China’s electric-vehicle (EV) king BYD reported a 30% drop in profits in the second quarter as surging overseas sales failed to offset the negative impact of a brutal price war in the domestic market, reports the South China Morning Post. The Shenzhen-based company earned RMB 6.4 billion ($894.6 million) in the three months to June, down 29.9% from a year earlier. Revenue grew 14% year on year to RMB 201 billion.
The second-quarter numbers are derived by comparing BYD’s interim earnings to its results for the first three months, published in April.
Rising EV adoption in China had led to “increased price competition and frequent occurrences of excessive marketing, which exerted an adverse periodic impact on the development of the industry”, BYD said in a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday.