BUSYMING has released its first annual results since listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange: its store count is approaching 22,000, and its gross merchandise volume (GMV) is nearing 93.6 billion yuan, signaling the emergence of a retail giant. In 2025, BUSYMING achieved revenue of 66.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.2%. Its adjusted net profit reached 2.692 billion yuan, surging by 194.9% compared to the previous year. In terms of scale and size, it has begun to pull ahead of its competitor, Wanzhen Group. Over the past year, BUSYMING opened 7,813 new franchised stores, 1.66 times more than Wanzhen Group, and its total store count exceeds Wanzhen's by 3,600. Its overall revenue is 1.29 times that of Wanzhen. However, amid these strong results, market skepticism is growing: as simple linear extrapolation becomes less reliable for forecasting, what will drive BUSYMING's future growth? Will it continue to seek out the last gaps in the vast lower-tier markets, or will it advance into higher-tier cities? Will it stick to the snack vertical or evolve into a full-category discount supermarket? Until these major questions are resolved, BUSYMING stands at a crossroads. While its growth ceiling is far from being reached, the path to the endgame remains shrouded in uncertainty.
Space for growth remains from an industry lifecycle perspective. The expansion logic of the volume snack sector is not yet exhausted. In 2025, buoyed by continued capital market support, the "duopoly" maintained high growth rates. BUSYMING and Wanzhen Group saw store growth rates of 52.5% and 29% respectively, sustaining a narrative centered on store expansion. Leading players are accelerating their encroachment on the long-tail market and progressively replacing some traditional convenience store formats, suggesting further market concentration. Goldman Sachs research predicts that by 2028, the combined market share of BUSYMING and Wanzhen Group could approach 80%. Despite their already substantial scale, regional structures remain unbalanced, supporting the logic of horizontal expansion. Huaan Securities analyst Deng Xin points out that BUSYMING has completed initial deployment in new first-tier and second-tier cities, with average store coverage of approximately 68,000 people, roughly on par with comprehensive supermarkets. Given that volume snack consumption frequency is higher than that of supermarkets, Deng believes there is still room for increased store density in second-tier cities. Furthermore, stores in fifth-tier cities account for 12.3% of the total, with average coverage of about 76,000 people, also indicating development potential.
Regional "misalignment" is a key reason competition within the industry remains relatively rational. Currently, the duopoly is not engaged in direct, draining competition but is in a phase of "growing the overall pie." BUSYMING is focusing on addressing historical weaknesses in regions like East and North China, while Wanzhen is expanding from its base in East China towards the southwest. Goldman Sachs tracking data from July to November 2025 shows that Wanzhen's new store openings in Central and South China remained in the low single-digit percentages, indicating it has not yet entered BUSYMING's core territories on a large scale. This benign expansion environment is directly reflected in financial performance. In 2025, BUSYMING significantly reduced subsidies for new stores from 120,000 yuan in 2024 to 36,000 yuan and largely eliminated competitive special subsidies. Coupled with the ongoing effects of economies of scale, BUSYMING's gross profit margin increased by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 9.8%, and its adjusted net profit margin rose to 4.1%.
However, "space remaining" does not guarantee that growth and returns can continue linearly. In the first half of 2025, BUSYMING's annualized revenue per store was 3.61 million yuan, a decline of 3.8% year-on-year. Concurrently, the average daily order volume per store increased from 385 orders in 2022 to 458 orders. CFO Wang Yutong acknowledged during the earnings call that same-store GMV pressure stemmed from the previous excessive focus on store opening speed and subsidy competition, which meant operational capabilities did not keep pace with expansion. In response, the company initiated an organizational restructuring in the second half of 2024: decentralizing authority to regional branches for faster response to frontline needs, while headquarters shifted towards process-driven and standardized capability output. Wang stated that entering the second half of 2025, especially the fourth quarter, BUSYMING's same-store performance had begun to recover. Nevertheless, the company's guidance for 2026 remained cautious, emphasizing only "year-on-year improvement" rather than encouraging market extrapolation.
Structural challenges persist. The consequences of rapid expansion need time to be digested, and even setting aside density issues, the future competitive landscape will become more complex. A notable change is that volume snack stores are aggressively entering core areas of first-tier cities, no longer confined to business "outside the Fifth Ring Road." These stores are often located in high-traffic core business districts or communities with higher rental costs, posing greater challenges to single-store operational capabilities. Currently, BUSYMING remains in a "one-size-fits-all" stage, lacking differentiated formats tailored to specific scenarios like communities, schools, or office buildings. Faced with the diverse and "layered" consumer demands within first-tier cities, precise site selection and refined operations have become essential.
