BYD shares fall as stalling sales put annual target in question
The stock fell as much as 4.2 per cent in early trading, taking its decline from a May peak to around 28 per cent. Sales of the Shenzhen-based auto giant barely grew last month. The world's biggest EV seller delivered 344,296 vehicles in July, it said on Friday. That's up 0.6 per cent from a year earlier, but down 10 per cent from June. BYD's overseas sales also fell 10 per cent compared to June to 80,737 units.
While the slowdown is not unexpected given China new car sales are typically weak in the summer, BYD faces headwinds in hitting its annual goal of 5.5 million units. Chinese authorities have stepped up scrutiny on the nation's auto sector, pledging to crack down on the heavy discounts that have fuelled a price war.
Having sold 2.5 million units to July, the maker of the electric Seagull hatchback now needs to deliver on average roughly 602,000 vehicles a month for the rest of the year to reach its target. The most vehicles BYD has ever sold in a single month was just shy of 515,000 last December.
Most rivals are showing signs of resilient demand. Geely Automobile Holdings sold 237,717 cars in July, its highest since November. Meanwhile, Stellantis-partner Leapmotor and Xpeng achieved new monthly records, delivering 50,129 and 36,717 vehicles respectively.
Fellow upstart Xiaomi also reported record deliveries of more than 30,000 units. In contrast, Li Auto's 30,731 units were down about 40 per cent from a year earlier. Li Auto shares fell as much as 2.6 per cent in Hong Kong trading on Monday.
China's Passenger Car Association last week said that retail passenger vehicle sales in July were estimated to grow 7.6 per cent from a year earlier, though would be down 11 per cent from June.
Nio continued to struggle as it posted a 16 per cent month-on-month fall in sales, recording its smallest sales volume since March. Nio's shares jumped 8.6 per cent on Friday, after the launch of its Onvo L90 model which analysts see as attractive in its pricing and offering. BLOOMBERG
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Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
China urges firms not to use Nvidia H20 chips in new guidance
Hong Kong – China has urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia's H20 processors, particularly for government-related purposes, complicating the chipmaker's attempts to recoup billions in lost China revenue as well as the Trump administration's unprecedented push to turn those sales into a US government windfall. Over the past few weeks, Chinese authorities have sent notices to a range of firms discouraging use of the less-advanced semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The guidance was particularly strong against the use of H20s for any government or national security-related work by state enterprises or private companies, the people said. In addition to Nvidia, Beijing's overall push affects AI accelerators from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, one of the people said, though it's unclear whether any letters specifically mentioned AMD's MI308 chip. Both companies recently secured Washington's approval to resume lower-end AI chip sales to China, on the controversial and legally questionable condition that they give the US government a 15 per cent cut of the related revenue. Now, Nvidia and AMD face the challenge that their Chinese customers are under Beijing's pressure not to make those purchases. Some of Beijing's letters to companies included a series of questions, according to one of the people, such as why they buy Nvidia H20 chips over local alternatives, whether that's a necessary choice given domestic options, and whether they've found any security issues in the Nvidia hardware. The notices coincide with state media reports that cast doubt on the security and reliability of H20 processors. Chinese regulators have raised those concerns directly with Nvidia, which has repeatedly denied that its chips contain such vulnerabilities. Right now, China's most stringent chip guidance is limited to sensitive applications, a situation that bears similarities to the way Beijing restricted Tesla vehicles and Apple iPhones in certain institutions and locations over security concerns. China's government also at one point barred the use of Micron Technology chips in critical infrastructure. Still, it's possible that Beijing may extend its heavier-handed Nvidia and AMD guidance to a wider range of settings, according to one person with direct knowledge of the deliberations, who said that those conversations are in early stages. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Power fault downs MRT service on stretch of North East Line; recovery may take 2-3 hours Singapore Live: NEL MRT service between Farrer Park and Buangkok stations restored Singapore Plan to base Singapore's F-15 fighter jets in Guam cancelled Business Singapore raises 2025 economic growth forecast but warns of uncertainty from US tariffs Singapore Circle Line to close early most Fridays and Saturdays, start late most weekends from Sept 5-Dec 28 Business Goh Cheng Liang, Nippon Paint billionaire and richest Singaporean, dies aged 98 Business StarHub buys rest of MyRepublic's broadband business in $105m deal; comes after Simba buys M1 World After tariff truce extended, a Trump-Xi summit in China? AMD declined to comment, while Nvidia said in a statement that 'the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure.' China has ample supplies of domestic chips, Nvidia said, and 'won't and never has relied on American chips for government operations.' China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to faxed requests for comment on this story, which is based on interviews with more than a half-dozen people familiar with Beijing's policy discussions. The White House did not respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours. The Chinese government's posture could make it more difficult for Nvidia and AMD to sell their hardware into the world's largest market for semiconductors. It also raises questions about the Trump administration's explanation for why the US is allowing those exports mere months after effectively banning such sales. Multiple senior US officials have said their policy reversal was part of a trade accord with China, but Beijing has publicly indicated that the resumed H20 shipments were not part of any bilateral deal. China's recent notices to companies suggest that the Asian country may not have desired such a concession from Washington in the first place. Beijing's concerns are twofold. For starters, Chinese officials are worried that Nvidia chips could have location-tracking