As the restaurant industry enters a transition period of stock competition, the established hotpot giant XIABUXIABU (00520) is seeking a new path under a profit warning. Recently, the company released its first-half 2026 performance forecast: it expects revenue of approximately 1.5 billion yuan (RMB, same below), a 23% year-on-year decrease; but net loss is expected to narrow to between 29 million yuan and 39 million yuan, a significant reduction of 51% to 64% compared to the 81 million yuan loss in the same period last year. This performance "divergence"—double-digit revenue decline alongside a halved loss—is a microcosm of XIABUXIABU actively pushing for structural store optimization, marking an end to the era of extensive expansion. Under the shadow of consecutive years of losses, can XIABUXIABU successfully achieve a turnaround by "doing less"?
The "subtraction" logic behind the narrowing loss. Zhitong Finance APP noted that in recent years, XIABUXIABU 's performance has been consistently volatile. Looking at revenue scale, despite a strong post-pandemic recovery in the restaurant industry giving a brief boost to the company's revenue, the long-term trend shows revenue falling from a high of 6.147 billion yuan in 2021 to 3.789 billion yuan in 2025, a reduction of nearly 40% over five years. Notably, revenue declined by 19.65% in 2024 and 20.32% in 2025. These two consecutive years of significant decline suggest persistent challenges in market demand or the company's operations. Looking at net profit performance, the company has been in a loss-making state since its first annual loss in 2021. Although the 2025 loss narrowed to 296 million yuan from 398 million yuan in 2024, reversing the continuous loss streak and halting the revenue decline remain its biggest challenges. The core reason for XIABUXIABU 's renewed "loss reduction" in the first half of 2026 lies in management finally beginning to reallocate resources based on economic outcomes. In the full year of 2025, the group opened 57 new stores and closed 109, resulting in a net decrease of 52 stores. Among these, its premium brand Coucou net decreased by 53 stores. It is worth noting that the popular Xiaobu Xiaobu brand, positioned as a budget hotpot, only saw a net decrease of two stores during the period. This contraction strategy continued into the first half of 2026, with the company stating in its latest profit warning that it expects impairment losses on assets for closed and continuously loss-making restaurants to decrease by approximately 30% year-on-year. This strategy of "subtracting" stores marks XIABUXIABU 's farewell to scale worship and a shift towards refined operations. In fact, this trend has become a consensus across the leading hotpot industry. Peer industry leader Haidilao also closed or relocated 85 underperforming stores in 2025. As the industry shifts from a scale-oriented to an efficiency-oriented focus, store closures are no longer a passive damage control for failed expansion but an active move to maintain profitability. For XIABUXIABU , clearing out inefficient stores not only sheds the burden of losses but also allows for a "lighter" financial statement.
Structural difficulties remain to be resolved. If closing stores to reduce losses is a temporary fix, the persistent weakness of its core brands, especially Coucou, is a structural chronic disease that XIABUXIABU must confront. Zhitong Finance APP understands that in 2016, the company officially launched the premium brand "Coucou" to explore new business growth, pioneering the "hotpot + tea" model and creating a differentiated complement to the Xiaobu Xiaobu brand. Coucou's average per-person spending is 2-3 times that of Xiaobu Xiaobu. At that time, the higher price point did not hinder Coucou's expansion; instead, it drove desirable table turnover rates, making it a revenue mainstay for XIABUXIABU and paving the way for the company's subsequent premiumization plans. As a former second growth curve, Coucou has become a "heavy burden" on the group's development as its table turnover rate and same-store sales growth have consistently "cooled" in recent years. From a performance perspective, Coucou brand revenue sharply decreased by 30.8% in 2025, with an operating loss of up to 252 million yuan. In contrast, during the same period, although Xiaobu Xiaobu brand revenue fell by 13.3%, this segment successfully achieved a profit of 16.648 million yuan. This shows that the Coucou brand has become the largest variable dragging down the group's overall performance. Amidst the intensifying trend of consumption segmentation, Coucou finds itself in an awkward position of "neither high nor low." Its per-person spending remains at a mid-to-high-end level of 148.8 yuan, but in the face of increasingly rational consumer decisions, it cannot offer the ultimate service experience of Haidilao, nor does it win on cost-effectiveness against emerging affordable hotpot brands. This has led to a decline in both its table turnover rate and same-store sales. According to financial reports, Coucou's table turnover rate fell from 1.6 times in 2024 to 1.4 times in 2025, a stark contrast to Xiaobu Xiaobu's 2.8 times.
Seeking a breakthrough. Under the heavy pressure of stock competition, XIABUXIABU is not sitting idly by. While "subtracting" in scale, it is also attempting to optimize performance through various strategies, such as deeply exploring its supply chain and accelerating the deployment of affordable sub-brands. From a supply chain perspective, XIABUXIABU does possess a certain moat. In 2026, the group's fresh meat production line in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia, commenced operations, enabling same-day slaughter and delivery of fresh beef. Zhitong Finance APP learned that after the launch of fresh beef, the product order rate increased by 33%. This not only enhances product competitiveness but also reduces the marginal cost of multi-brand operations through supply chain reuse. The company stated that this integrated supply chain, from procurement to logistics, is the core barrier for its multi-brand collaborative synergy. In response to Coucou's slowdown in the high-end market, the company has pivoted, launching two new business formats: "Xiaobu Mu Ranch" and "Xiaobu Steakhouse." The former focuses on self-service small hotpot starting at 29.8 yuan, targeting the lightweight, high-value solo dining segment. The latter, with a model of "100 yuan steak + 158 free-flow dishes," fills the gap in the Western buffet market. This multi-category matrix layout aims to cover all price points and scenarios, leveraging the group's membership interconnection and traffic sharing to amplify scale effects. However, it is worth noting that exploring new business formats is not without challenges. While multiple brands can cover more scenarios, they also place higher demands on the company's supply chain, R&D, and organizational synergy. Currently, "Xiaobu Steakhouse" is still in the single-store model refinement stage, and whether it can achieve the target of opening 100 stores in three years remains to be seen over time. In fact, XIABUXIABU 's fluctuating performance reflects a microcosm of the transformation period in China's restaurant industry. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in the first half of 2026, the national catering revenue reached 2825.5 billion yuan, with growth slowing to 2.8%. This indicates that as the industry enters a new phase of structural restructuring and accelerated differentiation, consumers are no longer willing to pay a premium for overly decorated environments and complex services, instead seeking stable, convenient, and transparently priced dining experiences. So, after clearing out inefficient stores, can XIABUXIABU establish a sustainable single-store return model? The historical burden of five consecutive years of losses and the persistent profitability challenges of the Coucou brand are the operational tests management finds difficult to avoid. Furthermore, in a stock market, whether new brands can truly stand out remains highly uncertain. XIABUXIABU founder He Guangqi once said, "There are no shortcuts in the restaurant industry. Only by doing solid work on cost control, customer management, and product innovation can one navigate through cycles." After the pain of extensive expansion, XIABUXIABU is recalculating the value of every store. This "loss reduction" report card is a conscious choice for its shift towards high-quality development, but the established hotpot giant still has a long way to go before achieving a true and comprehensive turnaround to profitability.
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