BYD's 2024 Annual Financial Report: Revenue Reached 777.1 Billion Yuan, Surpassing Tesla for the First Time

On the evening of March 24, 2025, BYD, as expected, released another annual financial report that is the "strongest in history."

In 2024, BYD's annual total revenue reached 777.1 billion yuan. This is not only the first time it has broken through the 700-billion-yuan mark but also the first time it has surpassed Tesla (after converting Tesla's revenue according to the exchange rate, it is 702.2 billion yuan).

The revenue in 2024 increased by 29.02% compared to the previous year, which is already an extremely remarkable achievement. What's even more remarkable is that BYD's net profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company increased by 34%, reaching 40.254 billion yuan.

At the same time, the proportion of net profit to revenue increased from 4.99% in 2023 to 5.18%. Compared with other automobile manufacturing enterprises around the world, this proportion is at a relatively high level.

The increase in both revenue and profit fully demonstrates that BYD has become the biggest beneficiary during the "price war" in the automotive market in 2024 and the rapid development of the new energy vehicle market in China.

After entering 2025, it can be seen that BYD no longer wants to use the competition method of the "price war" last year. Instead, it hopes to rely on stronger competitive advantages to further expand its leading position. "Smart Driving for All‌" "Megawatt fast charging"... In 2025, BYD has played a series of "technical aces."

Based on this situation, when looking back at BYD's 2024 financial report, it is easy to find a key word: confidence.

The outstanding performance is the confidence for BYD to change its competition strategy in 2025.

Far Ahead

BYD's historical revenue and profit achievements are based on a significant increase in automobile sales.

In 2024, BYD sold a total of 4.27 million new vehicles globally, a year-on-year increase of 41%. Analysts predict that BYD's annual sales volume in 2025 will increase by another 23% to reach 5.24 million vehicles; while BYD's official figure ranges from 5 million to 6 million vehicles.

Divided by market regions, China remains BYD's most important market. The annual sales volume in China was 3.84 million vehicles; the sales volume in overseas markets was 417,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 80%.

It is worth mentioning that in 2024, the net profit per vehicle sold by BYD has increased significantly, reaching 8,500 yuan; in 2023, the net profit per vehicle sold by BYD was 8,000 yuan.

The "price war" still had a certain impact on BYD. The average price per vehicle decreased from 150,000 yuan in 2023 to 145,000 yuan in 2024. Although the average price decreased, the net profit increased. This clearly shows that BYD has achieved remarkable results in controlling the costs of the supply chain.

At the end of 2024, a screenshot of an email with the general idea of "BYD requiring the supply chain to take the initiative to reduce prices" spread widely on the Internet. In fact, it is a common practice in the automotive industry to require upstream suppliers to take the initiative to reduce costs. However, BYD can push costs lower mainly because it develops and manufactures the vast majority of its automotive components on its own.

Key components such as the "battery, motor, and electronic control" of the vehicle, as well as power semiconductors and the vehicle platform architecture, are all developed by BYD itself. When releasing the "super-fast charging" technology, BYD emphasized that because the 1200V SiC was developed by BYD itself, the "1000kW charging" technology can only be achieved by BYD in a short period of time.

"Except for tires and glass, all other components are developed independently" - although this sentence is a bit exaggerated, it does reflect that the proportion of components developed independently by BYD's vehicles is very high.

Moreover, BYD's huge sales volume can fully utilize the "cost advantage brought by large-scale production." By producing automobiles on a large scale, it can reduce the costs of research and development and manufacturing.

Under the effect of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, in 2024, the gross profit margin of BYD's automobiles reached 22.31%, an increase of 1.29% compared to the previous year; the overall gross profit margin reached 19%, which is much better than that of new energy vehicle manufacturers such as Li Auto and Xiaomi.

Ultimately, this series of excellent achievements, such as "high sales volume" and "high profit," all point to one result: BYD has become one of the most profitable automobile manufacturing enterprises globally; in the field of new energy vehicle manufacturing enterprises, its performance is not inferior to that of Tesla.

In 2024, BYD's cash reserves were approximately 154.937 billion yuan. Even if BYD's annual investment in research and development reaches 54.1 billion yuan, such a large amount of cash reserves can fully ensure that BYD can quickly keep up with the trend of technological development.

"Adequate cash reserves provide strong support for the rapid development of our business every time," and what Wang Chuanfu said is indeed true.

Under the Surface

However, after releasing this "strongest in history" financial report and with the company's market value reaching one trillion yuan, whether BYD can continue to maintain its rapid development momentum is also a matter of concern.

Looking back at 2024, BYD's performance was certainly not "perfect." Behind these excellent achievements, there are still some aspects that need to be improved or paid attention to.