and remote shutdown capabilities – a suggestion that Nvidia has vehemently denied. Still, Trump officials are actively exploring whether location-tracking could be used to help curtail suspected smuggling of restricted components into China, and lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require location verification for advanced AI chips. Second, Beijing is intensely focused on developing its domestic chip capabilities, and wants Chinese companies to shift away from Western chips in favour of local offerings. Officials have previously urged Chinese firms to choose domestic semiconductors over Nvidia H20 processors, Bloomberg reported last September, and have introduced energy efficiency standards that the H20 chip does not meet. But Beijing has stopped short of outright banning the hardware, which Nvidia designed specifically for Chinese customers to abide by years of US curbs on sales of advanced chips to the Asian country. The H20 chip has less computational power than Nvidia's top offerings, but its strong memory bandwidth is quite well suited to the inference stage of AI development, when models recognize patterns and draw conclusions. That's made it a desirable product to companies like Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings in China, where domestic chip champion Huawei Technologies is struggling to produce enough advanced components to meet market demand. By one estimate from Biden officials – who considered but did not implement controls on H20 sales – losing access to that Nvidia chip would make it three to six times more expensive for Chinese companies to run inference on advanced AI models. 'Beijing appears to be using regulatory uncertainty to create a captive market sufficiently sized to absorb Huawei's supply, while still allowing purchases of H20s to meet actual demands,' said Lennart Heim, an AI-focused researcher at Rand, of China's push for companies to avoid American AI chips. 'This signals that domestic alternatives remain inadequate even as China pressures foreign suppliers.' US President Donald Trump on Aug 11 called the H20 chip 'obsolete,' saying that China 'already has it in a different form.' That echoed previous statements by officials in his administration, who defended the decision to resume H20 exports on the grounds that Huawei already offers comparable chips to the H20. The US should keep the Chinese AI ecosystem reliant on less-advanced American technology for as long as possible, these officials argue, in order to deprive Huawei of the revenue and know-how that would come from a broader customer base. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other Trump officials have also claimed that the H20 move was part of a deal to improve American access to Chinese rare-earth minerals – despite the Trump team's previous assertions that such an arrangement was not on the table. The first Nvidia H20 and AMD MI308 licences arrived a bit over a week after Mr Bessent's declaration – after Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang met with Mr Trump and both companies agreed to share their China revenue with the US government. BLOOMBERG
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
China, US pledge funds for Pacific Islands ahead of key meet they will not attend
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Major powers including the United States and China are pushing for influence in the Pacific region. SYDNEY - A Chinese corporation has pledged A$1 billion ($836 million) to Nauru, the Pacific Islands nation with a population of 12,000 said on Aug 12, as major powers including the United States push for influence in the region. The announcement comes ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Pacific Islands Forum regional bloc on Aug 14 and the region's top political meeting in September. The Solomon Islands, which hosts the annual leaders meeting and is China's biggest ally in the region, made the surprise decision to block 21 donor countries , including China and the United States, from attending after pressure from Beijing to exclude Taiwan. The US expressed disappointment with the move but on Aug 12 made its own US$60 million (S$77.17 million) pledge to the region under a 2022 treaty, as news of the Chinese agreement with Nauru was made public. The US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told Pacific Islands officials in Washington on Aug 11 the long-promised funds would be released by the Trump administration, the State Department said. Meanwhile, Australia, the largest forum member, has sent high-level delegations to Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu for security talks. Nauru said its Foreign Affairs Minister Lionel Aingimea had signed the proposal in Beijing worth A$1 billion with the China Rural Revitalisation and Development Corporation for economic development. The deal was signed last week and would develop Nauru's renewable energy, phosphate industry, fisheries, water, agriculture, transport and health sectors, the statement said. A Nauru government official was unable to provide further details. Nauru's President David Adeang visited China in July to trace his ancestral roots, China's embassy in Nauru said in July. The Pacific leaders meeting in September will consider regional security, with Australia seeking to block China from forging further security ties in its Pacific neighbourhood. Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Pacific Minister Pat Conroy will hold security talks in Vanuatu on Aug 13, with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporting a deal worth A$500 million over a decade under consideration. Vanuatu said the two countries expected to sign a deal covering infrastructure and economic development in September. Ms Wong said in a Sky television interview on Aug 12 the Pacific is 'essential to our stability, to our security'. Mr Marles on Aug 12 opened the Lombrum Naval Base in Papua New Guinea, which he said was the largest security infrastructure project delivered by Australia in the Pacific. The upgrade to the PNG defence base was funded by the US and Australia. REUTERS
Business Times
an hour ago
- Business Times
China urges firms not to use Nvidia H20 chips in new guidance
