The world’s largest EV battery maker, CATL, posted record 2025 revenue of 423.7 billion yuan ($61 billion), up 17% from the previous year.
Net profit came in at 72.2 billion yuan ($10.4 billion), up 42.3%, marking the fastest profit growth in three years.
Q4 alone: profit jumped 57.1% to $3.35 billion.
The details
It is the ninth consecutive year at the top for battery giant CATL.
Battery sales: 661 GWh (+39%). Of that, 541 GWh were EV batteries, up 41.85%.
Global EV battery market share: 39.2%.
BYD stands at 16.4%, less than half.
The more interesting part lies outside the core business: in energy storage, gross margin reached 26.7%, above the 23.8% in the EV battery business.
The reason: AI data centers and power grids are driving demand, and the segment now accounts for 14.7% of total revenue.
Despite Trump’s tough stance on China: Ford wants to use CATL’s licensed technology to expand its own energy storage production. JPMorgan sees this as a growing foothold in the US market.
CATL vs. BYD:
BYD last week unveiled its new Blade Battery, which is supposed to deliver 1,000 km of range after nine minutes of charging.
CATL’s Shenxing cell delivers 520 km after five minutes. At the same time, CATL is developing batteries for trucks, ships, and aircraft.
Where this is heading
Founder Robin Zeng himself warns that geopolitics, industry cycles, and technological disruption are overlapping. The fact that CATL is now generating higher margins in storage than in its core business shows the direction: away from pure volume chasing in EV batteries, and toward high margin infrastructure deals.
👉 Sources: SCMP, DealStreetAsia, Nikkei, BusinessTimes
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