China's BYD forecasts 2023 net profit to rise as much as 86.5% y/y

BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD said on Monday it expects net profit in 2023 to have risen by as much as 86.5% on the previous year, buoyed by strong sales and cost cuts.

BYD forecast net profit for last year between 29 billion and 31 billion yuan ($4.04-4.32 billion), an increase of 74.46-86.49% from a year earlier, it said in a Shenzhen Stock Exchange filing.

That growth will come in at a much slower pace than in 2022, when BYD posted a 446% net profit surge to 16.6 billion yuan.

"Despite the fierce competition in the industry, the company has achieved significant improvement in profitability and demonstrated strong resilience," BYD said.

The results were achieved thanks to factors including its "rapid growth" of overseas sales, scale advantage and cost control ability in the supply chain, the Shenzhen-based company said.

In comparison, Tesla, BYD's biggest EV rival, reported a 19.4% growth in net profit in 2023 to $15 billion.

In the last quarter of 2023, BYD became the top EV maker by sales, delivering 526,409 vehicles, beating Tesla, which handed over 484,507 cars.

For the whole of 2023, the company sold about 3.02 million vehicles, an increase of 61.9%.

In January, BYD unveiled three battery EV models in Indonesia as it eyes the top market position in the segment in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.

Other than automotive, BYD's business also includes sales of electronic components for smartphones.

($1 = 7.1780 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Ethan Wang, Zhang Yan, Ella Cao and Ryan Woo; Editing by Louise Heavens and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)