BYD leans on exports as its Chinese registrations nearly halve in H1 2026

BYD's interim results for the first half of 2026 confirm a decisive geographic shift in its business. Revenue earned outside China climbed 34% year-on-year to 181.3 billion yuan (roughly USD 27 billion), crossing the halfway mark at 53% of group turnover, while domestic revenue contracted 31%. The group as a whole still shrank: total revenue fell 7.1% to 344.8 billion yuan (USD 50.9 billion), and profit attributable to shareholders dropped 20.5% to 12.3 billion yuan (USD 1.8 billion).

The home-market picture is ugliest for the flagship brand. Insurance-registration data monitored by China EV DataTracker show 795,169 BYD-badged vehicles registered in China in H1, down 45.9%, as the price war grinds on. Fang Cheng Bao's 131,000 units (+115%) prove the sub-brands are growing, but they cannot fill a gap that size. Plug-in hybrids are the structural weak point: group PHEV volumes slid 7.9% in 2025 and another 11.2% between January and August this year.

Exports are carrying the company. BYD shipped 792,256 vehicles abroad in the half-year, up 70.6%, capped by a record of roughly 190,000 units in August alone — a 134% jump. Foreign operations earn a 22% gross margin, 1.9 points higher than a year earlier, which helped push the group-wide margin up to 18.85%. Brazil has become BYD's biggest market outside China, and the company is adding local factories in Brazil, Hungary and Turkey.

A second-half recovery may be forming: July and August combined saw 844,456 global sales, up 18.5%, driven by BEVs (+29.6%). The pain is not BYD's alone — CPCA figures show China's passenger-vehicle retail fell 21.1% in July, the tenth straight monthly decline, even as the country's vehicle exports surged 88.2%. With well over 100 brands still competing at home, BYD's future increasingly depends on markets abroad.