Finance
China’s Xpeng keeps up its solid EV delivery streak against rivals
Chinese electric car company Xpeng displays its mass-market Mona M03 coupe inside a headquarters’ showroom in Guangzhou, China, on Aug. 26, 2024.
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng
BEIJING — Chinese electric car startup Xpeng is keeping up the sales momentum against its rivals, even as BYD expands on its market dominance amid a fierce price war in China.
Xpeng said Tuesday it delivered 34,611 cars in June, its eighth-straight month of delivering more than 30,000 cars.
Shares rose more than 2% in New York trading. Xpeng did not specify what portion of the deliveries were for its cars with advanced driver-assist, or for its lower-priced Mona brand.
China’s electric car price war has only intensified in recent weeks, drawing government criticism for “involution,” or excessive, non-productive competition. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday also led a high-level financial and economic commission meeting that called for more governance of “low price, disorderly competition,” according to a CNBC translation of Chinese state media.
Mixed results for competitors
Xpeng’s U.S.-listed rivals, which target a more premium segment of China’s car market, saw more modest sales momentum.
Geely-backed Zeekr reported 16,702 car deliveries in June, down 11.7% from the prior month and 16.9% year over year.
Nio reported 24,925 car deliveries in June, a slight increase from May, thanks to growth across its premium “Nio” brand and lower-priced Onvo and Firefly brands.
Li Auto reported 36,279 vehicle deliveries in June, a 11.2% drop from May, but its total deliveries in the second quarter came in at 111,074 units, better than the company’s lowered guidance of 108,000 cars. The company on Friday cut its second-quarter delivery outlook by more than 15,000 cars, attributing the decline to an upgrade to its sales system.
“Based on our channel checks and analysis, we understand Li Auto has started to
prohibit extra rebates [from salespeople sharing their commission with customers] within its sales network since the beginning of June 2025,” Nomura analysts said in a report Sunday. They viewed the automaker’s moves as an effort to limit competition among its salespeople while focusing on improving services and brand recognition.
Most of Li Auto’s models are SUVs that come with a fuel tank, which extends the car’s driving range and addresses one of the biggest consumer concerns about electric vehicles. Li Auto’s monthly deliveries had surpassed 50,000 late last year.
Tesla under pressure
Hong Kong-listed Xiaomi reported deliveries of over 25,000 electric cars in June, a slight decrease from the previous month.
Less than a day after announcing its new YU7 SUV would be 10,000 yuan ($1,400) cheaper than Tesla‘s Model Y, the Chinese smartphone maker said its car received more than 240,000 locked-in orders. Xiaomi claimed the YU7 offered a longer driving range than the Model Y, but acknowledged that Tesla’s assisted-driving system was more advanced.
YU7 SUV deliveries are now slated to take more than half a year, if not much longer, according to Xiaomi’s online ordering portal. The company had initially said deliveries would take one to five weeks.
“We believe a significant portion of new orders may come from scalpers, reflecting expectations of extreme popularity for the new model,” Junheng Li, CEO, head of research, at JL Warren Capital, said in a note Wednesday.
“We estimate [Tesla] Q2 sales in China to be ~128K units, down 12% YoY, pressured by intensifying competition from Chinese brands’ new model launches,” Li said.
Tesla raised its price in China for the Model 3 long-range all-wheel drive by 10,000 yuan, according to its website Tuesday.
As of May, Tesla was the fifth-largest automaker by market share in China’s new energy vehicle segment, which includes battery-only and hybrid-powered cars. The figures from the China Passenger Car Association showed that Tesla’s retail sales in the country for the first five months of the year fell slightly to just over 200,000 vehicles. Figures for June were not available as of Wednesday morning local time.
Leapmotor, which has partnered with Stellantis, the owner of Chrysler and Jeep, for the overseas market, also maintained steady growth in June with record deliveries of 48,006 cars for the month. Aito, which uses Huawei technology for the car’s entertainment and driver-assist system, reported 44,685 car deliveries for last month.
Competing against a giant
BYD remained the market giant, with its passenger car sales edging higher in June to 377,628 vehicles, more than half of which were of battery-only cars. The rest were plug-in hybrid electric cars.
That brought BYD’s passenger car sales for the first half of the year to 2.1 million vehicles.
In contrast, Leapmotor and Li Auto each saw deliveries of more than 200,000 cars in the first half of the year, while Xpeng came just shy of the benchmark at 197,189 vehicle deliveries.
Xiaomi’s deliveries for the first half of the year exceeded 150,000 cars, according to CNBC calculations of publicly available figures.
BYD, Xiaomi, and Geely will be the most likely to survive any chaotic industry consolidation, predicted Michael Dunne, head of advisory at Dunne Insights.
Speaking on CNBC’s “The China Connection,” he added that Nio might be at risk despite having a great product and “doing all the right things” due to their poor finances.
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For the generation that should be in its “peak savings years,” the prospect of retiring on time has shifted from a plan to a prayer.
A newly released Employee Financial Wellness Survey by PwC found that nearly 50% of Gen X employees are pushing back their retirement dates, citing stagnant wages, rising everyday costs, and a lack of liquid savings.
Additionally, only 38% of Gen Xers believe they can retire when they originally planned, and more than half of this demographic expect to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts early to cover short-term costs.
“For employers, this isn’t a future problem. Financial anxiety during peak career years can affect focus and engagement,” PwC researchers write. “If the risks are clear, the question is why more employees aren’t taking action. It’s not a lack of desire. Most employees want stability, confidence and to feel in control. But many don’t feel equipped to get there.”
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The primary driver of this retirement delay is the inability to save as inflation eats away at monthly expenses, the report notes. Twenty-five percent of the total workforce is living without a buffer, and nearly half cannot meet basic household expenses.
Nearly half of Gen X workers are delaying retirement, PwC reports. (Getty Images)
“[Forty-nine percent] say their compensation isn’t keeping up with costs. As expenses rise faster than income, day-to-day trade-offs are becoming routine. Employees aren’t just feeling squeezed. They’re making difficult financial decisions to stay afloat,” the PwC report continues..
As a result, when Gen Xers cannot afford to leave their current jobs, the entire corporate ladder stalls, creating business risks, with companies facing higher costs as older talent remains on payroll longer than expected.
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“When employees dip into retirement funds early or delay retirement altogether, it affects more than personal finances and retirement plan leakage,” the report says. “It may also influence workforce planning, healthcare costs, succession timing and overall organizational stability.”
The findings also show that a significant portion – 41% – of the workforce feel they were never given the tools to manage a crisis of this magnitude, leading to a sense of being “overwhelmed” by financial choices.
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PwC provided a call to action for employees and their employers, encouraging them to reduce the stigma around financial education, foster trust through human coaches, emphasize skill building and focus on day-to-day finances before long-term goals.
“Employees define financial wellness simply: less stress, fewer surprises and the freedom to make financial choices with confidence. For employers, that’s the opportunity.”
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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