Chery has 78 billion yuan more cash than debt. That is 60% of what the whole company is worth on the market, so most of the price is the bank balance. Take the cash out and the market prices the car business at roughly 2x operating profit. Geely's trades at 6x, BYD's at 20x, and neither rival holds Chery's cash.
More than half the cars Chery sold last year left China. The company shipped Tiggo and Jetour SUVs to Europe, Russia, South America and the Middle East, and booked 300 billion yuan in revenue doing it. Net profit rose 35%, to 19 billion yuan. For a carmaker in the middle of a price war, that is a good year.
The stock has been listed on Hong Kong's HKEX since September 2025. At HK$24.42 on July 27, 2026, the whole company is worth about 129 billion yuan on the market. Of that, 78 billion is cash the company already has in the bank. You are paying the other 51 billion for the largest car exporter in China.
What Chery Does
Chery Automobile (9973.HK) is a mass-market carmaker based in Wuhu, in eastern China. It makes petrol, hybrid and electric passenger cars under the Chery, Jetour, Omoda and Exeed names. The company was founded in 1997 and spent most of its life private. It is not a startup and not a bet on one technology. It sells cars, at scale, and has made money doing it for years. A company that has been building cars since 1997 has been a public one for ten months.
What sets Chery apart from its domestic rivals is where the cars go. Over the past two decades it has built the widest overseas dealer network of any Chinese brand, and in 2025 more than half of its sales came from outside China. That export machine drove 300 billion yuan of revenue and 19 billion of net profit. Gross margin held at 13.8%: thin, but normal for a brand that competes on price.
Here is the part that does not fit: the strongest numbers in the group sit on the cheapest stock.
| Revenue | CNY 300B exports >50% |
| Net Profit | CNY 19B +35% |
| Operating Profit | CNY 25.1B |
| Gross Margin | 13.8% |
| Net Cash | CNY 78B |
| Net Cash / Market Value | ~60% |
| Dividend | CNY 0.86 / share (~3.8%) |
| Listed Since | September 2025 |
| Price (Jul 27, 2026) | HK$24.42 |
| BYD (1211.HK) | ~20× (approx.) |
| Geely (0175.HK) | ~6× |
| Chery (9973.HK) | ~2–4×−60% |
EV/EBIT = market value less net cash, over operating profit. Source: HKEX filings 2026 · peer figures re-checked Jul 2026. BYD post-correction (approx.).
Cheaper Than Both. And Leaner Than Both.
Three Chinese carmakers make real money at scale: BYD, Geely and Chery. The market knows the first two well and has barely met the third.
BYD is the giant. It earned more than twice Chery's revenue last year, builds its own batteries, and makes the biggest profit of the three. It is also the one investors pay up for, near 20x, and the only one of the three that owes more than it holds in cash. Geely is the brand collector. It owns Volvo, Zeekr and Polestar, sells a premium story on top of the volume, and holds 47 billion yuan in spare cash. Its business trades near 6x.
Chery is the smallest of the three by revenue. It is also the leanest. Of every 100 yuan it sells, 8.4 end up as operating profit. Geely keeps 6.1, BYD 5.3. Chery does that on a thinner gross margin than either rival, and it still out-earned Geely last year, 19 billion yuan against 16.9 billion, on lower sales. The smallest carmaker of the three runs the most profitable engine.
| Metric | Chery (9973.HK) | Geely (0175.HK) | BYD (1211.HK) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue (2025) | CNY 300B | CNY 345B | ~CNY 735B (approx.) |
| Net profit (2025) | CNY 19.0B (+35%) | CNY 16.9B | ~CNY 30B (approx.) |
| Operating margin | 8.4% | 6.1% | 5.3% (approx.) |
| Balance sheet | Net cash +CNY 78B | Net cash +CNY 47B | Net debt ~CNY 26B (approx.) |
| Overseas sales | ~52% of revenue | minority | mostly domestic |
| Control | State-linked | Founder-led | Founder-led |
| Distance from high | −27% | −43% | −44% |
| EV/EBIT | ~2–4× | ~6× | ~20× (approx.) |
| Price (Jul 27, 2026) | HK$24.42 | HK$18.82 | HK$88.55 |
The leanest and richest of the three is also the cheapest. Markets do not usually price the strongest operator in a group that way. The reason sits outside the accounts.
Why Chery Trades at a Discount
The cheapness is not an accident of the numbers. Four things sit between Chery and a normal price, and none of them is the profit.
The first is time. Chery has been public for ten months. It is not yet in the major indices, coverage is thin, and big institutions are still building positions. A ten-month-old listing trades on thin attention, and thin attention trades cheap.
The second is who owns it. Chery's largest shareholder is Wuhu Jianhui, an investment vehicle tied to the Wuhu municipal government, inside a structure with no single controlling owner. That is a different animal from BYD, which Wang Chuanfu built and still runs as a private founder. State-linked ownership brings a discount: the market is never sure spare cash comes back to shareholders rather than serving the state.
The third is the export engine that also powers the profit. In 2025, overseas markets brought in about 52% of revenue, slightly more than the home market did. That reach is the growth story. It also means tariffs, currencies and politics abroad can hit Chery in a way they cannot hit a rival that sells mostly at home.
The fourth is plain positioning. Chery is a value brand where Geely sells a premium story alongside the volume. Chery sells Chery. The dividend is modest, near 3.8%, and there is no buyback. For all that cash, it has given the market little reason to trust what it will do with it.
