Penghui Energy raked in 800 million yuan in half a year, with its overseas revenue surging by 157%. How did it grow into the world's top residential energy storage enterprise rated by international authoritative institutions?
Penghui Energy recorded a revenue of 10.978 billion yuan in the first half of the year, with a net profit of 816 million yuan turning from loss to profit, and its global market share of residential energy storage cells reached 28%, ranking first worldwide.
Energy Foresight learned that Penghui Energy released its 2026 semi-annual report on August 27.
Revenue hit 10.978 billion yuan, up 155.27% year on year; net profit attributable to shareholders stood at 816 million yuan, compared with a loss of 88.22 million yuan in the same period last year. Within one year, the company turned from losing money to making a net profit of 800 million yuan. This is not a simple performance rebound, but a complete turnaround from the brink of collapse.
This is not an isolated case across the entire energy storage industry. According to data from TrendForce, global energy storage cell shipments exceeded 460 GWh in the first half of 2026, a sharp year-on-year increase of about 94%. The residential energy storage track even achieved a growth rate of 113%, with shipments exceeding 53 GWh in the first half of the year. The shipments of leading enterprises including CATL, Hithium, EVE all exceeded 30 GWh. The energy storage industry is undergoing a rare round of profit recovery. However, Penghui's performance of jumping directly from losses to tenfold growth is still particularly eye-catching. Its energy storage cell shipments in the first half of the year reached 20.5 GWh, surging 202% year on year, leading the top 10 energy storage shipment rankings in terms of growth rate.
What did Penghui do right? Three words: bet on the right track.
The small residential energy storage market has nurtured the world's No. 1 player
Residential energy storage is a very special track. Downstream customers are not power generation groups that can cover their annual order demand with a single deal, but integrators distributed all over the world: products for European markets need to support charging at minus 20 degrees Celsius, Australian users focus heavily on cycle life, and Middle East customers ask directly whether the products can withstand high temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius. General-purpose products cannot meet these diverse and fragmented demands at all.
Penghui's three technical routes come in handy here. The high-capacity Fengpeng series focuses on grid-side and industrial & commercial scenarios, small-sized energy storage cells are dedicated to residential energy storage, consumer electronics and base station backup power, while high-rate products are targeted at specific scenarios such as AIDC data centers for precise deployment. For the residential energy storage line, a small cell needs to adapt to the low temperature in Europe, long cycle life requirements in Australia, and high temperature in the Middle East at the same time. Do not underestimate the ability to break through these fragmented demands one by one, as the barriers to entry in the residential energy storage market lie exactly here.
According to data from Frost & Sullivan, Penghui's global market share of residential energy storage cells reached 28% in the first half of 2026, ranking first in the world. The figure was only about 25% in Q1, and jumped to nearly 30% directly in Q2, indicating that production capacity is accelerating to tilt to this high-margin segment.
According to the 2026 semi-annual report, the company's lithium battery capacity utilization rate reached 165.72%. According to the estimation of the Soochow Securities research report, lithium battery shipments in the first half of the year were 26.5 GWh, of which energy storage cells accounted for 20.5 GWh. The production capacity is also expanding simultaneously: at the beginning of 2026, the company invested a total of 3.3 billion yuan to deploy new energy storage production lines in two major bases in Henan, matching product demands by different tracks, including the 122Ah high-energy residential energy storage cell production line; orders from most leading integrators have basically locked up the production capacity in advance, rather than being temporary volume increases.
Penghui Energy's top ranking in global residential energy storage cell shipments comes from its deep cultivation in niche segments, technical accumulation and advance layout. The residential energy storage track actually has very high entry barriers: long product certification cycles, differentiated product requirements, high delivery capabilities, and brand trust that requires years of accumulation. Penghui entered the energy storage industry as early as 2011, making it one of the earliest battery enterprises to enter this sector. More than ten years of accumulation has been fully realized in 2026.
On the technical front, the R&D expenditure in the first half of the year was 435 million yuan, up 125% year on year. In terms of residential energy storage, the POLAR low-temperature series is equipped with self-developed LTSC low-temperature superconducting technology, which realizes stable charging in a wide temperature range from -30℃ to 60℃; the cycle life of the 100Ah long-cycle cell is increased from the mainstream 4000 cycles in the industry to 7000 cycles, which can be stably used for nearly 15 years with one charge and discharge per day; at the same time, the 122Ah high-energy cell with an energy density of over 200Wh/kg has been launched, which has obtained international certifications such as IEC and UN38.3; the large cylindrical HOME series has undergone six years of special R&D, holds more than 30 core patents, and has delivered a total of nearly 170 million units worldwide. These technical reserves are the confidence for Penghui to capture the global residential energy storage market.
Overseas business is the real profit driver
Overseas revenue in the first half of 2026 was 1.703 billion yuan, up 157.26% year on year. This figure is already close to the total overseas revenue of 1.793 billion yuan for the whole year of 2025.
The more critical point is gross profit margin. The overseas gross profit margin is 24.74%, while the domestic gross profit margin is 18.6%, with a gap of more than 6 percentage points. The same cell is more profitable when sold overseas. In Q2 alone, the overseas gross profit margin further rose to 24.7%, and overseas revenue surged 157% year on year.
