BYD’s 150,000 Great Tang Pre-Orders Battle Pentagon Tag and Sinking Margins

Despite record pre-orders for its new SUV, BYD's stock hovers near its 52-week low as a Pentagon designation, profit decline, and price war weigh on sentiment.

BYD’s new Great Tang SUV has racked up more than 150,000 pre-orders since April – an internal company record for a single model – yet the stock hovers barely one percent above its 52-week low. The chasm between robust operational news and a beaten-down share price has rarely been wider, and a fresh geopolitical headwind is making the gap even harder to close.

The Great Tang, which boasts a driving range of 950 kilometres, has electrified BYD’s home market. Chairman Wang Chuanfu acknowledged at the annual general meeting, however, that production cannot keep pace. The bottleneck is the company’s new Blade battery; output is trailing demand, threatening to turn a blockbuster launch into a lesson in capacity constraints.

Pentagon designation adds a layer of caution

The US Department of Defense has formally listed BYD as a Chinese military company, a classification it shares with Alibaba and Baidu. Operationally, the impact is limited – BYD does not bid for Pentagon contracts, and the group has rejected the label as unfounded. Beijing has also protested the move. Yet for equity markets, the designation weighs on sentiment. Global institutions face compliance questions, and the perception that Chinese technology champions trade at a permanent geopolitical discount is hardening.

That perception arrives just as BYD’s fundamental picture weakens. Quarterly profit has fallen, squeezed by sluggish domestic demand, a brutal price war, and Beijing’s decision to reduce trade-in subsidies for entry-level electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. The Chinese auto market is no longer an easy backdrop; margins are thinning and technology leads over rivals are shrinking.

International expansion gathers pace

Despite the headwinds at home, BYD continues to make inroads overseas. In the UK it sold more than 26,000 vehicles between January and April, capturing a 7.2% market share, and has just opened its first own-brand rapid charging station in London. A new agreement with Canada permits the import of 49,000 Chinese EVs annually at a reduced tariff of roughly six percent – far lower than earlier fears.

In South America, BYD is adapting to rising trade barriers. Brazil will raise import duties on electric cars to as high as 28% starting in July. In response, the company is building a local battery factory; a final site decision is expected by mid-September. BYD aims to have vehicles assembled in Brazil using at least 50% local parts by early 2027.

Technical picture offers little comfort

The stock closed at €9.05 on Wednesday, just €0.10 above the 52-week trough of €8.95. On a year-to-date basis it has lost roughly 35%, and at €14.80 the July 2025 peak now sits more than 38% higher. Both the 50-day moving average of €10.71 and the 200-day average of €10.95 are well above the current price, signalling a deep downward repricing rather than a garden-variety pullback.

Oversold indicators flash amber: the relative strength index is at 27.5 according to one reading and 28.8 per another. But exhaustion alone does not equal a bargain. A sustainable rebound requires the domestic pressure to ease and the Pentagon label to prove inconsequential in practice. Until those conditions are met, tactical bounces may occur, but the burden of proof rests squarely on BYD. The stock is stuck in a volatile, pressured groove – and the case for a clean recovery has yet to be made.