Hyperdrive
BYD Brushes Off Earnings Miss With 20% Sales Growth Forecast
- Shares see biggest drop in a year on below-estimate net income
- Electric carmaker sets aggressive sales target for 2024
Although BYD Co. overtook Tesla Inc. in the last three months of 2023 as the world’s biggest seller of electric cars and is targeting a 20% rise in sales this year, posting net income just below analysts’ projections was enough to trigger the worst selloff in the Chinese company’s shares in a year.
BYD’s stock slumped 6.1% in Hong Kong after the carmaker reported 2023 net income of 30.04 billion yuan ($4.16 billion) for 2023 on Wednesday. While that was the midpoint of a preliminary forecast of 29 billion yuan to 31 billion yuan given in January, the result missed the 30.94 billion yuan average forecast by analysts.