Xiaomi Bridges Ecosystems With Apple Find My as €100M Share Buyback Precedes Q1 Test

Xiaomi repurchases shares near 52-week low, unveils flagship phone with huge battery and electric SUV, as market awaits pivotal Q1 earnings on May 26.

Xiaomi is placing two bets at once: a share buyback to catch a falling stock, and a product launch aimed at pulling users across platform boundaries. The Chinese tech giant spent roughly 100 million Hong Kong dollars on Wednesday to repurchase 3.3 million of its own B-shares, a move that comes as the stock hovers near its 52-week low. The buyback landed just a day before the company unveiled its new flagship phone and an all-electric SUV, setting the stage for what promises to be a pivotal first-quarter earnings release on May 26.

The market’s mood remains cautious. Xiaomi’s shares closed at €3.37 in Frankfurt on Wednesday and slipped further to €3.36 on Thursday, barely above the €3.17 trough seen earlier this year. Over the past twelve months, the stock has shed 44.84% of its value, and the year-to-date decline stands at 25.04%. Technically, the picture is equally dour: the share price trades well below both its 50-day moving average of €3.52 and its 200-day line of €4.47, leaving little room for a rapid trend reversal without a fundamental catalyst.

That catalyst could come from the product front. At the center of Xiaomi’s new lineup is the Xiaomi 17 Max, a flagship smartphone featuring an 8,000 mAh battery — an unusually high capacity for a mass-market device — and a 200-megapixel main camera developed in collaboration with Leica. More strategically, the company has opened the door to Apple’s ecosystem. The new wireless clip-on headphones officially support Apple’s “Find My” network, signaling Xiaomi’s ambition to hold onto users who mix hardware from different manufacturers rather than lock them into a pure Android environment.

On the automotive side, Xiaomi is moving deeper into premium territory. The YU7 GT, an electric SUV, goes on sale in China this week with an expected price tag of around 400,000 yuan. CEO Lei Jun has positioned the vehicle as one for the “elite,” reinforcing the company’s push to establish itself as a serious player in the high-end EV market. The dual product offensive — a supersized phone battery and a high-margin SUV — is designed to demonstrate that Xiaomi can compete on both fronts simultaneously.

But execution remains the question. The market will get a first detailed look at the numbers on May 26, when the board approves the unaudited consolidated results for the first quarter. Analysts currently expect revenue of about 100.83 billion yuan and earnings per share of roughly 0.175 yuan. The top line alone is unlikely to shift sentiment; much more depends on the quality of earnings. Xiaomi is pouring capital into its EV business while the smartphone market in China stays fiercely competitive, and rising memory costs are squeezing margins on the handset side. The company has flagged that storage price inflation is already pressuring smartphone pricing.

If margins disappoint, the recent low at €3.17 will become the immediate technical support. That scenario would put the buyback in a different light — not as a vote of confidence, but as a last line of defense. Conversely, if Xiaomi can carry the startup costs of its auto division without significantly diluting core profitability, the share repurchase will carry more weight than a mere price support measure.

The calendar is packed in the weeks ahead. Beyond the Q1 results on May 26, the company plans to unveil the Xiaomi 17T series on May 28, followed by its annual general meeting in Beijing on June 2. Each event adds another data point for investors trying to gauge whether the product blitz and the buyback can arrest a slide that has already cut the stock’s value by nearly half.