Xiaomi’s Stock Remains Under Pressure as May 26 Earnings Loom — But the EV Machine Kicks into Higher Gear

Xiaomi's EV deliveries surge to record highs with in-house battery plans, yet shares slide over 41% in 12 months. Buybacks and Q1 results on May 26 are key.

Xiaomi finds itself caught between two starkly different narratives. On the shop floor, the electric-vehicle venture is gathering speed with record deliveries and plans for in-house battery production. On the trading floor, the stock continues to slide, down 23.61% since the start of 2026 and 41.45% over the past twelve months. The shares closed Friday at EUR 3.43, languishing well below both the 50-day moving average of EUR 3.55 and the 200-day average of EUR 4.56. The relative strength index of 54.2 suggests no technical overheating, but the broader chart remains deeply bearish.

The next big test comes on May 26, when the board approves Xiaomi’s unaudited consolidated results for the quarter ended March 31. Investors will be watching margins closely. In the smartphone business, the company has been pushing upmarket — the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max last year captured the top spot in China for both sales volume and revenue in the segment above RMB 6,000. The question is whether that pricing power is translating into better profitability at the group level. The EV division, meanwhile, delivered 411,082 vehicles in the prior fiscal year with a reported gross margin of 24.3%, and cumulative deliveries since market entry have now exceeded 600,000 units.

To signal confidence while the market waits, management has been steadily buying back shares. So far in 2026, the buyback total stands at roughly HKD 4.7 billion, building on last year’s HKD 6.3 billion. On May 5 alone, Xiaomi repurchased more than 3.29 million class B shares for HKD 100 million. An automated buyback plan with a potential volume of up to HKD 2.5 billion is also running. These moves can provide psychological support, but they do not substitute for an operational turnaround.

Operationally, April delivered a new record. Xiaomi shipped 36,702 electric vehicles, with the SU7 contributing 26,826 units — the strongest monthly showing since its launch. That brought the January-to-April total to 117,558 units, a 12.55% increase from the same period last year. The official CPCA figures comfortably exceeded Xiaomi’s own earlier guidance of “more than 30,000 units” for April. For the full year 2026, the target remains ambitious at 550,000 deliveries, meaning the monthly run-rate must rise significantly above April’s peak. Production is already running on two shifts.

The more strategic story, however, lies in the supply chain. Xiaomi has established a subsidiary, Beijing Xiaomi Jingxu Technology, to build a battery factory with a planned annual capacity of 15 gigawatt-hours. Traction batteries account for roughly 35% to 45% of an EV’s total cost, so bringing that capability in-house could give the company more leverage over both costs and integration. The move also reduces reliance on dominant suppliers CATL and BYD’s FinDreams Battery, which together controlled 54.4% of the global traction battery market in the first quarter of 2026 — CATL alone held a 40.7% share. The path to full-scale production has not been officially announced, but the direction is clear.

International expansion is also taking shape. Vice president of the auto division, Yu Liguo, now heads the newly formed Overseas Business Preparation Group, while Song Gang, a former manager of Tesla’s Shanghai factory, oversees production and manufacturing. Xiaomi plans to enter Europe in the second half of 2027, starting with Germany. Right-hand-drive markets such as the UK, Japan and Australia are scheduled for the first half of 2028. A research and development centre in Munich already employs around 50 engineers and designers recruited from BMW, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.

On the software side, Xiaomi’s MoE large model operates with over one trillion parameters and a context window of one million tokens, underpinning features across smartphones, IoT devices and electric cars. Monthly active users now stand at 750 million. The ecosystem pitch is meant to deepen customer stickiness, but the real pressure is financial: the auto business is capital-intensive, and building battery expertise from scratch is a multi-billion-euro undertaking that takes years to mature. The May 26 earnings will show whether the smartphone margins can hold up and whether the EV ramp is coming without a sharp drag on profitability. Until then, the buybacks are a stabiliser, not a solution.