Chinese battery king Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. has reported estimate-beating profits for 2025 as the company cements its market dominance on the back of business diversification efforts.
Net income rose 42.3% from a year earlier to 72.2 billion yuan ($10.4 billion), the world's largest maker of electric-car batteries said in a regulatory filing Monday, topping analysts' expectations of 68.9 billion yuan. Revenue grew 17% to a record 423.7 billion yuan.
CATL, based in China's southeastern Fujian province, has doubled down on its energy storage segment, which has seen orders boosted by a boom in artificial intelligence data centers and electrical grids.
Gross profit margin in its energy storage business reached 26.7% in 2025, surpassing the 23.8% of its core EV battery operations.
The U.S. remains a key market for CATL's burgeoning energy storage business despite the Trump administration's hostile trade policies toward China. American carmaker Ford, to which CATL has licensed battery technology, announced plans late last year to use such technology to expand production capacity for energy storage systems.
"This marks a potential expansion of CATL's business footprint in the US energy storage system market," JPMorgan analysts wrote in a research note in December.
CATL continues to compete head-to-head with Chinese electric-vehicle champion BYD in cutting-edge battery technologies. Last week, BYD unveiled the latest generation of its Blade Battery, capable of running nearly 1,000 kilometers on a nine-minute charge, less than a year after CATL claimed that its Shenxing battery cells could offer a 520-km range from five minutes of charging time.
CATL held a commanding 39.2% share of global EV battery usage last year, with BYD trailing at 16.4%, according to South Korea-based consultancy SNE Research.
CATL has been exploring new revenue streams as part of a broader attempt to offset slowing Chinese EV demand. The company said in the filing that it has developed batteries usable in new applications, including trucks, ships and aircraft.
Management also warned that potential risks stemming from geopolitical tensions and intense competition could weigh on the group's future performance.
"As geopolitics, industry cycles and technological revolutions intertwine, uncertainty has become the norm in the global economy," founder and Chairman Robin Zeng said in the filing.