Australian clients are rushing to make payments, European orders are fully booked, and an in-depth analysis of the profit turning point for second-tier lithium battery factories.

Ask AI · Why has Ruipulan Jun’s pricing linkage mechanism become key to turning losses into profits?

21st Century Business Herald reporter Fei Xinyi

In the fourth quarter of 2025, the phone calls received by Ruipulan Jun (0666.HK) from its sales and delivery team were overwhelmed by customers from overseas.

On the other end of the line was an Australian home energy storage supplier. To lock in supply before the subsidy window period in the fourth quarter, one customer said bluntly: “I’ll put down 80 million first—keep the cells for me.”

Such a scene of chasing orders with cash in hand has, in the lithium battery industry over the past several years, almost only occurred among industry leaders.

But this time, it was the turn of this second-tier lithium battery manufacturer that has lived for years in the shadow of big players.

This surge in demand ultimately materialized into a historic set of results.

In 2025, Ruipulan Jun achieved its first annual profitability since its founding: during the reporting period, the company recorded revenue of RMB 24.334 billion, up 36.7% year over year. Full-year net profit was RMB 681 million, turning losses into profits; in 2025 it sold 82.7 GWh of lithium battery products, up about 89.2% year over year. Q3 and Q4 consecutively set new records for quarterly deliveries.

In the lithium battery industry, there is a “one superpower and many strong players” pattern. In the narrative for 2024, CATL firmly held more than 60% of the global market share, as well as over 90% of the industry’s operating profit. In the two core tracks of power and energy storage, it maintained an unshakable leading position.

In recent years, the survival story for second-tier lithium battery makers has largely been about struggling in the red sea of a price war, expanding capacity at a loss under pressure from leaders, in an attempt to survive by achieving scale.

But in the 2025 lithium battery annual report season, even though CATL’s industry dominance remains steady, this narrative is being rewritten. Multiple second-tier battery companies, including Ruipulan Jun, have turned in performance reports showing significant improvement.

How to get out of the shadow of the leader—and stop being an empty slogan. Second-tier lithium battery makers, like blades of grass that grow in tough conditions, seize the structural demand tailwinds in overseas markets, hold the line on pricing and profit, and squeeze into the sunlit gaps to gain room to grow.

According to multiple authoritative institutions, Ruipulan Jun ranked first globally in 2025 in terms of shipment volume of home energy storage battery cells. In the power segment, Ruipulan Jun targeted a subsegment in the commercial vehicle heavy-truck market, achieving the second-highest nationwide vehicle loading volume, and also ranked among the top in China in terms of loading volume for lithium iron phosphate power batteries.

The reversal of demand in the 2025 lithium battery industry is a prerequisite for second-tier players to break through. Among them, the most certain and most urgent growth comes from the pull of subsidy policies in Europe and Australia that boost demand for home energy storage.

“From September to early December last year, home energy storage suppliers in Australia were so afraid they wouldn’t be able to buy cells that they rushed to secure supply ahead of the subsidy policy. ” A relevant executive at Ruipulan Jun recalled that during that period, customers’ anxiety nearly overflowed the phone lines—making it an industry norm to lock in capacity by paying a prepayment directly.

The demand surge continued into this year and even brought “sweet” troubles. “The biggest headache during this period is booking cargo ships. The shipment schedule to Morocco is simply not available—kept getting pushed back.” In the shipment plan for March this year, there were still hundreds of megawatt-hours of goods that could not be dispatched due to delayed ship schedules, and fluctuations in shipping costs also became a daily variable to deal with.

Faced with the flood of incoming orders, Ruipulan Jun’s choice was to prioritize securing production capacity for its overseas strategic customers, while selectively giving up lower-priced orders from within China. Of course, all of this is built on Ruipulan Jun’s particular emphasis on reputation and business credibility.

In Ruipulan Jun’s 2025 energy storage business, the advantage of the home energy storage segment in overseas markets is especially evident. This is because overseas home energy storage offers better product premium potential, which can generate sustainable gross margin. And to protect that profit, management emphasized the company’s strategy: “Dynamically assess delivery lead times and production capacity matching for very large orders, prioritize assurance when necessary; allocate limited capacity to high-quality orders that can generate healthy profits.”

The effectiveness of this strategy has been continuously validated on the order front. In March 2026, at the Italy International Renewable Energy Exhibition, Ruipulan Jun signed supply agreements on-site with seven European partners. Over the next two years, it will deliver a total of 8.3 GWh of energy storage systems.

At present, a surge in crude oil prices is driving a long-term adjustment in the global new energy structure, but the release of this demand has a clear lag. For the market in 2026, the company’s judgment is that this year’s overall growth demand is clear. And with the rollout of subsidy policies in Europe and elsewhere, it is expected that the market will see higher levels of business momentum in the second quarter.

Beyond capturing overseas structural demand tailwinds, strictly adhering to pricing discipline and maintaining healthy cash flow is the core reason Ruipulan Jun can realize profitability from scale growth.

In the second half of 2025, the lithium battery industry fell into a set of contradictory feedback loops: downstream demand for cells outstripped supply and production capacity was tight; upstream lithium carbonate prices kept rising; and the supply-demand game between upstream and downstream once reached a stalemate.

From October 2025 to early 2026, industry information shows that Ruipulan Jun’s average selling price for cells increased by about 25%-30%. Its future trajectory remains firmly tied to price fluctuations of raw materials such as lithium carbonate. Worth noting is that Ruipulan Jun is the first company in the industry to clearly propose that battery product pricing be linked to the upstream raw material price increase. It formally sent customers a notice about linked adjustments between battery prices and raw material prices.

In the lithium battery industry, where price war smoke has been everywhere in recent years, this was almost an unimaginable move. In previous years, to grab market share, second-tier players were willing to report prices below cost even at a loss—so there was essentially no room to talk about a pricing linkage mechanism.

“Growth is not the goal. High-quality growth is the goal. Receivables, profit, and cash flow must all be healthy.” This line, repeatedly emphasized by company management, runs through the company’s business decisions throughout 2025.

This business logic is reflected in every detail: adhere to not fighting a price war; prioritize ensuring high-quality customers and long-term cooperation. Even when supply is tight and some customers actively add premiums to lock in capacity, the company still makes choices and trade-offs—prioritizing strategic customers and exclusive cooperation relationships, so it is not thrown off by short-term high-priced orders disrupting its long-term customer layout.

In terms of capacity expansion, Ruipulan Jun has also chosen a pace completely different from the industry’s past frenzy of expansion. In 2025, the company’s annual cell production capacity was about 90 GWh, with capacity utilization rate rising significantly. On that basis, the company plans to continue steadily increasing capacity in 2026. Its core positioning is not to expand too aggressively—first to fully utilize capacity.

To deepen the gross profit “moat,” Ruipulan Jun also completed a key transition in 2025—from being a cell supplier to becoming a system solution service provider. That year, the company made a substantial addition to the production capacity for large-scale energy storage systems, growing by more than 30 times in one year.

In management’s view, the scale production capacity breakthrough achieved by the company in the Pack and energy storage system fields in 2025 is not only expected to increase the value per project, but also significantly strengthen customer stickiness. In addition to supplying core cells, the company can provide customers with end-to-end consulting services and problem-solving solutions covering testing, assembly, and certification. This may further enhance the company’s core barriers in competing in overseas markets.