To The Moon

Everest Medicines and BYD are quietly flexing their cash muscles—while others chase noise, these two play the long game.

In a Chinese equity market where drama is currency and hype is mistaken for growth, I’ve found comfort in the steady rhythm of cash flow. Amid the chaos, $EVEREST MED(01952)$ and $BYD COMPANY(01211)$ are doing something wonderfully boring—and in investing, boring can be beautiful. They're quietly building value through discipline, liquidity, and hard numbers. Here’s why I believe these two companies—one a biopharma underdog, the other an EV titan—deserve a closer, calmer look.

Where others chase noise, value flows in silence

Everest Medicines: A Pipeline With Patience

$EVEREST MED(01952)$ doesn’t scream for attention. Instead, it calmly navigates the biopharma maze with something far rarer than hype: financial control and a lengthening runway. The market has it pegged at HK$57.35—a decent climb from its low of HK$18.18, yet still trading at a roughly 49% discount to its fair value.

On the surface, Everest looks like your typical early-stage biotech with red ink all over the ledger. Its free cash flow for FY 2024 was -CNY 744.9 million—still negative, but meaningfully improved from -CNY 886.5 million in 2023 and a brutal -CNY 1.51 billion in 2022. The operating cash flow trend tells the same story, improving from -CNY 1.16 billion in 2022 to -CNY 679.5 million in 2024. Everest is burning less, and doing so more deliberately.

At the same time, revenue is finally moving—RMB 706.7 million in FY 2024, up 461% year-on-year, with gross margin (ex non-cash items) hitting 83%. This isn’t just trial-stage optics; it’s early signs of commercial momentum.

A closer look at Everest’s YTD technicals reveals something rare in early-stage biotech: disciplined accumulation that feels more like a long game than a short bet.

Smart money moves quietly—Everest trades like it’s maturing

And Everest is doing all this from a position of strength: RMB 1.6 billion in cash and just CNY 65.4 million in capex in FY 2024. The result? A long cash runway, a lean capital structure, and the ability to prioritise R&D without racing to raise.

One underappreciated angle? Its focus on nephrology treatments like NEFECON gives Everest pricing power in a market with lower competitive saturation. That’s a small, but defensible moat. In a sector where headlines chase pipelines, Everest is quietly building margin and discipline.

BYD: A Cash Cow Masquerading as a Rocket Ship

Then there’s $BYD COMPANY(01211)$, the name that gets tossed around every time someone says “Tesla of China” without checking their facts. But I’m not here for the EV race drama. What excites me about BYD is far less sexy: free cash flow—and in spades.

Annual free cash flow for FY 2024 hit $36.09 billion, with a monster $49.34 billion in Q4 alone. Even with a dip in operating cash flow—$6.60 billion as of March 2025, down from $20.93 billion in 2022—BYD still towers over peers in cash generation.

Investors often miss just how efficient this cash machine is. Its free cash flow per share came in at $12.41, and the free cash flow yield of 4.39% is well above global auto averages—signalling solid value even after adjusting for cyclical softness. Yes, FCF growth shrank by 24.2% year-on-year, but with absolute numbers like these, the dip feels more like a breather than a stumble.

BYD’s YTD chart tells the same story as its cash flows: controlled strength with upside pressure building

Volatility tamed—BYD rides its own high-pressure system

While the world debates EV demand curves, BYD is busy monetising its scale advantages. With EV/EBITDA at 6.12, it’s valued more like a heavy industrial than a growth stock—yet it delivers ROE of 26.14%, a number software founders would envy.

It’s also showing a quiet shareholder tilt: BYD just approved a substantial dividend, and its expanding European footprint isn’t just about export headlines—it’s about moving upstream into margin-rich territory.

Why Cash is King in China—Now More Than Ever

Let’s face it: investing in China is not for the faint-hearted. Between regulatory uncertainty, macro wobbles, and geopolitical squalls, the only thing more volatile than the market is the mood of its retail base. In this climate, strong operating and free cash flows aren’t just reassuring—they’re essential.

Everest and BYD are vastly different companies, but they share one fundamental trait: they either generate or carefully conserve cash to execute long-term strategies. Everest isn’t profitable yet, but it’s burning smarter, not faster. BYD, meanwhile, prints cash like it’s going out of fashion, but does so while trading at value stock multiples.

What many miss is that in China, cash generation signals independence—from over-leveraged banking systems, from subsidy reliance, and from the fickle affections of policy sentiment. Both companies pass this test with flying colours.

The Verdict: Buy the Quiet Strength

Long-term cash beats short-term storms—if you know where to look

If I’ve learned anything from investing in volatile markets, it’s that the loudest stories are rarely the best ones. The market loves hype, but cash doesn’t lie. Everest Medicines and BYD each offer a different flavour of value, grounded in fundamentals, and tempered with strategy. One promises future upside with minimal downside risk thanks to cash discipline. The other delivers present performance with surprising valuation upside.

In a world craving the next big thing, I’ll take steady cash flow and strategic focus any day. Sometimes, the real growth lies not in what everyone’s shouting about—but in what they’re quietly ignoring.

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