[HONG KONG] China has urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia's H20 processors, particularly for government-related purposes, complicating the chipmaker's attempts to recoup billions in lost China revenue as well as the Trump administration's unprecedented push to turn those sales into a US government windfall. Over the past few weeks, Chinese authorities have sent notices to a range of firms discouraging use of the less-advanced semiconductors, sources familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named discussing sensitive information. The guidance was particularly strong against the use of H20s for any government or national security-related work by state enterprises or private companies, the sources said. In addition to Nvidia, Beijing's overall push affects artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), one of the sources said, though it's unclear whether any letters specifically mentioned AMD's MI308 chip. Both companies recently secured Washington's approval to resume lower-end AI chip sales to China, on the controversial and legally questionable condition that they give the US government a 15 per cent cut of the related revenue. Now, Nvidia and AMD face the challenge that their Chinese customers are under Beijing's pressure not to make those purchases. Some of Beijing's letters to companies included a series of questions, according to one of the sources, such as why they buy Nvidia H20 chips over local alternatives, whether that's a necessary choice given domestic options, and whether they have found any security issues in the Nvidia hardware. The notices coincide with state media reports that cast doubt on the security and reliability of H20 processors. Chinese regulators have raised those concerns directly with Nvidia, which has repeatedly denied that its chips contain such vulnerabilities. Right now, China's most stringent chip guidance is limited to sensitive applications, a situation that bears similarities to the way Beijing restricted Tesla vehicles and Apple iPhones in certain institutions and locations over security concerns. China's government also at one point barred the use of Micron Technology chips in critical infrastructure. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Still, it's possible that Beijing may extend its heavier-handed Nvidia and AMD guidance to a wider range of settings, according to one source with direct knowledge of the deliberations, who said that those conversations are in early stages. AMD declined to comment, while Nvidia said that 'the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure'. China has ample supplies of domestic chips, Nvidia said, and 'will not and never has relied on American chips for government operations'. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to faxed requests for comment on this story, which is based on interviews with more than a half-dozen sources familiar with Beijing's policy discussions. The White House did not respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours. The Chinese government's posture could make it more difficult for Nvidia and AMD to sell their hardware into the world's largest market for semiconductors. It also raises questions about the Trump administration's explanation for why the US is allowing those exports mere months after effectively banning such sales. Multiple senior US officials have said that their policy reversal was part of a trade accord with China, but Beijing has publicly indicated that the resumed H20 shipments were not part of any bilateral deal. China's recent notices to companies suggest that the Asian country may not have desired such a concession from Washington in the first place. Beijing's concerns are twofold. For starters, Chinese officials are worried that Nvidia chips could have location-tracking and remote shutdown capabilities, a suggestion that Nvidia has vehemently denied. Still, Trump officials are actively exploring whether location-tracking could be used to help curtail suspected smuggling of restricted components into China, and lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require location verification for advanced AI chips. Second, Beijing is intensely focused on developing its domestic chip capabilities, and wants Chinese companies to shift away from Western chips in favour of local offerings. Officials have previously urged Chinese firms to choose domestic semiconductors over Nvidia H20 processors, Bloomberg reported last September, and have introduced energy efficiency standards that the H20 chip does not meet. But Beijing has stopped short of outright banning the hardware, which Nvidia designed specifically for Chinese customers to abide by years of US curbs on sales of advanced chips to the Asian country. The H20 chip has less computational power than Nvidia's top offerings, but its strong memory bandwidth is quite well suited to the inference stage of AI development, when models recognise patterns and draw conclusions. That's made it a desirable product to companies such as Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings in China, where domestic chip champion Huawei Technologies is struggling to produce enough advanced components to meet market demand. By one estimate from Biden officials, who considered but did not implement controls on H20 sales, losing access to that Nvidia chip would make it three to six times more expensive for Chinese companies to run inference on advanced AI models. 'Beijing appears to be using regulatory uncertainty to create a captive market sufficiently sized to absorb Huawei's supply, while still allowing purchases of H20s to meet actual demands,' said Lennart Heim, an AI-focused researcher at Rand, of China's push for companies to avoid American AI chips. 'This signals that domestic alternatives remain inadequate even as China pressures foreign suppliers.' US President Donald Trump on Monday called the H20 chip 'obsolete', saying that China 'already has it in a different form'. That echoed previous statements by officials in his administration, who defended the decision to resume H20 exports on the grounds that Huawei already offers comparable chips to the H20. The US should keep the Chinese AI ecosystem reliant on less-advanced American technology for as long as possible, these officials argue, in order to deprive Huawei of the revenue and know-how that would come from a broader customer base. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other Trump officials have also claimed that the H20 move was part of a deal to improve American access to Chinese rare-earth minerals, despite the Trump team's previous assertions that such an arrangement was not on the table. 'As the Chinese deliver their magnets, then the H20s will come off,' Lutnick said last month. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in late July that the magnet issue had been 'solved'. The first Nvidia H20 and AMD MI308 licenses arrived a bit over a week after Bessent's declaration, after Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang met with the president and both companies agreed to share their China revenue with the US government. BLOOMBERG
