Despite facing persistent price wars, elevated costs, and intensifying market competition in the automotive sector during the first quarter of 2026, Geely Auto achieved remarkable counter-trend growth. Demonstrating strong strategic resilience and systematic capabilities, the company reported total sales exceeding 700,000 vehicles, securing the top position as the best-selling Chinese brand for the quarter. Revenue reached 83.8 billion yuan, while core net profit attributable to shareholders surged 31% year-on-year to 4.56 billion yuan, setting a new record for the same period.
This dual growth in both the consumer market and capital markets stems from Geely's strategic focus on premiumization, globalization, and intelligentization, shifting away from inefficient internal competition toward high-value creation. The robust financial report clearly illustrates how Geely, through its integrated "One Geely" operational strategy and strategic focus, is building a new pattern of high-quality development amid industry cycles.
The first quarter saw overall industry profitability under pressure, yet Geely delivered a high-quality financial performance with all core profit indicators showing improvement. Moving decisively beyond a volume-driven model reliant on price discounts, the company achieved comprehensive upgrades in revenue, profit, profitability quality, and financial structure, marking a transition from "volume leadership" to "value leadership."
Geely's total sales for Q1 2026 reached 709,358 vehicles, claiming the title of quarterly sales champion among Chinese brands, with market share rising to 11.95%. Notably, new energy vehicle sales amounted to 369,059 units, a 9% year-on-year increase, representing 52% of total sales, highlighting a clear structural growth trend. Particularly impressive is that Geely's NEV sales maintained positive growth despite a 24% year-on-year decline in industry-wide NEV retail sales, underscoring the breakthrough capability of its product and brand strength.
On the profitability front, total revenue of 83.8 billion yuan represented a 31% year-on-year increase, while core net profit attributable to shareholders grew strongly by 31% to 4.56 billion yuan, with core profit growth outpacing revenue growth, indicating concentrated release of benefits from premiumization and globalization. The gross profit margin stood at 17.5%, up 1.8 percentage points year-on-year, and the core net profit margin reached 5.4%, an increase of 0.6 percentage points, leading the industry in profitability quality.
The profit composition reveals that Geely has successfully shifted from linear growth dependent on sales volume accumulation to a multiplicative effect driven by the value chain. In Q1, benefiting from the sustained strong sales of high-value models like the Zeekr 9X and Zeekr 8X, the sales proportion of Geely's premium models priced above 200,000 yuan significantly increased to 10%. The core net profit per vehicle reached 6,429 yuan, a 30% year-on-year increase, hitting a five-year high.
These figures strongly demonstrate that Geely's growth engine has transitioned from "trading price for volume" to "defining premium through technology." While revenue expanded, deep synergies under the "One Geely" strategy—encompassing technology sharing, joint procurement, and channel co-development—led to an 18% year-on-year decrease in the administrative expense ratio and a 17% decrease in the R&D investment ratio in Q1 2026. This created a favorable "scissors difference" of rapid revenue growth alongside a declining expense ratio, providing solid support for profitability.
Geely has also built a substantial safety cushion regarding financial stability. By the end of Q1, the company maintained a total cash position above 60 billion yuan, a historically high level, while the debt-to-asset ratio improved further to 65.1%. Ample cash reserves and a continuously improving capital structure provide Geely with strategic depth far exceeding its peers amidst industry price wars and geopolitical uncertainties, enabling it to withstand short-term volatility while stockpiling resources for future global expansion and technological breakthroughs. This ability to precisely manage financial leverage while growing rapidly is a core guarantee of high-quality growth.
Centered on the transition from "scale leadership" to "value leadership," Geely is steadily advancing its strategies for intelligentization, globalization, and premiumization. Through the "One Geely" system integration, operational redundancies are being eliminated, fostering balanced development across multiple brands and efficiency gains across the entire value chain.
In intelligentization, Geely is leading the next phase: mass production of the integrated cabin-driving intelligent entity, deployment of the native Robotaxi prototype, over 600,000 users for the Ziyue Haohan G-ASD system with a 93.86% activation rate, achieving China's first international export of intelligent driving technology with UNR171 certification, and deepening collaboration with NVIDIA to solidify the technological foundation, accelerating the arrival of the technology realization period.
Premiumization efforts yielded significant results: Zeekr delivered 77,037 vehicles in Q1, an 86% year-on-year increase, with the 9X model claiming the sales crown in the 500,000-yuan luxury SUV segment for four consecutive months, and the 8X becoming an instant hit upon launch. Lynk & Co sales grew 12% year-on-year, with NEVs accounting for 62% of its sales, forming a mature premium product matrix that drives the brand from "scale profit" toward "value profit."
Globalization entered a phase of accelerated growth, with overseas sales doubling year-on-year and NEV exports exceeding 61% of the total. Localized factories were established in Egypt, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan, achieving multi-point success in key markets like Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Central Asia. With a presence in over 100 countries and regions and more than 1,900 service outlets, Geely is transitioning from product export to full value chain export, solidifying its long-term growth trajectory.
