Even though stellar growth of the environmentally friendly car market is easing somewhat this year, Warren Buffet-backed Chinese auto manufacturer BYD Co Ltd announced over the weekend that this year’s full year profit forecast was likely to jump as much as 85 percent.
Profits could be as high as $800 million in 2016 for the Shenzhen-based car maker who has invested heavily in the green car side of their operations recently. The forecast margins are between 78 and 85 percent profit gain.
In the first three quarters of this year BYD reported profit increases of around 87 percent year-on-year which fell in line with the companies expected rises which were between 82 and 92 percent.
“The BYD results so far this year are excellent but they could have been so much better,” said Anthony Russell, Senior Vice President at Monex BMO Securities.
“They had triple digit growth four quarters in a row until the green car market started to ease after government support fizzled out. So the targets are going to be quite unattainable now.”
The Chinese government set a target of 750,000 electric and plug-in hybrid car sales for 2016, and the total so far this year is around 290,000 according to car association official data reports, so the industry has some hard months ahead if they want to get close to their hoped for results.
Controversy over some firm’s handling of their subsidy payments also looks set to hamper attempts to reach target levels this year.
