Guangzhou Automobile Group (02238) First Half of 2026: Steady Revenue Growth, Overseas Sales Doubled to Become the Primary Growth Driver

The automotive industry is experiencing strong internal growth, with revenue from overseas markets doubling, establishing the primary growth curve, and strategically investing in AI+ industrial sectors for diversified growth paths. Guangzhou Automobile Group (02238) is in the process of reconstructing its fundamental value. On August 28, Guangzhou Automobile Group announced its semi-annual financial report for 2026, achieving total operating revenue of 46.5 billion yuan, an increase of 9.13% year-on-year, with overseas revenue reaching 14.013 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 109.27%, raising its revenue share to 30.13%, making the overseas market a core growth engine. In the first half of the year, the company anchored its "Panyu Action," focusing on product value battles, product breakthroughs, and overseas expansion among various initiatives, achieving significant results with substantial growth in three key indicators: new energy vehicles, self-owned brands, and overseas markets, thereby establishing a new growth curve. The automotive industry has entered a phase of elimination in a stock era. While consolidating its fundamentals, Guangzhou Automobile Group is also exploring various growth points, including strategic investors like Siasun Robot&Automation and the gradual commercialization of Robotaxi and other AI applications. By June 2026, the company had cash equivalents of 33.386 billion yuan, an increase of 9.546 billion yuan from the end of 2025, ensuring sufficient cash flow to support the comprehensive advancement of multiple growth strategies. Three Core Drivers Creating the Primary Growth Curve In the first half of 2026, total vehicle sales in the automotive industry were 15.017 million units, down 4.1% year-on-year, with new energy vehicle sales at 7.446 million units, which increased by only 7.3% year-on-year, compared to a growth of 40.3% in the same period last year. Against a backdrop of slowing industry growth and intensified price competition, Guangzhou Automobile Group's total sales reached 773,100 units, showing a counter-trend growth, with new energy, self-owned brands, and overseas markets driving this growth. In the new energy sector, the company sold 260,200 new energy vehicles in the first half of the year, an increase of 68.8% year-on-year, raising its sales share to 33.65%. Combined with energy-efficient vehicle sales, the total share reached 62.82%, a year-on-year increase of 14 percentage points. In the self-owned brand sector, driven by the wave of electrification, sales surged to 346,000 units, a remarkable increase of 35.69%, with the sales share climbing to 44.75%. Notably, GAC Aion achieved sales of 181,600 units, a growth of 67.08% compared to the same period last year, maintaining a growth rate of over 60% from March to June, with retail sales to consumers exceeding 80%. Additionally, GAC Trumpchi sold 164,400 units during the same period, a year-on-year increase of 12.36%. The first model from the jointly developed Qijing automobile by GAC and Huawei, the smart pure electric hatchback GT7, has been produced and launched at the end of June, and is expected to contribute to sales growth in the second half of the year. In the overseas market, the company fully implements the overseas traction, global adaptation mechanism, accelerating the development of global vehicle projects and reshaping its product system for overseas expansion. During this period, exports of self-owned brands reached 121,500 units, a year-on-year increase of 132%, leading the industry, with the scale nearing the total for the entire year of 2025. This accounted for 15.72% of GAC's overall sales. In Southeast Asia, GAC's terminal sales doubled to approximately 23,000 units, while in the Americas, terminal sales reached about 25,000 units, up 75% year-on-year. In fact, the new energy and self-owned brands primarily focus on vehicle development, gaining competitive advantages in the stock and incremental market play for larger market shares, while the overseas market is a core incremental market, maximizing the product advantages of new energy and self-owned brands to form the primary growth curve that the company is keen to develop. In the first half of the year, Guangzhou Automobile Group expanded into 32 new overseas markets, covering 110 countries and regions globally, with overseas sales and service networks reaching 746 outlets. The company has set a target of 250,000 self-owned brand overseas sales for 2026, planning to accelerate the development of global vehicle projects and efficiently promote the implementation of the overseas Thousand Network Plan, constructing a comprehensive overseas operational system covering production, energy supply, product delivery, and mobility services, with a goal of entering 120 countries and regions globally by 2030 and achieving annual overseas sales exceeding 1 million units. Market + Technology Builds Strong Product Power, R&D Investment Exceeds 67 Billion Yuan The three core drivers of Guangzhou Automobile Group can maintain high growth because the fundamental logic lies in winning with products. In a fiercely competitive landscape, pure price competition fails, and success is determined by high-cost-performance vehicles, with automakers possessing comprehensive independent R&D capabilities creating a resonance between products and demand, seizing the best window for market capture. The company insists on relying on technology, continually investing in R&D to reshape product power. In the first half of the year, self-research expenses reached 4.834 billion yuan, an increase of 27.58% year-on-year, accounting for 10.4% of total expenses, with a cumulative investment exceeding 67 billion yuan, having initially transitioned from point technology breakthroughs to a systematic technological framework. During this period, the company filed over 1,200 new patent applications, increasing its cumulative patent applications to over 25,000 by June 2026. Guangzhou Automobile Group focuses on R&D for self-owned