Multi-brand synergy is releasing potential: a clear differentiated matrix exists with "Zeekr targeting luxury, Lynk & Co solidifying the premium segment, Galaxy holding the mainstream, and China Star stabilizing the foundation." Sharing across R&D, supply chain, and channels eliminates operational redundancy, reduces costs, and ensures each brand precisely targets its segment, aiding the冲刺 towards the annual sales target of 3.45 million vehicles and achieving dual breakthroughs in operational efficiency and business growth.
The effective implementation of intelligentization, premiumization, and globalization strategies enabled Geely to achieve a strong breakthrough in the capital market during Q1, completing a shift in valuation logic from a "traditional auto stock" to a "tech growth leader," becoming a core benchmark in the Hong Kong automotive sector.
By the intraday session on April 29, its market capitalization surpassed 240 billion HKD, reaching a four-and-a-half-year high. The stock price performance was impressive, with a cumulative increase of over 20% in 2026, and a particularly strong rally of over 60% from March 6 to April 10, leading the performance in the Hong Kong auto板块.
The essence of this valuation re-rating is the capital market's re-pricing of Geely's "technology attributes." With the Ziyue Haohan advanced driver-assistance system scaled to over 600,000 users and the mass production of the integrated cabin-driving intelligent entity, Geely's leading position in the field of AI-defined vehicles is becoming increasingly clear. The investment logic has shifted from solely focusing on model cycles typical of "traditional manufacturing stocks" towards evaluating technological barriers and data flywheels characteristic of "tech growth stocks."
Domestic and international investment banks are unanimously optimistic. Institutions including J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and China Merchants Securities International have issued "Overweight" or "Buy" ratings, with target prices reaching up to 32 HKD. There is broad institutional recognition of its long-term growth logic, synchronously boosting capital confidence and valuation potential.
The fundamental confidence behind Geely's "counter-trend dual growth" in Q1 originates from the comprehensive synergistic capabilities built through the integration under the "One Geely" strategy. This capability not only brings short-term expense optimization and profit release but also constructs a structurally competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate in the long term.
On the R&D front, core technological resources—including vehicle architecture, electronic electrical architecture, three-electric systems, intelligent driving, and intelligent cockpit—are shared across multiple brands, effectively avoiding duplicate investment. In manufacturing and procurement, capacity utilization and delivery efficiency are enhanced by allocating factory resources, while supply chain costs are continuously reduced through the scale advantages of joint procurement. In channels and after-sales, accelerated channel co-development and after-sales synergy further reduce marginal costs in sales and service. The year-on-year decline in the administrative expense ratio and R&D investment ratio in Q1 is a direct financial reflection of this all-link synergistic efficiency, indicating that the "One Geely" integration is transitioning from "physical merger" to "chemical fusion," a qualitative leap.
Geely's first-mover advantage in intelligentization is being amplified through the systemic strength of "One Geely." The user base for the Ziyue Haohan intelligent driving system has exceeded 600,000, with assisted driving mileage growing 3.15 times over the past year to over 1.32 billion kilometers and an activation rate of 93.86%, gradually entering a critical phase of large-scale user experience validation. It is projected to be equipped on over one million vehicles within the year and cover seven brands next year. Concurrently with the Beijing Auto Show, Geely unveiled China's first natively developed Robotaxi prototype, the Eva Cab, equipped with the mass-producible L4 autonomous driving solution Ziyue Haohan G-ASD L4, demonstrating its full-chain capability from前瞻 technology布局 to mass production落地. Simultaneously, Geely is engaging in deep collaboration with NVIDIA in areas like physical AI and industrial AI, accelerating the construction of the next-generation intelligent mobility technology foundation. The unified调度 and scaled popularization of intelligent resources allow Geely to establish a systemic first-mover advantage in the latter half of the smart car competition.
Compared to the high capital expenditure and geopolitical risks faced by many domestic NEV brands expanding overseas through independent investment and factory construction, Geely, guided by the dual-brand matrix of "Geely + Zeekr" and leveraging the resource advantages of global partners like Proton, Renault, and Volvo, adopts flexible and diversified cooperative出海 models. This approach results in higher efficiency and lower susceptibility to geopolitical conflicts. In Kazakhstan, Geely became the first Chinese brand to implement a "dual distributor, dual factory, dual energy form" model. In Brazil, a joint investment of 3.8 billion Brazilian Reais with Renault plans to kickstart local production within the year. To date, Geely has established over 1,900 sales and service outlets in more than 100 countries and regions, serving 20 million global users, making its global network's depth and breadth unique among independent brands. This globalization system output builds an irreplaceable overseas competitive barrier.
From sales champion to profit champion, from product export to technology export, and from scale leadership to value leadership, Geely Auto, underpinned by the systemic strength of "One Geely" and driven by the four wheels of premiumization, globalization, intelligentization, and energy diversification, has achieved dual growth in both consumer and capital markets during an industry downturn. It has charted a high-quality growth path characterized by "removing redundancy, enhancing efficiency, increasing value, and strengthening resilience," providing a replicable benchmark model for the transformation and upgrading of Chinese automotive brands.
Comments