The disclosure of 2025 annual reports for listed securities firms is nearly complete. A performance picture characterized by "record-high net profits but revenues yet to reach historical peaks" has emerged. Proprietary trading and wealth management have become key drivers of overall securities firm performance, while investment banking has also been crucial for boosting results at some leading firms. However, most securities firms have not seen their operating revenues surpass the highs achieved five years ago.
Major A-share indices posted gains across the board in 2025, creating fertile ground for proprietary trading businesses. Proprietary trading income contributed over 30% to total revenue for most leading securities firms. For CITIC Securities, this segment alone accounted for 51.57% of total revenue, exceeding the full-year revenue of all securities firms except for Guotai Haitong. Meanwhile, the wealth management transformation showed concentrated results, with related revenue growth at leading firms mostly around 20% year-over-year, contributing up to 40% of total revenue.
However, structural differentiation was evident. While most leading securities firms achieved record-high net profits attributable to parent company shareholders, only GF Securities among the top ten firms managed to surpass its 2021 revenue peak. Investment banking emerged as a key variable—firms with higher IPO income proportions were more significantly affected by adjustments in issuance pace. For example, CITIC Securities' 2025 revenue decreased by approximately 1.67 billion yuan compared to 2021, nearly equivalent to the contraction in investment banking revenue.
Rankings have quietly shifted. Over the past five years, GF Securities climbed from sixth to fourth place, China International Capital Corporation (CICC) moved from seventh to fifth, and China Merchants Securities advanced from ninth to seventh. East Money Securities achieved nine consecutive years of revenue growth through brokerage and fund distribution services, jumping from 72nd to 11th place in the industry.
Overall, the securities industry delivered strong results in 2025 driven by both investment and wealth management, but the gap in investment banking recovery compared to historical peaks leaves uncertainty for future competition.
What drove the significant performance improvement? Proprietary trading and wealth management carried the banner. By April 3, the disclosure of 2025 annual reports for leading securities firms was nearly complete. Except for Guosen Securities, all firms likely to rank in the industry's top ten had released their 2025 results.
Securities firms' overall performance fell short of expectations in 2022 and 2023. Improvement began accelerating from 2024 onward, with most leading firms achieving over 5% year-over-year growth in operating revenue, and half of the top ten firms reaching double-digit growth.
It's important to note that securities firm revenue closely correlates with A-share market performance. The improvement in 2024 largely benefited from market stabilization following the "9/24" market trend, making the fourth quarter of 2024 a critical period for performance enhancement. In 2025, A-shares demonstrated even stronger performance with major indices rising across the board—the Shanghai Composite Index gained 18.41%, the SME Composite Index rose 31.61%, and the ChiNext Composite Index surged 40.40%. This resulted in more significant performance improvements for most securities firms in 2025 compared to 2024.
Among the top ten firms, 60% achieved over 20% year-over-year revenue growth in 2025, with three firms exceeding 30% growth. Even CITIC Securities, which had the highest base of 63.789 billion yuan in 2024, achieved 28.79% revenue growth in 2025.
Wealth management, proprietary trading (also called investment income), and investment banking were key drivers of significant performance improvement for most leading securities firms. Due to the Matthew effect in investment banking, income improvements from market recovery primarily benefited leading firms, making wealth management and proprietary trading more crucial for smaller and medium-sized securities firms.
While proprietary trading already served as the main driver for many securities firms' performance improvement in 2024, the effectiveness of wealth management transformation became clearly visible in 2025. In recent years, securities firms have actively promoted wealth management transformation, shifting core characteristics from traditional "product sales" models to "investment advisory" models. As transformation results emerged in 2025, key indicators such as wealth management business revenue and profit margins improved significantly, with most leading firms achieving around 20% year-over-year growth in wealth management revenue.
