CATL’s strong performance continues.

After the stock price exceeded 600 yuan, on October 27, CATL released another quarterly report card that was the best in history.

Financial report data shows that in the third quarter of this year, CATL’s operating income was 29.287 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 130.73%.

The net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 3.267 billion yuan, which not only exceeded 30 yuan for the first time, but also increased by 130.16% year-on-year.

In the capital market, CATL is also a sought-after presence.

According to Tianxiang statistics, CATL has surpassed Moutai to become the top holding of public equity funds; and after the release of the financial report, CICC even adjusted its target price to 800 yuan/share in the research report.

In the ten years since its official establishment in 2011, CATL seems to be gradually entering its best era.

How to resist rising raw material prices?

Starting from a "BYD Battery Price Increase Contact Letter" circulated on the Internet on October 26, "price increase" has become the hottest keyword in the battery industry.

Image source: Advanced Industrial Research Institute According to statistics from the Advanced Industrial Research Institute, affected by rising raw material prices, the theoretical costs of cells and battery systems increased by more than 30% in the third quarter compared with the beginning of the year.

Judging from relevant reports, in addition to BYD, a number of battery companies such as Guoxuan Hi-Tech and Funeng Technology have also tried to increase prices to offset the performance impact of rising raw material prices.

Among them, Ningde era is an exception.

Market news shows that CATL has not increased prices.

At the same time, judging from the third quarter financial report data, while the gross profit margins of other companies have declined due to the impact of raw material prices, CATL's gross profit margins have bucked the trend and rebounded.

In the third quarter, CATL’s gross profit margin reached 27.9%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points from the previous quarter.

At the same time, compared with battery companies such as Yiwei Lithium Energy, Sunwoda, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech, CATL's gross profit margin is also significantly higher.

Regarding why CATL can buck the trend and rise, many securities institutions said in their analysis that this is inseparable from its systematic layout in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.

Data from Qichacha shows that Ningde Times has invested in 86 companies overseas, mainly involving companies in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain such as lithium mines, phosphate mines, new battery materials, electrolyte additives, and charging services.

Just in September this year, CATL also announced that it would acquire all shares of Canadian lithium mine producer Millennial Lithium Corp.

In addition, it also acquired a partial stake in the African lithium mining project Manono through a joint stock company.

On October 12, CATL also announced that it plans to invest no more than 32 billion yuan in the construction of the Bangpu Integrated Battery Materials Industrial Park project in Yichang City, Hubei Province.

This project mainly involves the recycling of used battery materials, as well as the production of lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobalt oxide and ternary cathode materials.

Thanks to the comprehensive layout of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, Industrial Securities previously stated in a research report that CATL’s raw material procurement prices can obtain a discount of about 10% compared to its peers, and the cost of battery cell raw materials ranks first in the world.

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Is rapid expansion of production capacity necessary?

In addition to improving performance, what has attracted the most attention at CATL this year is the rapid expansion of production capacity.

On October 28, the day after the third quarter financial report was released, the new lithium-ion battery manufacturing base project invested by CATL in Yichun, Jiangsu Province officially laid the foundation stone.

According to previous announcements, the production capacity of this project will reach 60Gwh after completion - almost equivalent to the total battery production capacity of CATL in the first half of this year.

And this is only a small part of CATL's production capacity expansion plan this year: In February this year, CATL issued three production expansion announcements, with a total planned investment of no more than 29 billion yuan to build/expand three major bases.

On August 12, CATL launched the largest private placement plan in the history of A-shares, with a fixed increase amount of 58.2 billion yuan.

In addition to the 7 billion planned as R&D funds, most of it will be used to build and expand five production bases.

...The third quarter financial report shows that as of the end of the reporting period, the amount of projects under construction in CATL reached 21.495 billion yuan, an increase of 273.81% from 5.75 billion at the beginning of this year.