Industry & technology / BYD
BYD executive says nine-month R&D ran RMB 14 billion ahead of net profit
Executive vice president He Zhiqi said R&D expense for the first nine months was RMB 36.3 billion against RMB 22.3 billion of net profit, and framed the gap as long-term investment. R&D expense and attributable profit are different lines, so the gap is a comparison, not a loss.
Media-based report · see original reporting below
Key points
- BYD executive vice president He Zhiqi put nine-month R&D expense at RMB 36.3 billion and net profit at RMB 22.3 billion.
- He described the RMB 14 billion gap as deliberate, saying the company is keeping a longer account.
- The executive said cumulative R&D spending has passed RMB 280 billion.
- He attributed third-quarter profit growth to earlier technology spending and to Blade Battery volume.
- R&D expense and profit attributable to shareholders are different lines; the post gives no segment or capitalisation detail.
Reported details
BYD executive vice president He Zhiqi said in a post on 1 November that the company spent RMB 36.3 billion on research and development in the first nine months of 2026 while reporting RMB 22.3 billion of net profit, a gap he put at RMB 14 billion. He said cumulative R&D spending has passed RMB 280 billion. The post appeared two days after BYD published its third-quarter report on 29 October, and a day after its October sales release, which put new-energy volume at about 490,200 vehicles, up 10.97%, with the ten-month total down 2.16%.
His argument was about what the spending is for. He wrote that the real barrier in the industry is not short-term profit but core technology held in-house, and that money spent now turns into more dependable products, better user experience and a stronger position later, naming the Blade Battery, the Yi San Fang platform, the DiSus suspension system and the God's Eye driver-assistance family. He also tied the third-quarter result to earlier investment, saying Blade Battery sales were strong and capacity was being released, so the quarter's growth reflected technology spending from previous periods. The phrasing is his own framing of the numbers rather than a disclosure requirement.
Two details matter for reading the comparison. R&D expense is an income-statement line for the period; net profit attributable to shareholders is measured after tax, minority interests and everything else below the operating line, so subtracting one from the other describes a gap between two different measurements rather than a loss on research. The post also gives no split between expensed and capitalised development, no breakdown by project, and no cash-flow figure; the RMB 280 billion cumulative number is a gross total across many years, not adjusted for inflation.
Editorial interpretation
The timing is part of the message. A senior executive choosing to publish a profitability argument, unprompted, is a statement about how management wants the company to be valued — as a technology investor rather than a volume machine — and it arrives in a year when domestic price competition has compressed margins across the sector. Our reading is narrower than his: the arithmetic is verifiable, the interpretation is not. That R&D exceeded net profit is a fact about two lines in a filing; that the spending will produce the products, prices and market position he describes is a claim only later results can settle.
What can be tracked from here is specific. Watch whether R&D expense stays above attributable profit in coming quarters, and whether the gap widens because research grew or because profit fell — those point in opposite directions. Watch the capitalisation policy, since moving development costs onto the balance sheet would shrink the expense line without changing the spending. And watch whether BYD begins to disclose R&D by project or by technology, which would let readers test the claim that the money is going where he says it is going.
What it means
A post by BYD executive vice president He Zhiqi on 1 November, reported by IT Home on 2 November. The figures match the Shanghai-listed financial-indicator record for the period ended 30 September 2026, which shows R&D expense of RMB 36.28 billion and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 22.34 billion; the post rounds these to 363 and 223. The photograph is a brand reference and has no connection to the figures.
Original reporting and attribution
IT Home / IT之家 ↗沁沧（实习）
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