Two典型案例 demonstrate this trend: Huatai Securities, traditionally strong in brokerage business, and CICC, which started brokerage business later but led in wealth management transformation. In 2025, Huatai Securities' wealth management business generated 15.864 billion yuan in revenue, up 29.85% year-over-year, contributing 44.30% to total revenue with gross profit margin increasing 4.80 percentage points to 55.75%. CICC, known for investment banking but relatively weak in brokerage, saw its wealth management revenue reach 9.489 billion yuan in 2025, surging 35.91% year-over-year, contributing significantly to its performance improvement.
Proprietary trading, characterized by low costs, high profit margins, and high correlation with stock market performance, has always been a core engine driving securities firm performance in bullish markets. While leading firms maintain relatively balanced business layouts with lower dependence on proprietary trading, they still achieve substantial investment returns through scale advantages and excellent investment management capabilities in strong market years. In 2025, proprietary trading contributed over 30% to total revenue for most leading firms, reaching 51.57% for CITIC Securities with 38.604 billion yuan in proprietary trading income.
To put 38.604 billion yuan in perspective: only CITIC Securities and Guotai Haitong achieved higher full-year operating revenue in 2025. Only four firms exceeded 35 billion yuan in revenue, including Huatai Securities and GF Securities. This means CITIC Securities' proprietary trading income alone surpassed the full-year revenue of all securities firms except Guotai Haitong, demonstrating the segment's importance in bullish markets.
Why are record net profits common while record revenues remain rare? Focusing on the top ten firms, which showed the most improvement in 2025? Operating revenue and net profit attributable to parent company shareholders are two key metrics. Overall, most securities firms achieved both revenue and profit growth in 2025, with many exceeding 20% year-over-year growth and some setting historical records.
However, excluding个别 cases like Guotai Haitong that resulted from mergers, historical records in 2025 primarily appeared in net profit rather than revenue. Despite普遍 significant revenue growth in 2025, most firms still lagged behind their 2021 levels.
CITIC Securities, the industry leader, achieved 30.076 billion yuan in net profit in 2025, up 38.58% year-over-year—marking its first time exceeding 30 billion yuan in annual net profit. Compared to its 2021 peak net profit of 23.100 billion yuan, this represents an increase of nearly 7 billion yuan. However, operating revenue reached 76.524 billion yuan in 2021 but only 74.854 billion yuan in 2025, leaving a 1.67 billion yuan gap.
Most other top ten firms showed similar patterns, with only two exceptions: Guotai Haitong and GF Securities. The former achieved record revenue of 63.107 billion yuan in 2025, but this resulted from its merger between Guotai Junan and Haitong Securities, making comparable data limited. GF Securities achieved genuine performance improvement, with 2025 revenue reaching 35.493 billion yuan compared to 34.250 billion yuan in 2021—an increase of 1.243 billion yuan.
GF Securities has demonstrated steady performance improvement in recent years, rising from sixth place in 2021 to fourth place in 2025—the fastest ranking improvement among top ten firms. This improvement stems from multiple factors including expanded trading and institutional business advantages, effective wealth management transformation, and increased investment management income, which grew 60.19%, 28.32%, and 21.63% year-over-year respectively in 2025. However, GF Securities' ability to achieve rare record revenue in 2025 also relates to its relatively limited investment banking scale.
Despite significant improvement compared to the past two years, investment banking revenue for most leading firms in 2025 still lagged considerably behind 2021 levels due to ongoing adjustments in A-share IPO and refinancing pace. This means firms with larger investment banking revenue, particularly higher IPO income, faced greater impact from these adjustments.
CITIC Securities' investment banking revenue decreased by 1.820 billion yuan from 8.156 billion yuan in 2021 to 6.336 billion yuan in 2025—almost matching its total revenue gap of 1.670 billion yuan. Excluding investment banking impact, CITIC Securities would have achieved record revenue in 2025. In contrast, GF Securities' investment banking revenue was only 433 million yuan in 2021 due to business suspension following the Kangmei Pharmaceutical accounting scandal. With historical issues gradually resolved, its investment banking revenue recovered to 884 million yuan in 2025—still far behind leading firms like CITIC Securities, CICC, Guotai Haitong, and China Securities, but representing significant self-improvement.
