BYD's Two-Speed May: Export Record and In-House Chip Debut vs. 24% Domestic Sales Drop

BYD shares hover near 52-week low as record exports and new Xuanji A3 autonomous chip are overshadowed by a 24% drop in China sales and halved profits.

BYD’s stock is flirting with its 52-week low even as the company delivers two pieces of genuinely good news — a record export month and the launch of a homegrown autonomous-driving chip. The shares closed Friday at €9.84, just 3.5% above the €9.51 trough set over the past year, after a 2.48% daily loss that extended the month-to-date decline to nearly 10%. The paradox captures the market’s reaction to an increasingly fractured growth story: international expansion is accelerating, but the home market that built BYD into the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker is bleeding sales.

Exports surge to record 42% of total deliveries

May sales across all powertrains hit 383,453 units, a marginal 0.26% year-on-year increase that snapped eight consecutive months of annual declines. The headline figure, however, masks a dramatic shift in geography: BYD shipped 160,644 vehicles outside China, the first time monthly exports have crossed the 160,000 mark. That represents an 80% jump from May 2025 and a 19% improvement over the previous record set in April. International markets now account for roughly 42% of the group's total monthly volume.

The export momentum has been building for months. In the first five months of 2026, BYD delivered nearly 616,000 vehicles abroad — a 65% increase over the same period last year. With a full-year target of 1.5 million foreign sales, the company is on track to reach that goal if the current pace holds.

Within the product mix, battery-electric vehicles contributed 198,674 units, slightly below last year’s level, while plug-in hybrids rose to 178,316 units. Commercial vehicles added 6,463 sales.

Home market troubles deepen despite industry tailwind

The domestic picture tells a starkly different story. BYD’s China sales in May slumped to 222,809 units, a 24% drop from a year earlier. Over the first five months of 2026, cumulative deliveries of about 1.405 million vehicles are still roughly 20% behind the same period of 2025.

What makes that figure more troubling is that the overall Chinese new-energy vehicle market continues to grow. Total NEV sales in China — including both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models — rose an estimated 12% in May to about 1.36 million units. BYD is losing market share exactly where it once dominated, and the erosion is cutting into profitability. First-quarter operating profit came in at 4.70 billion yuan, less than half of last year’s level, while net profit halved to 4.08 billion yuan.

The arithmetic for the rest of the year is daunting. BYD’s management has set a full-year sales target of 5.0 million to 5.5 million vehicles. To hit even the low end, the company would need to deliver an average of between 517,000 and 589,000 units per month over the next seven months. The current monthly average stands at just 276,000.

Xuanji A3 chip signals strategic pivot to autonomy

Amid the sales drama, BYD unveiled the Xuanji A3, a 4-nanometer chip built in-house for autonomous driving, now in mass production. The processor supports Level 3 and Level 4 autonomy and, in a three-chip configuration, delivers more than 2,100 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Energy consumption per computing unit is 20% lower than comparable products, and Citi analysts estimate the total hardware cost of the Xuanji A3 platform at roughly one-third of an equivalent Nvidia Thor solution.

Chairman Wang Chuanfu framed the move as a defining shift: “The first half of electrification is about batteries; the second half of intelligence is about chips.” Over the next three years, BYD plans to invest 100 billion yuan in research and development. The company is also extending its “God’s Eye” LiDAR system to volume models as an optional upgrade priced at about 12,000 yuan.

Stock technicals remain fragile, but analysts hold their ground

The share price has fallen nearly 79% from its 52-week high of €46.39, and the technical picture is weak. BYD trades below its 50-, 100- and 200-day moving averages — clustered between €10.85 and €11.05 — which now form a resistance band. The relative strength index (RSI) stands at 38, indicating moderate weakness without reaching oversold territory.

Wall Street, however, has not turned bearish. Among 28 analysts covering the stock, 26 rate it a buy. The consensus price target of 124.52 Hong Kong dollars implies a meaningful upside from current levels, with earnings expected to grow roughly 15% annually in the coming years.

Shareholders also have a dividend event to watch. The ex-dividend date is June 11 for a cash payout of 0.36 yuan per share, with distribution scheduled for July 31.

The summer test ahead

May’s report provides two clear signals: BYD’s growth axis is rotating decisively toward international markets, and the domestic engine is sputtering. Whether the export record is a one-off or the start of a sustained trend will become clearer over June and July. If exports can be maintained at elevated levels while the home-market decline begins to moderate, the full-year numbers could still approach last year’s. If China remains stuck in a 20%-plus contraction, no amount of overseas deliveries will be enough to lift the stock out of its current rut.