Setback in the High-End Market

"Developing towards the high-end market" has been a key development direction for BYD since it re-launched the Denza brand in 2022 and re-planned its brand layout in 2023. However, by the end of 2024, its strategy of developing towards the high-end market is still some distance away from true "success."

One of the data mentioned earlier is that the average price per vehicle of BYD in 2024 decreased by 5,000 yuan compared to 2023, while the historical peak was in 2022 - at that time, the average price per vehicle of BYD once approached 180,000 yuan, exceeding that of some automobile brands such as Volkswagen and Toyota.

The decrease in the average price per vehicle while the increase in the net profit per vehicle is BYD's ability; but it also reflects a problem, that is, the sales situation of BYD's high-end models may not be as good as expected.

According to data statistics, in 2024, among BYD's "high-end automobile brands," Denza sold 126,000 new vehicles, Yangwang sold 7,454 vehicles, and Fang Cheng Bao sold 56,000 vehicles. The total sales volume of these three brands was 190,000 vehicles. Calculating it, the sales volume of the "high-end automobile brands" only accounted for 5% of BYD's total sales volume.

For comparison, HarmonyOS Intelligent Travel sold 445,000 vehicles last year, and Li Auto sold more than 500,000 vehicles, and the average price per vehicle of them was 350,000 yuan (the official data of HarmonyOS Intelligent Travel) and 277,000 yuan (calculated based on Li Auto's financial report data) respectively.

However, at the same time, BYD has also made some arrangements for the above-mentioned "high-end automobile brands," but the results have not met expectations.

Denza launched a newly designed sedan product, the "Z9," equipped with the "Yi San Fang" chassis, the "Tian Shen Zhi Yan" intelligent driving capability, etc., hoping to become an excellent representative among C-class sedans in the price range of 300,000 to 400,000 yuan.

On the side of Fang Cheng Bao, although it mainly relies on the two products, the Bao 5 and the Bao 8, the Huawei Qiankun ADS 3.0 intelligent driving technology has been introduced on the Bao 8 to improve the overall competitiveness of the product.

On the side of Yangwang, a new model, the U7, has also been launched and started to accept reservations in November 2024.

It is understandable that the sales volume of Yangwang, which is positioned as a "million-level automobile brand," is average. However, the sales performance of Denza and Fang Cheng Bao is obviously the key reason for hindering BYD's development towards the high-end market.

In 2025, Denza will launch the N9, a mid-large SUV priced at around 400,000 yuan, and Fang Cheng Bao will launch the Tai 3, a compact SUV. Impacting the high-end market will definitely be an important development strategy for BYD, but how effective it will be remains to be seen.

Chasing Technology

In the competition in some key technologies, such as "intelligent driving," BYD did not hold a leading position in 2024.

Indeed, BYD released the "DiPilot " intelligent driving system as early as 2023, but for a long time, this system was only used on some models of the Denza brand; at the same time, the DiPilot intelligent driving system could not keep up with the development speed of the leading intelligent driving systems at that time. In important aspects such as "switching from relying on map navigation to being able to drive without relying on map navigation," "being able to achieve intelligent driving anywhere in the country," and "achieving full-process intelligent driving from the starting point to the destination," it was one step behind others.

On the other hand, BYD also has problems in coordinating technology research and development and applying the technology to automobiles.

There was once news that BYD was developing its own chips and supporting algorithms for intelligent driving. The progress of the self-developed chips is unknown; as for the developed algorithms, there is a saying that it has been switched to basic and relatively primary algorithms, while more advanced intelligent driving functions are realized and applied to automobiles in cooperation with partners.

From this, a problem can be seen, that is, for some technologies of BYD, the process from "being developed" to "being applied to automobiles" may take too long, or some difficulties may be encountered, resulting in an uncertain time for when it can be applied to automobiles. Another possibility is that BYD has misjudged the trend of technological development internally and underestimated the importance of "intelligent driving" in the market.

In the field of pure electric vehicles, BYD's battery, motor, and chassis technologies are in a leading position in the industry, especially the "Yun Nian" series of chassis technologies, which have a high reputation among users.

However, when it comes to technologies for replenishing energy for vehicles, the only relatively outstanding "dual-gun charging" was previously only used on vehicles of the two brands, Denza and Yangwang. Unlike other pure electric vehicle manufacturers that have "high-voltage fast charging" and "battery swapping" as their "killer technologies," it seems that its competitiveness is not particularly strong.

Precisely because of this, BYD's launch of the technology systems of "making intelligent driving accessible to everyone" and "super-fast charging" after the Spring Festival in 2025 is considered a move to turn its weaknesses into strengths.

