Last year, a dividend of 8.1 billion was distributed; Zeng Yiqun donated another 2 billion to his alma mater.

Questioning AI · How does CATL’s performance growth support Zeng Yuqun’s charitable actions?

Radar Finance Production | By Ding Yu | Meng Shuai

As CATL’s performance surges, Zeng Yuqun once again gives back to his alma mater, making a huge donation of stocks worth approximately 20 billion yuan.

On the evening of March 31, CATL released an announcement stating that its controlling shareholder, Xiamen Ruiting Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xiamen Ruiting), plans to make a free donation of 5 million shares of CATL’s A-shares non-restricted floating shares to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Education Development Foundation.

The annual report shows that CATL’s founder, Zeng Yuqun, holds 100% of the equity of Xiamen Ruiting through direct and indirect shareholding, and the latter directly holds 22.45% of CATL’s shares.

In addition to the 2 million CATL shares that were donated free of charge to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Education Development Foundation in 2021, within just a few years Zeng Yuqun has already donated nearly 3.4 billion yuan worth of shares to his alma mater through holding companies.

The confidence behind Zeng Yuqun’s generous donation back to his alma mater also depends on the strong performance of CATL. In 2025, CATL’s revenue has returned to the 400 billion-plus yuan level, and its net profit attributable to the parent has surged by more than 40% to 72.201 billion yuan.

It is worth noting that CATL plans to use half of its 2025 net profit attributable to the parent for dividends. Through Xiamen Ruiting, Zeng Yuqun is expected to receive about 8.1 billion yuan.

In the “2026 Hurun Global Rich List” unveiled in early March, Zeng Yuqun ranked 33rd on the overall list with a net worth of 380 billion yuan, up 46% from the previous year in terms of his personal wealth.

A 380 billion yuan billionaire gives back to alma mater, with cumulative donations of nearly 3.4 billion yuan

According to an announcement released by CATL on March 31, recently, Xiamen Ruiting and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Education Development Foundation signed the “Donation Agreement for the ‘Zeng Yuqun Education Fund’ of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.” Xiamen Ruiting plans to donate, free of charge, the 5 million A-share non-restricted floating shares of CATL that it holds to the foundation.

Based on the company’s closing price of 401.7 yuan per share on the date of the announcement, the value of the donated shares is approximately 2.009 billion yuan.

All the gains and funds generated from the aforementioned donated shares will be fully injected into the “Zeng Yuqun Education Development Fund” to support the development of educational undertakings at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Upon completion of this donation, Xiamen Ruiting’s shareholding in CATL will decrease from 1.025 billion shares to 1.02 billion shares, and its shareholding ratio will fall from 22.45% to 22.34%.

CATL stated that this donation will not result in any change in the company’s controlling shareholder, and will not have any material impact on the company’s corporate governance structure or its ongoing operations.

Public information shows that the establishment of the “Zeng Yuqun Education Development Fund” can be traced back to April 2021. At that time, coinciding with Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s 125th anniversary celebration, Zeng Yuqun was appointed as a university director and donated funds to set up the “Zeng Yuqun Education Fund.”

In August of the same year, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Future Technology Institute was formally unveiled and established. Ni Jun, CATL’s Chief Manufacturing Officer, was appointed as dean, and Zeng Yuqun was appointed as honorary dean of the Future Technology Institute.

Four months later, CATL announced that its controlling shareholder, Ningbo Ruiting, in support of the development of education, planned to make a free donation of 2 million shares of the company held by it to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Education Development Foundation, accounting for 0.09% of the company’s total share capital.

According to Tianyancha, Ningbo Ruiting has since been renamed as Xiamen Ruiting, and Zeng Yuqun is its actual controller. Based on the closing price of 687 yuan per share on the date when CATL’s aforementioned announcement was released, the value of this donation is as high as 1.374 billion yuan.

This year marks the 130th anniversary of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Coupled with the value of the donated shares of approximately 2.009 billion yuan, within just a few years Zeng Yuqun’s controlled Xiamen Ruiting has already cumulatively donated nearly 3.4 billion yuan to Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Zeng Yuqun does not forget his hometown; CATL is based in Ningde

Behind Xiamen Ruiting’s “generous” donation to Shanghai Jiao Tong University is Zeng Yuqun’s original intention to be grateful to his alma mater.

Public information shows that Zeng Yuqun is an alumnus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, class of 1989. He graduated from the School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering.

More than 40 years ago, from a poor family background, Zeng Yuqun relied on talent and hard work to leave the small mountain village in Ningde, Fujian.

After graduating from university, Zeng Yuqun was assigned to a state-owned enterprise in Fuzhou, but not long after he resigned and went to Dongguan, joining the foreign-invested Xinke Magnetoelectric Factory. This company was affiliated with TDK Hong Kong, Japan’s subsidiary, and was the “king” of global computer hard disk head products at the time.

Because he was outstanding, Zeng Yuqun was highly valued and quickly promoted to management. At the age of 31, he became the company’s youngest engineering general director, and also the first mainland Chinese general director of the company.

In 1999, persuaded by colleagues Liang Shaokang and Chen Tanghua, Zeng Yuqun resigned together with the former to go into business and start a venture. In Hong Kong, he founded New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (ATL), and established a factory in Dongguan focusing on lithium battery technology.

To gain a foothold in the new industry, Zeng Yuqun, with an engineering background, began to study battery-related technologies seriously.

In 2001, Zeng Yuqun obtained a master’s degree from the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering at South China University of Technology. Five years later, he earned a doctorate from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, majoring in condensed matter physics.

