) for Sep 23 and 5.177m units (+33.8% yoy) for 9M23. These eight companies should have jointly contributed c.60% of China’s PEV sales volume in Sep 23 and 9M23. In general, these companies posted in-line Sep 23 sales.
- BYD remained the largest EV manufacturer in China, with wholesale shipment at a record 287,454 units (+56.9% yoy/+4.7% mom) in Sep 23, in line with estimates. This brings 9M23 wholesale shipment to 2.08m units (+77.1% yoy), on track to meet our estimate and the company’s target of 3.0m units (+62% yoy) for full-year 2023. Overseas wholesale shipment spiked by 262% yoy and 12% mom to 28,039 units in Sep 23 and by 550% yoy to 145,520 units, vs our full-year 2023F estimate of 250,000 units. BYD’s sales are being driven by launches of new models like Seagull, Denza N7, Seal DM-i, Song L, Bao 5 and Yangwang U8. We keep our estimates on BYD’s 2023-24 net profit and EPS estimates at Rmb23.81b/Rmb37.57b/Rmb53.36b and Rmb8.18/Rmb12.93/Rmb18.37 respectively, based on EV sales volume estimates of 3.0m/4.0m/5.2m units respectively. Maintain BUY with a target price of HK$590.00 based on 10-year DCF (WACC: 12%, terminal growth: 4%).
