2025 New Tea Beverage Financial Report Revealed: Who's Leading, Who's Falling Behind?

(Source: China Times Finance)

CET FINANCE

New tea shop brands have released their 2025 financial reports one after another, and their revenue performances have diverged significantly. The gap between leading brands and mid-tier brands, as well as between profitable and loss-making brands, continues to widen.

Data shows that Mixue Group achieved revenue of RMB 33.56 billion in 2025, up 35.2%; Guming achieved revenue of RMB 12.9 billion, up 46.9%; Tea Baidao achieved annual revenue of RMB 5.395 billion, up 10%; and Hushang Ayi achieved annual revenue of RMB 4.466 billion, up 35.96%.

In sharp contrast, Nayuki Tea, once known as the “No. 1 new tea drink stock,” has still not escaped its difficulties. In 2025, it recorded revenue of RMB 4.33 billion, down 12% year over year; its adjusted net loss was RMB 240 million, making it the only loss-making company among the five brands. Under the appearance of a booming industry, the gaps between new tea shop brands are continuously widening. What market logic lies behind this revenue divergence? And which brands are falling behind?

Author: Shen Yang

Editor: Li Jie

Graphics: Qiao Han Yun

PART 1

Mixue remains at the top; Guming leads in growth rate

Among the new tea shop brands that have already disclosed their financial reports, Mixue Bingcheng firmly sits in the top spot. In 2025, Mixue Group’s revenue was RMB 33.56 billion, up 35.2%; attributable net profit was RMB 5.89 billion, up 32.7%.

Hong Tao, vice president of the China Association of Consumer Economics and head of the Business Economics Research Institute at Beijing Technology and Business University, told China Economic Times · China Times Finance that Mixue Group’s high growth is not driven by a single factor. First, its “high-quality and affordable” business model ensures franchisees can still make profits with a thin-margin, high-volume approach; second, Mixue Group has extreme cost control and a vertically integrated supply chain, with core beverage ingredients produced and supplied in-house, compressing ingredient costs; in addition, it has deeply penetrated lower-tier markets, building a high-density, high-penetration store network in lower-tier cities.

Mixue Group’s financial report shows that in Mainland China, the number of stores in cities of tier three and below is 32,119, accounting for 58%; the number of stores in tier-two cities is 10,566, accounting for 19.1%. As of December 31, 2025, Mixue Group has 59,823 stores worldwide. During the year, it opened 13,000 new stores, with a strong expansion momentum.

In 2025, another brand that expanded aggressively in terms of store count was Guming. As of December 31, 2025, Guming had 13,554 stores, an increase of 3,640 net compared with the end of 2024.

Benefiting from the growth in store numbers, in 2025 Guming achieved revenue of RMB 12.9 billion, up 46.9%; attributable net profit was RMB 3.109 billion‌ , up 110.3% year over year. Among the five new tea shop companies, its net profit growth rate ranked first.

Unlike Mixue Group’s nationwide expansion, Guming has always focused deeply within regions. The financial report shows that currently, there are still 17 provinces in China where Guming has not yet established a presence. What will the timeline for entering these provinces look like in the future? Will 2026 continue with “regional deep cultivation,” or move toward nationwide expansion? In response, Guming told China Economic Times · China Times Finance that in 2026 it will continue with “regional deep cultivation,” and there is no specific timetable yet for its plans to set up in new provinces.

PART 2

Tea Baidao and Hushang Ayi’s “growth anxiety”

Among mid-tier players, in 2025 Tea Baidao’s revenue was RMB 5.395 billion, up 10%; net profit was RMB 820 million, up 71%. Hushang Ayi achieved revenue of RMB 4.466 billion, up 35.96%; net profit was RMB 501 million, up 52.4%.

Compared with the rapid rise of leading brands, mid-tier brands have started to show “growth anxiety.” Hong Tao also said in an interview: “At present, the biggest challenge faced by mid-tier players such as Tea Baidao and Hushang Ayi is that franchisees are leaving in serious numbers, and store expansion has hit a ceiling.”

In terms of store numbers, both new tea shop brands saw large-scale store closures in 2025. As of December 31, 2025, Tea Baidao’s domestic store count was 8,621, a net increase of 226 compared with the same period last year. During the reporting period, the number of newly added franchise stores was 1,159, but the number of franchise stores closed during the period was as high as 933.

