Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD has reported a significant jump in net profit in 2020 but it wasn’t the company’s cars that were responsible.
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, BYD began to make face masks and while it has specified exactly how many masks it is currently produced, it did reveal in May last year that it had the ability to make 50 million masks a day.
Mask production helped BYD report 4.23 billion yuan ($643.75 million) net profit last year, an increase from the 1.61 billion yuan ($245 million) it reported in 2019, Reuters reports.
Read Also: Daimler Says Denza X Crossover’s Success Key To Chinese Brand’s Future
Like so many other car manufacturers, BYD’s car sales slipped last year, falling by 7.5 per cent to 426,972 vehicles. Auto sales across China dropped by 1.9 per cent to 25.3 million, industry data reveals.
Despite the positive boost in net profit, BYD’s revenue dropped by 22.6 per cent to 156.6 billion yuan ($23 billion), slightly more than the 148.76 billion yuan ($22.6 billion) in revenue forecast by analysts.
The Warren Buffett-backed company is confident that a boost in auto sales through 2021 will allow net profit to grow 77.6 per cent in the first three months of the year. Reuters reports that BYD will also issue debt financing instrument worth up to 50 billion yuan ($7.6 billion).
In November last year, BYD announced a partnership with Chinese ride-hailing behemoth Didi Chuxiang to develop an all-electric vehicle designed specifically for ride-hailing.
