LG Chem's EV battery business is booming with orders

LG Chem is seeing its electric vehicle (EV) battery business in full swing on the back of rising orders, industry sources said Monday.

The company's EV battery business posted 5.08 trillion won ($4.28 billion) in sales in the first half of the year, accounting for 37.2 percent of its total revenue.

For EV batteries, sales topped 30 percent of total business last year. Compared with two years earlier, its share jumped by 12.8 percentage points, the sources said.

The EV battery unit's operating income stood at 104 billion won in the January-March period, making up 13.3 percent of the total.

LG Chem became the largest supplier of EV batteries in the first half of the year.

Based on the global usage of EV batteries, LG Chem's market share stood at 24.6 percent in the January-June period, up from 10.4 percent a year earlier, according to market tracker SNE Research.

The data showed that 10.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of LG Chem's EV batteries were used in the first half of this year, compared with 5.7 GWh from a year earlier.

SNE Research attributed the hike to robust sales of the Tesla Model 3, the Renault Zoe EV and the Audi e-tron EV, which are all powered by LG Chem's EV batteries.

China's CATL came in second in the first half of the year with a 23.5 percent market share, down slightly from 25.1 percent a year earlier.

Two other Korean EV battery makers — Samsung SDI and SK Innovation — came in fourth and sixth place with market shares of 6 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.

The strong performance of the Korean EV battery makers came despite a sharp decline in the global usage of EV batteries due to the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The combined global usage of EV batteries came to 42.6 GWh in the January-June period, down 23 percent from 55.3 GWh a year earlier.

Yonhap