What Closes the Gap
A discount built on youth and doubt is not permanent. Three things, all observable, would narrow it.
- 01 The listing ages. Once a listing is old enough, it can enter the main indices and the Stock Connect pipes that carry mainland money. The funds barred from buying a brand-new listing are finally allowed in. None of this requires the business to change. It requires the calendar to advance, which it does on its own.
- 02 A capital-return signal. The governance discount has a direct answer: give the cash back. A buyback, or a special dividend drawn from the 78 billion yuan pile, would tell the market that shareholders sit ahead of the state's other uses for the money. The company has done neither yet. The first move in that direction is the cleanest catalyst on the table, because it answers the discount directly.
- 03 The margin holds through the price war. China's car market is in a brutal price fight, and 13.8% is a thin gross margin to defend. If Chery holds it across 2026 while volumes keep climbing, the market has to accept that the export mix protects pricing in a way domestic-only rivals cannot match. A margin that survives the war is worth more than one that only exists in a calm year.
What Chery Is Actually Worth
Start with the cash, because it sets the floor. Chery has 78 billion yuan more cash than debt. The whole company is worth about 129 billion on the market, so the cash alone is 60% of the price. That leaves about 51 billion for the car business itself, which earned 25 billion in operating profit last year.
That is the 2x. Two years of profit would buy it outright. Count the cash more strictly, leaving out the money parked in wealth-management products, and it still costs under 4x.
Geely is the fair yardstick. It makes money, it has been listed for years, and the market has had time to price it. Its business trades at 6x. Price Chery's the same way, on the same operating profit, and the car business alone would be worth roughly three times what it is today. That is before counting a single yuan of the cash. Chery also sits closer to its own high than either rival: cheap, and holding up better than the field.
Risks We Are Not Downplaying
Two conditions would break this thesis, and the first has a sharper edge than the export number suggests.
Risk 1: The export engine meets a tariff wall
Overseas sales are about 52% of Chery's revenue, and most of that sits in one place. Europe takes roughly half of everything Chery sells abroad, and it grew almost fourfold in a year. Europe is also where the barriers are going up fastest. Full electric imports already pay EU anti-subsidy duties of up to 35%. Brussels is now moving to extend those duties to plug-in hybrids, and Chery is named as a main target. Its first European hybrids are due to arrive just as any new duty lands. Brazil and Mexico are raising tariffs too, on much smaller slices of the book. A minimum-price deal with Brussels, like the one Volkswagen's Cupra secured, could soften the blow. Chery does not have one. The cars keep selling, and management still guides deliveries higher in 2026. The danger is to the margin on the fastest-growing region, right as it scales. If that margin thins through 2026, the premium for Chery's reach turns into a discount for its dependence.
Risk 2: The cash stays trapped
The 78 billion is only worth 78 billion if shareholders can reach it. With a state-linked owner and no buyback, the fear is that the money goes into new plant, acquisitions or state priorities instead of coming back. That fear is the discount. If a full year passes with no buyback, no special dividend and rising spending on capacity, the doubt is confirmed rather than eased. The catalyst and the risk are the same lever, pulled in opposite directions.
One thing sits under both. A 13.8% gross margin is thin, and a crack below the low teens would eat the operating profit the whole case rests on.
The Decision
Written at HK$24.42 on July 27, 2026.
This is a valuation case, not a growth story. The bet is simple: the market re-prices a profitable, cash-rich carmaker once the reasons for the discount fade. The cash sets a floor under the price, and at 2x a good deal of the export gloom is already paid for. The room above runs from 2x toward the 6x that Geely already earns. A European tariff would slow that climb. It would not touch the floor.
| Scenario | Observable Signal | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Bull | First buyback or special dividend + margin above 13% | Governance doubt answered, re-rating toward peer multiple |
| Neutral | Listing seasons, coverage builds, no capital return yet | Slow drift toward fair value, thesis intact |
| Bear | Tariffs squeeze overseas margins + rising capex + no return of cash | Discount confirmed as structural, thesis invalidated |
Three signals would end the argument: an overseas-margin squeeze as tariffs bite, a full year with no return of cash, or group gross margin cracking below the low teens. For a related read on how a Chinese vehicle maker earns its multiple, see the Yadea analysis and the wider Electric Vehicles research.
China's largest car exporter is on sale for the price of its cash. The market's only question is whether the cash is really yours.
Sources
- Chery Automobile FY2025 Annual Results: HKEX filing, 2026
- Peer figures (Geely 0175.HK, BYD 1211.HK): each company's own HKEX annual results, re-checked July 2026. BYD net debt and EV/EBIT stated post-correction (approx.).
- Revenue split (mainland China RMB 142.9B, overseas RMB 157.4B, of RMB 300.3B total): Chery Automobile FY2025 annual report, HKEX, 2025
- Overseas unit sales by region, 2025 (Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Oceania, North America): Chery Group performance disclosures, 2025 to 2026
- Tariff developments: EU battery-EV countervailing duties of 7.8% to 35.3% (live since October 2024) and the proposed extension to plug-in hybrids naming Chery; Brazil to 35% and Mexico to 50%; price-undertaking guidance and the Cupra exemption. European Commission, Reuters, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and industry reporting, 2024 to 2026
- Ownership structure: Chery Automobile listing prospectus and HKEX filings, 2025
- Prices and per-share calculations: own calculations on HKEX market data as of July 27, 2026