How CATL came to dominate the EV-battery market, and how it has positioned itself to reap rewards from the coming boom in renewable energy.
Credit: Martin Schutt/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
In early 2017, employees of Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) received an email from their boss, asking: “Will pigs fly?”
Buoyed by government subsidies, CATL was growing quickly and doing well financially. But its CEO and founder Zeng Yuqun was worried even so. Invoking the Chinese allegory, ‘when the typhoon comes, pigs will fly’, he questioned what would happen when the ‘typhoon’ of state subsidies for the electric vehicle industry had blown through.
Yet fly CATL has. Between 2017 and 2020, its annual revenue increased two and a half times to $7.8 billion, while its share price is up by more than 130 percent over the past year giving it a market value of $190 billion. It now holds around one-tenth of the world’s lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity, a proportion expected to expand further, according to commodities consultancy Roskill.
CATL’s customers include major vehicle manufacturers su
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