Why BYD's Profit and Share price Slide Isn't Over: Supplier Rules from CCP

BYD just posted its fourth straight quarter of falling profits. Share prices fell. However, this decline will continue and normalise only at the end of this year, 2026.

The regulation behind the debt spike

For years, BYD ran one of the auto industry's most aggressive supplier-financing models. It paid vendors an average of 275 days in 2023 and roughly 127 days in 2024, often using its in-house "Dilian" promissory-note platform rather than cash — effectively turning unpaid suppliers into a source of free working capital.

That changed in 2025. Beijing's SME Payment Regulation, effective June 1, 2025, legally caps payment terms at 60 days, and bans forcing smaller suppliers to accept non-cash IOUs as a delay tactic. BYD, along with 16 other major automakers, publicly pledged to comply. By Q3 2025, BYD's payment cycle had collapsed to roughly 57 days.

That's good news for suppliers and for industry health — but it eliminated a multi-hundred-billion-yuan interest-free credit line BYD had been quietly running. The company had to replace it with real, interest-bearing debt.

The Hidden Financing Advantage

• Total debt rose from 40.5 billion yuan at the end of FY2024 to 124.2 billion yuan at the end of FY2025 — a 207% jump — and kept climbing to 144.4 billion yuan by the end of Q1 2026, a five-year peak.
• Short-term borrowings alone surged 72% quarter-on-quarter to 66.3 billion yuan in Q1 2026, which BYD attributed to higher financing needs across the group.
• Long-term borrowings climbed to roughly 61.2 billion yuan by Q3 2025, up more than 640% from the start of that year.

The consequence shows up directly in the income statement. BYD's financial expenses hit 2.1 billion yuan in Q1 2026, up 210% year-on-year — implying a base of roughly 680 million yuan in Q1 2025. That's interest cost that didn't exist a year ago, now eating directly into the bottom line at the same time gross margins are under price-war pressure.

It's likely on a full year basis of 2026, BYD's financial expenses will adversely hit its profits.

The profit trend

Q1 2026 net profit attributable to shareholders fell 55.4% year-on-year to about 4.08 billion yuan, down from 9.15 billion yuan — the lowest quarterly profit since 2023 and the steepest quarterly decline since 2020. Basic EPS fell 56.9% to 0.448 yuan. This extends a streak: Q3 2025 profit fell 32.6%, and full-year 2025 net profit fell 19% to 32.62 billion yuan — BYD's first annual profit decline since 2021. Revenue has now declined for multiple consecutive quarters as the domestic price war and the phase-out of NEV purchase-tax exemptions weigh on volumes.

Price target: 20x forward earnings on the 1Q decline rate

Applying the Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025 net profit decline (-55.4%) directly to full-year 2025 net profit (32.62 billion yuan) as a proxy for full-year 2026 earnings:

• Projected FY2026 net profit: 32.62B × (1 – 0.554) ≈ 14.55 billion yuan
• Shares outstanding: ~9.12 billion (post the July 2025 bonus share issue)
• Projected forward EPS in HKD: 1.85 HKD per share
• Price target at 20x forward P/E (do note many automobile makers price earnings are 9-12 times, so 20 is a very optimistic projection)

The target price is HKD$37

Against current prices of HK$72.45 (H-shares) as of July 1, 2026, this implies a further 50–60% downside.