Looking at five-year ranking changes: GF, CICC, and CMS rose, while East Money achieved nine-year consecutive growth. Based on 2025 operating revenue among firms disclosing reports by April 3, the top ten rankings were: CITIC Securities (74.854 billion yuan), Guotai Haitong (63.107 billion yuan), Huatai Securities (35.810 billion yuan), GF Securities (35.493 billion yuan), CICC (28.481 billion yuan), China Galaxy (28.302 billion yuan), China Merchants Securities (24.972 billion yuan), China Securities (23.322 billion yuan), Shenwan Hongyuan (23.159 billion yuan), and Orient Securities (15.358 billion yuan). Guosen Securities, which hadn't disclosed its 2025 report, was also expected to rank in the top ten.
In terms of year-over-year revenue growth, Guotai Haitong led with 87.40% due to its merger. Excluding this, CICC showed the most significant growth, increasing from 21.333 billion yuan in 2024 to 28.481 billion yuan in 2025—up 33.51%. Most other firms achieved around 20% growth.
Net profit attributable to parent company shareholders showed even larger increases, with Guotai Haitong leading at 113.52%, followed by Shenwan Hongyuan and CICC exceeding 70% growth at 82.46% and 71.93% respectively.
Over the past five years, while rankings within the top ten have changed, the member firms have remained relatively stable. Three firms improved their revenue rankings: GF Securities (from sixth to fourth), CICC (from seventh to fifth), and China Merchants Securities (from ninth to seventh).
CICC achieved significant performance improvement in 2025, with net profit surging 71.93% to 9.791 billion yuan. Besides benefiting from wealth management and proprietary trading trends that boosted industry revenue, investment banking was crucial for CICC's improvement. Its investment banking revenue jumped 77.95% to 4.596 billion yuan in 2025, with profit margin increasing 26.26 percentage points to 42.63%.
This investment banking performance resulted from comprehensive success across A-share and Hong Kong businesses. A-share IPO underwriting amount increased from 3.59 billion yuan in 2024 to 16.238 billion yuan in 2025—approximately five times higher. A-share refinancing growth was even more dramatic, surging from 12.349 billion yuan in 2024 to 91.922 billion yuan in 2025—about seven times higher. Hong Kong business growth, while less than A-shares, remained significant with IPO underwriting amount up 106% and refinancing/divestment increasing 216%. Notably, CICC has consistently ranked first among Chinese securities firms in Hong Kong equity underwriting, leading all investment banks in Hong Kong since 2024, making such high growth rates particularly impressive given its larger base.
Another noteworthy firm outside the top ten is East Money Securities. This internet-based securities firm, originating from Tian Tian Fund and acquiring Tibet Tongxin Securities in 2015 before renaming in 2016, has not only consistently improved its ranking since rebranding but also remains the only securities firm to achieve consecutive annual revenue growth through two industry downturns. From 72nd place in 2016 to 22nd in 2021 (with revenue comparable to Founder Securities and Great Wall Securities), East Money Securities reached 16.068 billion yuan in revenue in 2025—second only to Orient Securities among firms disclosing reports by April 2, ranking 11th and outperforming mid-tier firms like Industrial Securities, Zhongtai Securities, and Everbright Securities.
East Money Securities' nine-year revenue growth streak reflects excellent operational capability and represents an era缩影—an institution starting as a website accurately timing internet development, promptly obtaining securities licenses, and focusing on brokerage and fund distribution rather than comprehensive business layout like traditional firms. In 2025, its brokerage revenue grew 50.30% to 7.724 billion yuan, surpassing firms including Guolian民生, Western Securities, Huaan Securities, and Dongxing Securities. Among 52 securities firms disclosing 2025 reports by April 1, only 17 achieved higher revenue than 7.724 billion yuan according to Wind data.
Overall, the 2025 performance recovery and ranking changes among leading securities firms benefited from both market recovery and long-term strategic accumulation. The upward movement of GF, CICC, and CMS, along with East Money's consistent climb, highlight a fundamental truth: in cyclical fluctuations, only institutions that deepen their advantages and adapt to changes can continuously secure upward mobility.
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