Horizon Robotics 1H26 First Take. The company had pre-announced a profit warning, and 1H revenue and blended GPM landed toward the high end of guidance; however, guidance had already been cut vs. prior Street consensus, and the upside was driven by licensing and services.The core product solutions biz (chips + HSD algorithms) materially missed. Both revenue growth and margins slowed sharply; breakdown below:

1) Product solutions revenue slowed notably. The 'volume + price up' thesis remains unproven.

Revenue growth decelerated sharply: Q2 product solutions revenue was just RMB 930 mn, with growth slowing from 85% in 2H25 to only 15% in 1H26. This is far below the prior 2026 full-year guidance for the segment of +132%.

Shipments growth eased: 1H26 chip shipments were only 2.218 mn units, up just 12% YoY and below the full-year guide (Horizon has cut its FY shipments guide from 5.42 mn sets to 5.00 mn, implying ~25% YoY). The weakness reflects soft domestic PV retail demand in 1H26 (-20.2% YoY) and sales at key customer BYD Co. missing expectations, while BYD’s in-house high-compute 'Xuanji A3' chip (3-chip cluster >2,100 TOPS) stoked concerns about share loss in intelligent-driving chips.ASP gains stalled: 1H26 ASP was RMB 417, up only 2.4% YoY, indicating the higher-priced J6P has yet to scale. Shipments remain concentrated in the Mono series (J2, J3, J6B) and other mid/low-tier chips. The market’s thesis of domestic substitution led by the high-compute J6P driving both volume and ASP higher has not materialized in 1H26.

2) Product solutions GPM fell YoY, pressured by three factors.

Q2 product solutions GPM was just 36.2%, down 600 bps YoY and well below the 46.7% expected. Key drags included:

a) Product mix skewed to mid/low end. Shipments remained dominated by the lower-priced Mono series, while the high-ASP, high-margin J6P contributed minimally.

b) Memory price upcycle eroded hardware profits. DRAM prices continued to rise, and higher memory costs directly compressed product margins.

c) Higher mix of low-margin system-level deliveries. To accelerate roll-out of high-end HSD (SuperDrive) solutions, Horizon provided system-level deliveries including domain controllers to select clients. The low-margin domain-controller hardware diluted overall solution margins.$HORIZONROBOT-W(09660.HK)