From a long-term perspective, the scale growth of the volume snack channel will eventually normalize. As the marginal revenue contribution from "opening stores" continues to diminish, the long-term value of leading players like BUSYMING is shifting from "expansion speed" to "profit depth" and "model iteration." The underlying business logic dictates the error tolerance for single-store operations. According to BUSYMING's disclosed standard model: single-store investment is approximately 800,000 to 1 million yuan, with a payback period of about two years. Compared to high-margin sectors like bubble tea, its store gross margin is only about 19%, with franchisee net profit margins between 8% and 10%. This margin structure clearly shows that volume snacks are not a business supported by high per-item profits, but rather an extreme high-turnover game, relying on rapid inventory turnover to dilute fixed costs.
Consequently, the breakthrough for growth is likely to occur first at the operational level, specifically through upgrading sales per square foot at individual stores. In recent years, BUSYMING has actively promoted the renovation of stores to a new generation format, introducing categories like daily chemicals, fresh food, frozen products, and freshly baked goods. This moves it from being a "snack specialist" towards a "high-frequency discount retailer," aiming to raise revenue potential by broadening its product moat. This expansion remains measured. Although the group requires each store to maintain at least 1,800 SKUs, external statistics indicate snacks still account for 40% to 50% of the assortment. An investor long observing the consumer sector pointed out that under a high-turnover model, consumption frequency takes precedence over everything. Rashly pushing for a full-category approach could not only dilute the consumer's mental anchor of "volume snacks" but also easily drag down overall turnover efficiency due to slow-moving long-tail items, thereby eroding the foundation of the business model.
The approach to supply chain cooperation has also maintained its original course. In 2025, BUSYMING launched its own brand system featuring a value-oriented "Red Label" and a quality-focused "Gold Label," but did not position these as core levers for profit extraction. Management's explanation is that traditional retailers develop own brands to gain pricing power and high margins because their products overlap significantly with external brands. In contrast, BUSYMING's products are inherently differentiated, and the company prefers to position its stores as "showcase windows" for excellent Chinese food manufacturers, rather than turning them into mere OEMs. Another reason for this restraint is that, compared to front-end expansion, the ultimate optimization of mid- and back-office efficiency represents a more certain, urgent, and higher-return focus area currently. By the end of 2025, although the BUSYMING system had approximately 3,000 more stores and about 15 billion yuan more revenue than Wanzhen, their net profit levels were nearly equal, with Wanzhen's net profit margin being nearly 2 percentage points higher. In the razor-thin margin retail industry, this indicates a significant management gap.
To address this, the company is attempting to transition from "experience-driven" to "prediction-driven" operations through digital means, covering self-developed site selection, AI store audits, and intelligent ordering systems, aiming to close the management premium gap. On the supply chain front, it was noted during the earnings call that the company will systematically advance capabilities in hot food and cold chain: hot food includes immediate-consumption items like sausages and egg tarts, while the cold chain covers chilled and frozen products, with a focus on trends like less additives, short shelf life, and healthier options. Short-shelf-life foods impose higher demands on storage environments and turnover speed; errors in algorithmic forecasting or logistics delays could lead to inventory writedowns or food safety risks. Currently, BUSYMING operates 56 warehouses, over half of which rely on third-party operations. Its Hong Kong IPO prospectus disclosed plans to use part of the raised funds to focus on building smart warehouses and cold storage, while also strengthening the cold chain distribution system.
Simultaneously, BUSYMING appears to have quietly begun exploring "new formats." Market rumors suggest that "You·Recommend," launched in Wuhan earlier this year, is its pilot for the fresh snack segment, though this has not been officially confirmed. A Huaan Securities report indicates the project plans to adopt a "primarily direct-operated, supplemented by joint operations" model, aiming for around 800 stores nationwide. The core goal for 2026 is "scale expansion," focusing on covering core business districts in high-tier cities and expanding service radius through instant retail. The same report also notes that on the supply chain side, the company has established an integrated model of "central factory + cold chain logistics + in-store preparation." A 10,000-square-meter central factory is planned in Wuhan, with 5,000 square meters already operational; core categories are controlled by its own factories, while other categories adhere to standards comparable to Sam's Club production lines.
Store format expansion, efficiency optimization, and supply chain deepening are overlapping forces that collectively define the upward potential of BUSYMING's single-store model. For the company, the true key lies not in the number of available paths, but in when it can solidify a replicable, scalable, and deterministic model. This would open new avenues for growth before the pace of scale expansion inevitably slows down.
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