(Yicai Global) March 10 -- Shares of Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited rose after the Chinese battery giant said it nearly doubled its net profit last year thanks to the booming domestic electric vehicle market.

CATL [SHE: 300750] finished 2.2 percent higher at CNY405.79 (USD58.33) a share, after gaining by as much as 3.3 percent earlier today.

Net profit jumped 93 percent to CNY30.7 billion (USD4.4 billion) in 2022 from the year before, the Ningde-based company’s earnings report showed yesterday. Revenue soared 152 percent to CNY328.6 billion (USD47.2 billion).

Revenue from the power battery business climbed 159 percent to CNY236.6 billion, as sales more than doubled to 242 gigawatt-hours.

CATL had a 37 percent share of the global power battery market in 2022, up 4 percentage points from 2021, retaining the top spot for the sixth consecutive year, according to SNE Research.

Annual revenue from the energy storage business was CNY45 billion, an increase of 230 percent from 2021. CATL’s share of the global market jumped 5.1 percentage points to 43.4 percent in the period, according to SNE Research data.

In the fourth quarter, CATL’s net profit growth slowed, climbing 61 percent to CNY13.1 billion from a year ago, versus increases of 131 percent and 164 percent in the third and second quarters. Revenue was CNY118.3 billion, up 108 percent.

The global penetration rate of new energy vehicles has huge room for improvement and demand is expected to surpass expectations this year because of price cuts and the recovery in carmakers’ supply chains, Haitong International Securities said.

CATL’s cost controls and technical advantages will continue to lead, and the growth rate of its overall shipments will likely remain top of the industry for a long time, the brokerage added.

CATL also reassured investors about a series of concerns. Its cooperation with Ford Motor in the US is advancing, a module and battery cell plant in Germany has achieved mass production, a factory in Hungary is under construction, and the rectification of the lithium industry in China’s Yichun, known as ‘Asia’s lithium capital,’ has no impact on the firm’s local project, it said.

Sodium-ion batteries and M3P batteries should achieve mass production this year, CATL predicted, adding that the exact scale will depend on customer orders.

In response to recent attempts to cooperate with customers to supply batteries in larger batches at lower prices, CATL said lithium mine sharing is not intended to cut prices but to share mineral resources with long-term strategic clients, as the company does not want to gain massive profits from that.

CATL believes that recent fuel vehicle price cuts is mainly because of the upgrade of the sixth version of the national emission requirements, while that of NEVs is mostly due to the gradual decline in upstream raw material prices to a reasonable range.

Editor: Futura Costaglione