Hushang Ayi officially entered the “10,000-store scale” in 2025. Its store count was 11,449, a net increase of 2,273 compared with the same period last year. However, during the reporting period, the number of closed franchise stores reached 1,383, and the number of store closures increased by 40.12% year over year compared with 2024, putting pressure on the quality of expansion.

From the industry landscape, new tea shop brands can roughly be divided into three categories: premium, mid-tier, and value-priced. Competition among mid-tier new tea shop brands is especially fierce. Hong Tao said that the mid-tier segment of new tea shops has fallen into an “attack from both above and below” situation: the upper end has won consumer mindshare by premium brands such as Heytea and Nayuki; the lower end has been locked down by Mixue Bingcheng with extreme value for money; and mid-tier brands are aggressively “over-involuting” in the 12–18 yuan price band.

Perhaps to open a new growth route, in 2025 Tea Baidao began laying out its coffee business. The financial report shows that during the reporting period, Tea Baidao launched 17 coffee products. How many stores does its coffee business currently cover? And how much does it contribute to overall store sales?

In response to the above questions, Tea Baidao said that currently, its coffee series products have been launched in multiple locations, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing, and other cities’ Tea Baidao stores. It is expected that by the end of 2026, it may be able to cover 2,000 stores, and the share of coffee cup volume among stores that are actively selling will rise to around 15%.

PART 3

Why has Nayuki Tea fallen behind?

As the “No. 1 new tea drink stock,” Nayuki Tea is the only loss-making company among the five new tea shop brands. In 2025, it achieved revenue of RMB 4.33 billion, down 12% year over year; its adjusted net loss was RMB 240 million, which narrowed year-over-year by 73.8% compared with its 2024 loss.

From the financial report, one of the reasons for its loss reduction is the cost decrease brought by store closures. By the end of 2025, Nayuki Tea’s store count was 1,646, a net decrease of 152 compared with the same period last year. Of these, there were 1,288 company-operated stores, down 165 year over year. This is also the first time in recent years that Nayuki Tea’s store count has declined.

After the closures, in 2025 Nayuki Tea’s material costs dropped from RMB 1.809 billion in 2024 to RMB 1.470 billion; employee costs dropped from RMB 1.435 billion to RMB 1.222 billion; depreciation and amortization expenses for assets leased by the group dropped from RMB 413 million to RMB 274 million; and utilities spending also fell from RMB 154 million to RMB 122 million.

Since listing in 2021, Nayuki Tea has accumulated losses of more than RMB 1.7 billion. Pan Helin, a well-known economist and a committee member of the Expert Committee on information and communication economy at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, analyzed that Nayuki Tea has an unclear positioning. Its large-store model and high-barrier franchise strategy are seriously out of sync with actual market demand at the moment.

“Nayuki Tea’s franchise expansion has lagged, and the franchise threshold is too high. When it opened franchising in 2023, it required RMB 1.5 million in working capital per store. In 2024, even though it was reduced to RMB 580,000 as a starting point, it is still far higher than the industry’s average level, so it missed the opportunity from lower-tier market dividends.” Hong Tao said.

He added that Nayuki Tea’s revenue decline is not caused by a single factor, but rather the result of four overlapping pressures: a heavy-asset model, strategic vacillation, delayed franchising, and changes in consumer demand. Its predicament marks the new tea shop industry’s transition from the first half driven by capital and rapid expansion to the second half oriented toward profitability and light-asset operations.

The analysis from iiMedia Consulting points out that the new-style tea beverage industry has moved from the early stage of rapid expansion and the “race for market share” “land grab” phase to a new stock competition stage that emphasizes refined operations. Pan Helin recommends: “In a situation where homogeneous competition in the industry is extremely severe, new tea shop brands need to introduce differentiated new products with memorable features to satisfy consumers’ tastes.”

Hong Tao concludes that the new tea shop industry has officially entered a stage where stock deep cultivation and high-end competition proceed in parallel. Overall, it is in the mature phase of the product lifecycle, and it shows a structural divergence in which “the strong get stronger and the weak exit.” In the future, the key points of competition will be supply chain resilience, profitability at the single-store level, and the ability to differentiate the brand.

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