Xiaomi's Autumn Balancing Act: A Chip-Listing Windfall, Hybrid SUVs, and a Profit Squeeze

Xiaomi gains from CXMT's record debut, launches hybrid SUVs, and debuts its own chip in the Mix Fold 5, signaling a bold strategic pivot.

The last week of July delivered a rare one-two punch from Xiaomi's headquarters. On the same day the company unveiled its SkyNomad N90 and N70 SUVs, a strategic investment in Chinese memory-chip maker CXMT paid off spectacularly as the stock soared past 55 yuan in its Shanghai debut. For a company whose share price has spent most of the year in retreat, the optics could hardly have been better — even if the underlying numbers tell a more complicated story.

A Debut That Reshaped China's Valuation Charts

CXMT's initial public offering priced at 8.66 yuan per share, but early trading saw the stock rocket to as high as 55.03 yuan — a surge of roughly 466 to 535 percent depending on the source. That pop was enough to crown CXMT as China's most valuable listed company by market capitalization. Xiaomi's stake, taken in the chipmaker's early days as a minority investor, carries strategic weight beyond the paper gains: the company is a major buyer of memory chips for its smartphones and consumer electronics. The listing also arrived at a moment when Xiaomi's product pipeline was already generating headlines, with the SkyNomad range marking the company's most aggressive push yet into the automotive segment.

The EV Pivot Takes a Hybrid Turn

The SkyNomad N70 and N90 represent something of a philosophical shift for a company that has positioned itself around electric mobility. Both models pair a large battery with a range extender — a petrol engine that functions purely as a generator rather than driving the wheels. Xiaomi's chief executive Lei Jun framed the decision as pragmatic: for large SUVs, he argued, a range-extender layout is simply more logical than a pure battery-electric setup. The N90 offers a 2+2+3 seating arrangement, a 76-kilowatt-hour battery, and a WLTC range of up to 370 kilometres, stretching to 505 kilometres under China's CLTC testing standard. Fuel consumption is pegged at 5.7 litres per 100 kilometres for the N70 and 6.2 litres for the larger N90. The vehicles are also designed to convert into camping or sleeping configurations — a direct challenge to the European SUV market's established players.

The timing is no accident. Xiaomi has been steadily repositioning itself as a carmaker over recent quarters, and the SkyNomad launch follows a flurry of other announcements this week: a new foldable flagship phone with an in-house processor, and a revised base version of the YU7 electric SUV, registered in China with a 73-kilowatt-hour battery and a CLTC range of up to 643 kilometres.

A Homegrown Chip Breaks the Qualcomm Habit

The foldable, dubbed the Mix Fold 5, marks a notable departure for Xiaomi's smartphone division. After a year-long pause in the foldable segment, the device is the first to drop Qualcomm in favour of Xiaomi's own Xring O3 processor. The handset packs a 6,000-milliampere-hour battery — 20 percent larger than its predecessor — alongside a 200-megapixel primary camera and HyperOS 4, built on Android 17. Pricing starts above 1,300 euros. Industry observers have flagged potential thermal issues in the slim chassis, a risk that will only become clear through real-world use. Meanwhile, Xiaomi is running its "POCO Carnival" promotion with staggered discounts and financing offers through August 23, and continues to push the Xiaomi 17T — 12 gigabytes of RAM and a five-fold telezoom for under 500 euros — against rivals like the Nothing Phone (4a) and Google Pixel 10a.

The Numbers Behind the Noise

For all the product momentum, Xiaomi's first-quarter 2026 results, published in late May, painted a sobering picture. Revenue fell to 99.142 billion yuan, down 10.9 percent year on year. Net profit dropped 56.8 percent to 4.723 billion yuan, compared with 10.924 billion yuan in the prior-year quarter. The smartphone business — historically Xiaomi's core engine — saw revenue slide 12.6 percent to 44.273 billion yuan.

The picture varies depending on which profit measure one uses. Adjusted net income fell 43.1 percent to 6.1 billion yuan, while operating profit came in at 5.3 billion yuan. The automotive division, for its part, grew revenue 6.9 percent to 19.9 billion yuan and delivered 80,856 vehicles, up 6.6 percent year on year — yet it still posted an operating loss of 3.1 billion yuan. The division is scaling, but it continues to consume substantial capital.

Not everything is contracting. The AIoT segment — Xiaomi's ecosystem of connected devices — now counts 1.119 billion connected endpoints, an 18.5 percent increase from the prior year. Monthly active users rose 3.8 percent to 746.2 million. Those figures suggest the platform strategy remains intact even as the smartphone core weakens.

Buybacks, Stellantis Talks, and a Volatile Tape

Behind the scenes, Xiaomi has been running a share buyback programme since late January, having signed an agreement with an independent broker for up to HK$2.5 billion (roughly 295 million euros). The programme was slated to run until the 2026 annual general meeting or until the target amount was reached, with the Hong Kong exchange granting an exemption for repurchases during restricted periods.

Bloomberg has also reported that Stellantis held talks with Xiaomi and Xpeng in March over a potential electric-vehicle partnership. Discussions reportedly touched on technology transfer, European production capacity, and even stakes in European brands such as Maserati. Nothing has been confirmed, and the talks remain open.

The market's response to all this activity has been characteristically mixed. On Friday, Xiaomi shares closed at 3.04 euros, up 2.13 percent on the day. The stock has gained 8.63 percent over the past month, suggesting some short-term stabilisation. But the longer-term picture is far less forgiving: the shares remain down 29.83 percent since the start of the year, and sit 53.57 percent below their 52-week high of 6.54 euros, reached in September 2025.

The August Test

Investors now have a clear date on the calendar: August 18, when Xiaomi reports its next quarterly results. The question is whether the SkyNomad launch, the CXMT windfall, and continued AIoT growth can offset the smartphone decline and the automotive division's persistent losses. The company is effectively running two narratives in parallel — a shrinking legacy business and a capital-hungry future — and the market has yet to decide which one deserves the premium. The buyback programme and the Stellantis speculation add further layers of complexity, but neither addresses the fundamental tension at the heart of the stock: Xiaomi is spending heavily to build its next act while its current one loses momentum.