Xiaomi's Factory Robots Put in Eight-Hour Shifts While Analysts Puzzle Over the Profit Line
Published on 11/08/2026 at 02:40 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Xiaomi's humanoid robot has completed its first full eight-hour shift at a sorting station inside the company's own car plant, the firm reported at the World Internet Conference summit on Tuesday. A separate trial began in a staff residential complex, where the embodied base model handled tasks across three rooms for more than 30 minutes at a stretch. The twin tests — one industrial, one domestic — matter less as a robotics showcase than as a question about repeatability: can these tasks be strung into workflows that pay for themselves?
That question carries weight because the financial backdrop has shifted. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs cut its expectations for Xiaomi, citing the electric-vehicle business and higher AI investment. Two days earlier, Daiwa had taken the opposite tack, reaffirming its "Buy" rating and lifting its price target from 30 to 35 HKD, pointing to margin gains from premiumization in the smartphone division. Both houses arrived at the same target by different roads — a neat illustration of the tension running through the stock. Richer handset margins can underwrite earnings, while new technology and the auto unit consume capital.
A cautious note beneath the buying case
Citi kept its buy recommendation intact but flagged a softer profit picture. For the third quarter of 2026, the bank projected an adjusted net profit of RMB 4.8 billion — a 58% decline year on year. Average smartphone selling prices and margins, in Citi's view, should nevertheless come in better than expected.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Xiaomi?
The stock itself benefited on Thursday from a broad recovery in Chinese technology names. China Daily reported a rotation into the sector against a previously deeply pessimistic positioning, making the gain part of a market-wide move rather than a company-specific story. Media reports attributed support to positive sentiment abroad following the US midterm results and to money shifting out of AI names toward cheaper Chinese internet and consumer stocks. Xiaomi's October delivery figures were cited as a supporting company factor, not the sole trigger. On Friday, the shares added 0.7%.
Deliveries set the pace
The auto division tells the same story of scale on a larger canvas. Just over a week ago, Xiaomi reported more than 50,000 electric vehicles delivered in October — a figure Reuters called the year's strongest month. Cumulative deliveries from January through October reached roughly 336,000 vehicles, against a full-year target of 550,000.
Whether that volume translates into earnings is the crux. Xiaomi's next scheduled financial disclosure falls on 24 November, when the board is due to review and approve the unaudited third-quarter 2026 results. The same meeting will cover results for the nine months ended 30 September 2026. That date will put numbers behind the diverging analyst views.
For now, the investment case rests on how three threads knit together: technical execution, unit sales and earning power. Xiaomi has laid out several concrete growth avenues. They become more persuasive once better handset margins and auto progress help carry the cost of funding new technology. The robot's eight-hour shift is a start; the November filing is where the arithmetic gets tested.
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