Singapore

THE government could drop the current fixed-fee framework for operating the Downtown Line and place it on the risk-sharing model being used for the North-South, East-West, Circle and North East lines.

Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Friday that the government will review the financing framework for the Downtown Line that receives a fixed fee from operator SBS Transit to ensure the line is run reliably with high productivity and is sustainable.

Speaking in Parliament during the ministry's Committee of Supply debate, the minister said the Downtown Line's operator SBS Transit bears significant commercial risk under New Rail Financing Framework (NRFF) version 1, even as the government owns and replaces operating assets.

"If ridership is healthy and fare revenue far exceeds operating cost, they get to enjoy a good part of the profit. But if the reverse is true, they bear the loss."

Mr Ong, however, noted that it is not ideal for a public transport business to be unstable.

Walter Theseira, associate professor of economics at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, thinks the government might play a role in risk-sharing for the Downtown Line, by protecting against excessive losses, as well as by imposing a profit-sharing cap.

The government will cream off the operator's high profits but cushion big losses to smooth out commercial volatility under this model, known as the New Rail Financing Framework version 2.

The government dropped its fixed fee financing framework and applied this model for the North-South, East-West, Circle and North East lines.

As for the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL), it is on NRFF version 3, with the government collecting all the fare revenue and bearing all revenue risk, as well as granting the operator a fee to run the line in the initial period when ridership is still not stable.

TEL's operator SMRT will be placed on the same framework for the North-South, East-West, Circle and North East lines, after ridership stabilises.

Prof Theseira doesn't see the Downtown Line transitioning to NRFF version 3, because this structure is most suitable when ridership is difficult to predict or very unstable.

"DTL's revenue should be stable by now, barring the pandemic, although it may be different from initial projections. Hence there should be enough basis for transitioning to NRFF version 2, unless it turns out that ridership and costs are such that the DTL cannot possibly be run at an operating profit.

"In that case, there is no option but to go for version 3," he said.

Ong Khang Chuen, analyst at CGS-CIMB Securities (Singapore), said the Downtown Line has been a loss-making rail line for SBS Transit, as revenue generated from ridership has not been able to offset operations costs.

With the massive disruption to everyday life in 2020, mobility has been largely reduced, causing further losses.

"In my view, it would be difficult for operators to sustain high reliability of rail line operations in Singapore, when sustaining losses continuously, " he said.

He added it would remain to be seen whether ridership can reach pre-pandemic levels, given there has been a structural change in work arrangements.

The pandemic-driven circuit breaker and the work-from-home directive implemented last year saw average daily ridership for the Downtown Line drop 46 per cent to 257,000 passenger trips, whereas the decline for North East Line was less drastic at 40.9 per cent to 355,000 passenger trips.

Shares of SBS saw a minor boost following the government's announcement of the review.

The counter closed 1 per cent higher at S$3.02.

[BEIJING] BYD, China’s biggest electric vehicle maker by sales, on Friday (Mar 27) posted its first annual profit drop in four years, hit by weak sales in its home market.

Net profit slid 19 per cent to 32.6 billion yuan (S$6.1 billion), the automaker said in a stock exchange filing, compared with an average 12.1 per cent fall expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Revenue grew 3.5 per cent, the weakest rate in six years.

For the three months through December, profit fell 38.2 per cent from a year earlier to 9.3 billion yuan, a third consecutive quarter of decline.

Gross profit margin from autos and related products, which contributed 80.7 per cent to operating revenue, slipped to 20.5 per cent last year, down 1.8 percentage points from a year earlier.

Policy support still strong, but margins under pressure

BYD’s shares rose 3.7 per cent ahead of the results in Hong Kong and closed up 2.1 per cent in Shenzhen.

A profit dip raises questions about the company’s earnings visibility after years of rapid growth, reinforcing a more cautious view on the EV sector in China, the world’s largest auto market.

Policy support remains strong, but margins are under pressure and returns increasingly depend on scale, cost control and global expansion.

“We also recognise that competition in the (new energy vehicle) industry has reached a fever pitch, and is undergoing a brutal ‘knockout stage’,” BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said in its earnings statement, while reaffirming its overseas push.

BYD was once propelled by its affordable Dynasty and Ocean series, but has been losing ground as rivals such as Leapmotor and Geely narrow its technological lead.

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It was China’s biggest automaker in 2025 but fell to fourth place over the January-to-February period when its overall sales dropped by the most since the Covid-19 pandemic.

BYD makes only all-electric and plug-in petrol-electric hybrid vehicles, so has suffered the most from the expiration of purchase tax exemption on new energy vehicles.

Cars under 150,000 yuan made up 61% of domestic sales

Sales were also impacted this year by revised subsidies favouring models priced higher than those in BYD’s core budget segment.

Cars going for under 150,000 yuan (S$27,927) accounted over 61 per cent of BYD’s domestic sales in November, based on a Reuters analysis of the company’s filings and sales data from Chinese auto analytics platform DATADIC.

To revive sales, BYD unveiled 11 models with a faster-charging battery and pledged to grow its flash charging network. Still, the higher-priced lineup is unlikely to be enough to boost sales as consumers increasingly seek affordable options, analysts said.

The company on Thursday priced its Song Ultra EV with new battery technology below the presale level.

BYD said it would expand sales abroad. Overseas sales as a share of the total more than doubled to 22.7 per cent last year and more than doubled again to 50 per cent in January-to-February period. Even so, overseas sales are not enough to offset weak sales at home.

Overseas sales delivered a 19.5 per cent gross profit margin last year, up 1.9 percentage points from a year prior, versus a 3.5 per cent slide from domestic sales. REUTERS