XPeng's Institutional Divide Deepens as Porsche Alliance and Record Orders Collide With a Stubborn Share Price

XPeng trades near 52-week lows despite 50K orders, Porsche CO2 pooling, and VW integration—investors remain split on its global expansion.

The contradiction at the heart of XPeng has rarely been starker. A stock trading barely above its 52-week low, and a company that just locked in more than 50,000 non-cancellable orders for its upcoming Mona M03 coupe, secured a CO2 pooling partnership with Porsche, and watched its technology get embedded in a Volkswagen production model. The market is pricing one story; the operations are telling another.

A Tale of Two Trades

The second-quarter filings from major institutional investors paint a picture of outright disagreement rather than consensus. Citadel Advisors tripled its position to 4,036,718 American Depositary Shares, while Susquehanna International Group expanded its holding by 101.8 percent to 3,671,997 ADS. On the other side of the ledger, BlackRock cut its stake by 24 percent as part of a broader rotation out of Chinese electric-vehicle names, Goldman Sachs reduced its position by 71 percent to 2.27 million ADS, and hedge fund Perseverance Asset Management exited its entire US position.

That divergence extends to the sell side. Morgan Stanley reaffirmed its buy rating in early August with a price target of HK$96, while Barclays trimmed its target to US$15 in July and held firm at "Underweight." The spread between those targets is not a quibble over valuation methodology — it is a fundamental disagreement about whether XPeng's global expansion can offset the margin pressure that has dogged the company through 2025.

The share price reflects the bear case more than the bull case. At a recent close of €10.22, the stock sits just 2.3 percent above the August 13 low and roughly 58 percent below its November high of €24.40. The RSI reading of 39.9 signals neither oversold conditions nor any meaningful recovery momentum, and the price remains below all major moving averages.

The Porsche Signal

Perhaps the most telling development is not on the trading screen at all. Porsche has withdrawn from the Volkswagen CO2 pool and instead formed a new open pool with XPeng for the 2026 and 2027 compliance years, confirmed by European Commission filings on August 5. The symbolism is hard to overstate: a storied Stuttgart sports car manufacturer is now tying its emissions compliance to a Chinese challenger that its own parent company barely regarded as a serious player just a few years ago.

The Volkswagen connection runs deeper still. The 100,000th electric vehicle produced at the Hefei plant was an ID. UNYX 08 — the first production model co-developed with XPeng, incorporating the company's Turing AI chips and VLA-2.0 driver-assistance system. That XPeng's technology now sits inside a vehicle from one of the world's largest automakers is a validation that the equity market has yet to fully price in.

Global Footprint, Local Milestones

The operational expansion continues on multiple fronts. XPeng has officially launched in Australia with the G6 SUV, crossed the 6,000 cumulative deliveries mark in France — the milestone vehicle being a P7+ sedan sold to a customer in the AI industry — and recorded record overseas deliveries of 9,700 units in July. The Philippines market entry is slated for the third quarter of 2026, with the Mona L03 and X9 expected to lead the charge.

This week also brought the unveiling of the G9L in Guangzhou, positioned as a "global technology flagship." Pre-sales start at RMB 259,800 (approximately US$38,260) for both the battery-electric and range-extended variants. The vehicle carries the second generation of XPeng's vision-language-action driver-assistance system, powered by three self-developed Turing AI chips delivering 2,250 TOPS of compute. The G9L is earmarked for 64 markets worldwide, including Australia, where it must clear stringent ANCAP safety requirements.

The August 24 Reckoning

All of this sets up a pivotal moment on August 24, when XPeng reports second-quarter earnings before US markets open. The company has guided for revenue between RMB 19.60 billion and RMB 20.80 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 7.25 to 13.82 percent. The question is whether the sharply higher delivery volumes of the second quarter translate into improved margins — or whether the supply chain constraints that dented July deliveries continue to bite.

Three days later, on August 27, the official launch event for the Mona M03 takes place, with more than 50,000 non-cancellable orders already banked. The compact electric coupe could become the next volume driver, provided the delivery bottlenecks that caused July's sequential decline are resolved.

For investors, the calculus is uncomfortable. The international expansion, the Porsche partnership, and the Volkswagen co-development speak to structural potential that the current share price does not reflect. But the 43 percent decline since the start of the year, the persistent margin uncertainty, and the unresolved supply chain questions are a reminder that growth at XPeng remains expensive — and volatile. The bulls and bears are both placing their bets; the August 24 numbers will determine who is right.