In the early stage of entrepreneurship, several people including Zeng Yuqun pooled together 1 million USD to buy advanced polymer lithium battery patents of that time from the United States’ Bell Labs.

However, the technology bought with a large sum of money had major defects. After charging and discharging the batteries a few times, they would swell, and Bell Labs also had no way to solve the issue.

But after repeated experiments by Zeng Yuqun and others, they finally successfully solved the swelling problem, and ATL’s reputation then soared.

After that, ATL also successfully developed a special-shaped polymer lithium battery for the iPod and obtained Apple’s order for battery supply for 18 million iPods.

With the rise and popularization of smartphones, the company also supplied batteries to smartphone manufacturers such as vivo, Huawei, and Samsung, gradually growing into the world’s largest polymer lithium battery supplier.

In 2005, as investors cashed out and exited, Japanese TDK invested 100 million USD to acquire ATL. Zeng Yuqun and others, after twists and turns, became “employees” of their old employer again.

In 2008, as China began promoting new energy vehicles, ATL also set up an EVE division internally to focus on research on power batteries.

At that time, Zeng Yuqun keenly realized that in the initial phase of vigorously promoting the new energy vehicle industry, foreign-invested enterprises might be excluded from new energy subsidies.

So, with support from Zhang Yujie, then chairman of ATL, Zeng Yuqun spun off the ATL power battery business and established Ningde New Energy Technology Co., Ltd.

According to Tencent News’ “Prism,” an insider at CATL said that back then Zeng Yuqun used resignation as leverage to force the company to settle in Ningde, which was relatively remote. “Zeng Yuqun has a very strong hometown sentiment. He wants to do something for his hometown, but he does not want to just donate money or goods. Only by building an industry can he truly benefit his hometown.”

According to Tianyancha, in 2011 Zeng Yuqun founded a new company specializing in automotive batteries—CATL—focusing on the research and development of energy storage lithium-ion batteries, completely separating from the foreign-backed Ningde New Energy.

At that time, Zeng Yuqun bet on ternary lithium batteries. These batteries had lower safety and higher costs, but higher energy density and cold resistance. This aligned well with the new energy policy of 2017 that encouraged models with higher energy density and longer driving range.

CATL was thus able to grow rapidly. Subsequently, it established cooperation with many new energy vehicle manufacturers such as NIO, Avatr, Changan, Li Auto, and Zeekr.

In June 2018, CATL successfully listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Two years later, CATL officially announced that it would become Tesla’s battery supplier for its new Model 3, causing the company’s market value to surge for a time.

In 2021, CATL’s revenue first broke through the 100 billion yuan mark. Net profit attributable to the parent soared to 159.31 billion yuan, and its market value also rose to the trillion-yuan level, leading to the establishment of the “Ning Wang” nickname.

Last year’s impressive performance; inventory growth nearly 60%

Before the publication of this donation announcement, on March 9, CATL delivered its 2025 results, with performance reaching new highs.

The financial report shows that in 2025, CATL achieved full-year revenue of 4237.02 billion yuan, up 17.04% year over year, reversing last year’s decline and turning the situation around; it recorded net profit attributable to the parent of 722.01 billion yuan, up 42.28% year over year.

From the business segments perspective, in 2025, the company’s power battery sales reached 541 GWh, up 41.85% year over year, and its global market share surpassed a historical high; revenue was 316.5 billion yuan, up about 25%; gross profit margin was 23.84%, basically stable year over year.

In the same period, the company’s energy storage battery sales reached 121 GWh, up 29.13%. Its shipment volume has ranked number one globally for 5 consecutive years; revenue was 62.4 billion yuan, up about 9%; gross profit margin was 26.71%, slightly down year over year.

Looking at single-quarter performance, CATL’s fourth-quarter performance last year was particularly strong.

In that quarter, the company achieved revenue of 1406.3 billion yuan, up 36.58% year over year; net profit attributable to the parent was 231.67 billion yuan, up 57.13% year over year. The growth rates of both revenue and net profit attributable to the parent significantly exceeded the performance of the first three quarters.

At the March performance briefing, CATL stated that since the second half of last year, benefiting from saturated capacity utilization and expanded delivery scale, the company’s profitability has remained steady and robust.

In addition, by the end of 2025, CATL’s asset-liability ratio was 61.94%, down more than 3 percentage points from the end of the previous year, which was the lowest level in nearly five years.

However, as the business expanded, CATL’s inventory scale also increased to 945.26 billion yuan, expanding by nearly 60% year over year. The ratio of inventory to total assets also rose by 2.09 percentage points to 9.7%.

Also, according to the announcement released by CATL on March 9 regarding “2025 Impairment Allowances Provided,” in 2025 the company recorded total asset impairment provisions of 90.79 billion yuan for relevant assets, of which it provided 51.52 billion yuan for inventory price write-downs.

At the performance briefing, CATL said that according to accounting standards, it conducts impairment tests on assets on a regular basis. It provides for impairment for the portion where an asset’s recoverable amount is lower than its book value. The main reason why the impairment amount was larger in the fourth quarter is that impairments of inventory and fixed assets increased.

The increase in inventory impairment was because, as the company’s business scale continued to expand, the inventory balance also increased.

Considering factors such as warehouse aging and pricing, the company calculates the net realizable value of inventories. For the portion where the net realizable value is lower than the inventory cost, it records a write-down provision.

The main reason for fixed asset impairment is that the company’s production line equipment has been continuously upgraded technologically. Based on the calculation results, for the portion where the recoverable amount is lower than the equipment cost, the company records impairment provisions.

Regarding CATL’s future developments, Radar Finance will continue to monitor.