Overall, in 2024, BYD did bring a lot of highlights to the industry with the DM 5.0 technology. However, it is also a fact that it did not achieve major breakthroughs in the more widely discussed technologies related to intelligence and energy replenishment for vehicles.

Challenges in Going Global

One aspect that BYD needs to improve in 2024 is its performance in overseas markets. Strictly speaking, this is not "poor performance" but rather "needing to perform even better."

In 2025, BYD has set its sales target in overseas markets at 800,000 vehicles, which is almost double the sales volume in 2024. Currently, BYD's vehicles are sold in many overseas places, and its presence can be seen in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

BYD's development strategy in overseas markets has changed significantly in 2024. In addition to cooperating with overseas distributors to sell vehicles, it also meets local laws and regulations requirements and reduces costs by building factories overseas.

Specifically, BYD's factory in Thailand was completed and put into production in July 2024, and the factory in Brazil has already started construction; the planned factories also include the factory in Hungary (to be put into production in October 2025), the factory in Turkey (to be put into production in March 2026), the third factory in Germany, the factory in Indonesia, and so on.

Relying on models such as the Seagull, Dolphin, Seal, Song, and Han, BYD has already surpassed Chery in the first two months of 2025 and become the Chinese automobile brand with the highest export sales volume. However, in the long run, as "going global" becomes another key direction for Chinese automobile manufacturers, the challenges that BYD faces in overseas markets will only increase.

William Li has clearly stated that 2025 is NIO's "important year for overseas development," and new automobile brands such as Zeekr and Xpeng have also clearly stated that they will accelerate their layout in overseas markets. Especially in the European market, what awaits BYD will be a fierce competition.

Actively Seeking Change

Looking back, the leading new energy vehicle manufacturers have successively released their "strongest in history" annual financial reports, reaching new heights in many aspects such as revenue and sales volume. This mainly owes to two core reasons.

On the one hand, it is seizing the rare opportunity of the rapid development of the new energy vehicle market in China, just like a "pig standing at the forefront of the trend" that can take off with the wind.

On the other hand, according to the market law of "Matthew's effect," leading automobile manufacturers continuously seize the market share of middle and lagging automobile brands to expand their own market scale.

In such a market environment, the advantages go without saying. Of course, some automobile manufacturers can stand out; but the disadvantage is that the market is gradually becoming saturated, and the development vitality is relatively declining. It has become more difficult for automobile manufacturers to achieve rapid growth as before.

In simple terms, some practices that worked in the past may not work in the current new competitive environment.

Taking BYD as an example again, in 2024, it mainly relied on methods such as the "price war" and controlling the costs of the supply chain to achieve success in terms of sales volume, revenue, and profit. However, it is obvious that after entering 2025, they have not continued to use the strategy of 2024. Instead, they hope to "master technological advantages" and then convert these technological advantages into more sales volume.

This change shows that if they still rely solely on the "price war," it is very likely that they will not be able to achieve the sales target for 2025.

Based on this idea, we have seen BYD's active exploration of "new business growth points": at the beginning of 2025, it successively held several press conferences and vigorously promoted technology systems such as "Full Self-Driving" and "Megawatt fast charging."

Essentially, BYD's core idea is still to get rid of the impression of "low price" and replace it with brand images such as "technologically leading" and "high-end."

It is not difficult to predict that in the next nine months, BYD will continue to release more "core technologies" and will mainly apply these technologies to the vehicles of the three brands, Denza, Fang Cheng Bao, and Yangwang.

The ultimate question is whether BYD is currently in a stage of "being able to continue to develop and progress," with room for growth and the ability to achieve the annual target for 2025; or whether it has already reached the "highest point" - that is, its development will only decline in the future, and it will not be able to replicate its "best performance" in 2024.

Judging from the sales performance in January and February, BYD has achieved significant growth compared to the previous year. In January, the sales volume increased by approximately 47.5% to reach 300,000 vehicles, and in February, it increased by a substantial 164% compared to the previous year to reach 320,000 vehicles.

However, looking at the sales volume change data between each month, BYD's sales volume in January decreased by 41.6% compared to the previous month; and in February, it increased by 7.4% compared to January.

The data for March is very crucial. Whether the sales volume will increase and by how much will directly reflect whether BYD's strategy of "making intelligent driving accessible to everyone" is successful, and it will also determine whether the annual target can be achieved; it will more directly determine whether BYD has truly found new business growth points relying on "technological leadership."

There is no "ever-victorious enterprise" in the business market. There are only those "enterprises that can adapt to the development of the times" that can keenly perceive market changes and make decisive decisions.

Will BYD be such an enterprise?

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