Chinese battery giant CATL posted an on-year decline of 19.20% in the operating income of its power battery system business during the first half of this year, reaching about CNY 113 billion ($16 billion), Kallanish learns. 

This segment of the company was able to remain profitable due to effective cost reduction - the corresponding operating cost declined 25.84% year-on-year - resulting in an on-year increase of 6.55 percentage points in gross profit margin to 26.9%. 

In H1, its energy storage battery business also had an on-year increase in gross profit margin. It increased 7.55 percentage points to 28.87% due to an on-year increase in operating income and an on-year decline in operating cost. 

Meanwhile, the company's battery material recycling business and mining resource business had on-year declines in gross profit margin. 

Overall, net profit increased 10.37% on-year to about CNY 2.29 billion and its operating income declined 11.88% y-o-y to about CNY 167 billion. 

In H1, its battery system production capacity utilisation rate reached 65.33% with 323 gigawatt-hours of production capacity and 211 GWh production volume, and 153 GWh capacity is in construction. 

CATL said that its German factory is still in the process of ramping up production capacity, and this year's goal is to achieve break-even. The Hungarian factory has completed the capping of some factory buildings and equipment commissioning, and related construction work is progressing in an orderly manner. "The Hungarian factory has learned from the experience of the German factory, and has made many upgrades and improvements in production line design and factory operations. It is also larger in scale, so it is expected that the cost will be more advantageous than the German factory," it said.