brands, centering its transformation on the IPD process, forming a pioneering product development model driven by market + technology, deeply integrating user needs into the entire business process, and constructing an end-to-end development flow from insight demand development delivery. At the same time, the company has a leading exclusive platform for new energy vehicles, with self-developed technologies in multiple fields, including power systems, smart connectivity, and intelligent driving, creating the industry's most competitive vehicle models. In April this year, GAC focused on launching several new technological achievements, including the all-new Star Source Power, Starship Body, Star River Smart Cabin, and Star Spirit Architecture 4.0, covering core areas such as power systems, body safety, smart cabins, and electronic electrical architecture, with these technologies already fully integrated into production vehicles. For example, the latest Star Source Power technology has been implemented in the mass production of models like Trumpchi Xiangwang E8 PHEV and M8 PHEV L; the Starship Body technology has completed production on models such as Haobo S600. It is worth noting that the company is building an energy ecology through GAC Energy and Inpai Battery, creating a vertically integrated new energy industrial chain comprising lithium ore + basic lithium battery raw material production + battery manufacturing + energy storage and charging services + battery leasing + battery recycling and cascading utilization, accelerating the transformation of new energy and enhancing the competitiveness of vehicles. Moreover, the energy ecological layout also helps reduce supply chain and service costs. In the second half of the year, several major models, including Trumpchi Yue 7, Aion Ray 7, and Qijing GX7, will be launched to continuously enrich the product matrix. In the first half of the year, GAC introduced overseas models including Trumpchi M6, Trumpchi E9, and Aion i60, continually refining product power through R&D investment and leveraging a vast sales and service network that includes over 2,400 4S stores domestically and 746 overseas sales outlets to deeply connect with consumers and capture global market share. Exploring Diverse Growth Points, Future Valuation Potential Can Be Expected The automotive business serves as the fundamental base. Guangzhou Automobile Group is simultaneously stimulating internal organic growth through multi-fold initiatives while actively exploring new growth points, driving revenue growth from various dimensions. In the first half of the year, multiple foresight applications of AI that the company has deeply laid out are gradually transitioning to commercial operations, including high-potential sectors such as Siasun Robot&Automation, flying cars, and Robotaxi. In the humanoid Siasun Robot&Automation sector, Huilun Technology's main product, GoMate Mini, has started routine commercial operations, deploying nearly 50 units across seven major scenarios, being incorporated into the Chinese security system, and receiving orders amounting to nearly 10 million yuan; in the flying car sector, the Huangpu factory of Gaoyu Technology has started production, with the first flying car, GOVY AirCab, rolling off the assembly line, having garnered nearly 2,000 intent orders; in the Robotaxi sector, the Robotaxi R2 developed in partnership with Didi has been delivered earlier this year and has obtained road testing qualifications in Beijing and Guangzhou, with CHENQI TECH operating over 550 Robotaxi vehicles and planning to build a fleet of 10,000 vehicles through an open cooperation model in 100 cities nationwide within five years. Moreover, the company is expanding its core automotive business into future high-tech industries such as artificial intelligence, embodied intelligence, aerospace, and new materials through its industrial capital, progressing in main business + industrial investment. In the first half of the year, the company invested in a total of 32 projects, covering multiple fields including unmanned logistics, semiconductor power devices, and commercial rockets, involving companies like New Stoneware and Star River Power. Previously, the company has invested in over 140 enterprises, with 49 of them listed on the capital market, including 20 participating companies like CXMT Corporation and Momenta that have gone public this year. In the medium to long term, the three sectors of humanoid Siasun Robot&Automation, flying cars, and Robotaxi will gradually achieve mass production and scale commercialization, forming a second growth curve beyond the fundamental base for the company. Industrial investments are entering a return period, and the intensive listings of high-tech companies it has invested in will provide fair value returns and enhance profits. For instance, CXMT Corporation, which listed in July this year, had GAC participating in 2021, and the current market value after listing has soared to 3.98 trillion yuan, with paper profits reaching tens of times. In summary, Guangzhou Automobile Group is accelerating its fundamental transformation, driven by new energy, self-owned brands, and overseas markets that foster internal organic growth. The overseas market has become the primary growth curve, while intensive R&D investment continues to strengthen product capabilities, and with several new models set to launch in the second half of the year, self-owned brands + overseas will drive ongoing sales growth. The company is exploring new growth points, and AI sectors across multiple fields and industrial investments will gradually release performance improvements. Based on a positive long-term outlook for the company, shareholder Hong Zejun consecutively increased his holdings on July 2 and 14, with the latest holdings approximately at 425 million shares, representing a stake of 15.11%. On the day of the performance announcement, the stock of Guangzhou Automobile Group surged 7.91%, yet the current PB ratio is only 0.2 times, while the PB ratio for new energy vehicle companies stands at 2 times, indicating that the company's current value is significantly undervalued.