This achievement is not due to luck. On July 31, BloombergNEF released its Q3 2026 ranking, and Penghui was listed again, having been ranked in BloombergNEF's global Tier 1 energy storage vendor list for nine consecutive quarters. In the same period, S&P Global launched its first Tier 1 energy storage cell supplier selection, and Penghui became one of the first batch of selected enterprises. The simultaneous recognition from two authoritative institutions marks that Penghui's discourse power in the global energy storage industry chain is rising rapidly — when overseas owners discuss "who is the most reliable energy storage cell supplier", Penghui is already an unavoidable name.
This influence is not built by heavy marketing investment, but accumulated through the delivery of one project after another. In Azerbaijan, as the core energy storage system supplier, Penghui built the 500MWh energy storage project, the largest in the CIS region, for the national power company. The project is located near the 500kV Absheron Substation near Baku and the 220kV Agdash Substation in the central region, and Penghui provided the GreatCom 5MWh liquid-cooled energy storage container system as the core energy storage system supplier. At the same time, the 107.12MW/428.48MWh user-side energy storage project cooperated with Sichuan Zhongfu has been connected to the grid, which is the largest user-side energy storage project in China at present, and also the first one in the electrolytic aluminum industry.
According to the analysis of Soochow Securities, Penghui Energy's overseas shipments continue to rise, and overseas shipments in the second quarter have accounted for 70% of its total shipments, and this structure will continue to be optimized. The company stated at the teleconference that the growth rate of overseas residential energy storage and industrial & commercial energy storage is expected to be even higher. At present, Penghui has set up multiple overseas offices around the world, covering core markets such as the United States, Germany, Japan, Singapore and India. From product exportation to local brand rooting, Penghui is replacing the "Made in China" label with a "Trusted Globally" label.
Cash in hand, orders in pipeline
The company has 1.83 billion yuan of contract liabilities, up 30% from the end of the first quarter. Customers' payments have been received, while the goods have not been delivered — the real money advance payments are more substantial than any profit figures. Operating cash flow directly turned positive from a negative of more than 40 million yuan in the first quarter to more than 200 million yuan, meaning cash inflow has replaced cash outflow, and the business is developing in a positive direction, which is the most solid signal.
Penghui's overseas market performance has given securities firms the confidence to collectively raise their target prices. Soochow Securities predicts that Penghui's annual shipments will reach 50GWh, and hit 90GWh next year; Western Securities raised this year's net profit forecast to 2.079 billion yuan. The logic is simple: Penghui's overseas shipments accounted for more than 70% in the second quarter, and the overseas gross profit margin is 6 percentage points higher than that of the domestic market. The same cell can generate more profits when sold in different markets, and institutions can clearly understand this account.
What is most worth mentioning is the choice made during the industry's trough period.
From 2023 to 2024, the energy storage industry experienced the most brutal de-capacity cycle in history. Cell prices plummeted from their highs, fell by half and then fell by half again, breaking through the cost line, and a large number of enterprises were forced to exit the market. However, Penghui pressed the capacity expansion button at this time, with a total investment of 8.3 billion yuan. Outsiders could not understand: the price war was extremely fierce, who would buy the expanded production capacity?
But Penghui saw another logic. What fell in price was the homogenized backward production capacity, while the real high-end production capacity has always been a scarce resource. More importantly, this track has extremely high invisible barriers: the product certification cycle in overseas markets is calculated in years, the construction of global channels relies on the accumulation of reputation from one project after another, and the establishment of brand trust is measured in decades. These cannot be achieved simply by spending money, but require patience and time.
Penghui took three measures. Seize the residential energy storage track in advance, concentrate R&D resources and capital expenditure in this direction; be listed in BloombergNEF's Tier 1 list for nine consecutive quarters to expand brand influence globally; deploy localized services in major global markets to optimize customer response.
When the industry recovered in 2025 and overseas residential energy storage demand was released intensively, Penghui's production capacity had just reached full ramp-up, channels had been fully laid out, and the brand had been well established. With the influx of orders, the capacity utilization rate rose from 58.48% in the first half of 2024 to 88.54% in the first half of 2025, and reached 165.72% in the first half of 2026.
Looking back, this is not luck. During the lowest point of the industry, the cost of capacity expansion is the lowest and competition is the least, but the ability to judge the correct direction is the most scarce. Penghui completed a precise strategic attack: the explosive power of the residential energy storage niche segment, and the high gross profit space that the overseas market can support. It has seized the right rhythm and followed the correct direction — this is probably the most valuable part of the entire turnaround.
The energy storage industry is still on the rise. The total installed capacity of new global energy storage has reached 280 million kilowatts, up 67% year on year. Penghui holds 28% of the residential energy storage market share, continuously expanding overseas high-margin revenue, and 1.83 billion yuan of locked orders.
But for Penghui, the 800 million yuan profit in the first half of 2026 is not the end, but the first concentrated realization after 15 years of deep cultivation. Being the No.1 in global residential energy storage is just a starting point — industrial and commercial energy storage shipments are growing rapidly, large-scale energy storage cell production lines will be put into operation at the end of the year, AIDC dedicated cells have entered the verification phase of leading customers, and second growth curves such as solid-state batteries, sodium-ion batteries and lithium metal batteries have been fully laid out. While the industry is still discussing "who can survive this cycle", Penghui is already answering another question: who will define the next decade of global energy storage.