<img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://inews.gtimg.com/om_bt/Oxrl5v6XuYguU_YyB3Fgsj5OnEY2RCNgr0VJ7CyxBG74MAA/641?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" alt="Image" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://inews.gtimg.com/om_bt/Oxrl5v6XuYguU_YyB3Fgsj5OnEY2RCNgr0VJ7CyxBG74MAA/641"/> Author | Liu Yichen Editor | Song He BUSYMING has delivered its first annual report since going public in Hong Kong: the number of stores is approaching 22,000, and GMV is heading towards 93.6 billion yuan, marking the formal establishment of a retail giant. In 2025, BUSYMING achieved revenue of 66.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.2%; adjusted net profit reached 2.692 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 194.9%.
In terms of scale and volume, it has initially pulled ahead of its competitor Wanchen Group.
In the past year, the company opened 7,813 new franchise stores, which is 1.66 times that of Wanchen Group, with a total store count exceeding it by 3,600; the overall revenue scale is 1.29 times that of Wanchen.
However, at the peak of its performance, market doubts have become increasingly clear: when simple &#34;linear extrapolation&#34; is no longer applicable for future predictions, who will take over the growth momentum of BUSYMING?
Will it continue to seek the last gaps in the vast sinking market, or will it march northward to attack high-tier cities? Will it stick to the snack vertical track, or evolve into a full-category discount supermarket?
Before these grand propositions are settled, BUSYMING is at a crossroads. For it, although the ceiling has not yet been reached, the path to the end remains shrouded in fog.
<img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://inews.gtimg.com/om_bt/OVvNOxMvVaob38Iy6iUa6cyWm-mHCsJSKif5tJhAbGGpoAA/641?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" alt="Image" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://inews.gtimg.com/om_bt/OVvNOxMvVaob38Iy6iUa6cyWm-mHCsJSKif5tJhAbGGpoAA/641"/>
1
Space Still Exists
From the perspective of the industry lifecycle, the expansion logic of the bulk snack track has not ended.
In 2025, with continued support from the capital market, the &#34;dual oligopoly&#34; still maintains high growth rates, with BUSYMING and Wanchen Group's store growth rates reaching 52.5% and 29%, respectively, jointly supporting the narrative logic centered on store expansion.
Leading companies are accelerating the encroachment of the long tail market and continuously replacing some traditional convenience store formats, with market concentration expected to further increase. Goldman Sachs research predicts that the combined market share of BUSYMING and Wanchen Group may approach 80% by 2028.
Although the scale is already large enough, the regional structure remains unbalanced, and the logic of horizontal expansion still holds.
Deng Xin, an analyst at Huazhang Securities, pointed out that BUSYMING has completed its initial layout in new first-tier and second-tier cities, with an average single-store coverage population of about 68,000, basically on par with comprehensive supermarkets.
Considering that the consumption frequency of bulk snacks is higher than that of supermarkets, Deng Xin believes there is still room for densification in second-tier cities. Additionally, the proportion of stores in fifth-tier cities is 12.3%, with an average coverage population of about 76,000, also possessing development potential
The &#34;dislocation&#34; at the regional level is a key reason for maintaining relatively rational industry competition.
Currently, the dual oligopoly has not fallen into direct consumption but is in a stage of &#34;each expanding the cake&#34;: BUSYMING is focused on addressing historical shortcomings in regions such as East China and North China, while Wanchen is extending southwest from its base in East China.
Goldman Sachs tracking data shows that from July to November 2025, Wanchen's layout in Central and South China among newly opened stores remains in the low single digits, and it has not yet entered the core territory of BUSYMING on a large scale.
This benign expansion environment is directly reflected in financial performance.
In 2025, BUSYMING will significantly reduce new store subsidies from 120,000 yuan in 2024 to 36,000 yuan and has basically eliminated competitive special subsidies.
With the continuous release of scale effects, BUSYMING's gross margin increased by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 9.8%, and the adjusted net profit margin also rose to 4.1%.
&#34;There is still space&#34; does not mean 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 year-on-year decline of 3.8%; however, at the same time, the average daily order volume per store increased from 385 orders in 2022 to 458 orders.
CFO Wang Yutong candidly responded at the earnings meeting that the pressure on same-store GMV stems from the previous excessive pursuit of store opening speed and subsidy competition, which led to operational capabilities not keeping pace with expansion.
To address this, the company initiated an organizational restructuring in the second half of 2024: power was decentralized to regional subsidiaries to quickly respond to frontline demands, while the headquarters shifted towards process and standardization capability output.
Wang Yutong stated that entering the second half of 2025, especially in the fourth quarter, BUSYMING's same-store performance has shown signs of recovery.
However, the company has maintained restraint in its guidance for 2026, only emphasizing &#34;year-on-year improvement,&#34; rather than encouraging the market to make linear extrapolations.
Structural challenges still exist. The consequences of rapid expansion require time to digest, and even setting aside density issues, the future competitive environment will become more complex.
A significant change is that snack wholesale stores are now entering the core areas of first-tier cities, no longer just businesses &#34;outside the fifth ring.&#34; These stores are often located in densely populated core business districts or communities, with higher rental costs, posing greater challenges to the operational capabilities of individual stores.
Currently, BUSYMING is still in the &#34;one face for ten thousand stores&#34; stage and has not yet differentiated its offerings for specific scenarios such as communities, schools, and office buildings. In the face of diverse consumer demands within first-tier cities, precise site selection and refined operations have become essential.
Two
Path Undetermined
From a long-term perspective, the scale growth of the snack wholesale channel will ultimately return to rationality.
As the marginal revenue effect driven by &#34;opening stores&#34; continues to diminish, leading players like BUSYMING are shifting their long-term value focus from &#34;expansion speed&#34; to &#34;profit depth&#34; and &#34;model iteration.&#34;
The differences in underlying logic determine the margin for error in store operations
According to the standard model disclosed by BUSYMING: the investment per store is approximately 800,000 to 1,000,000 yuan, with a payback period of about 2 years. Compared to high-margin sectors like milk tea, the gross margin of its stores is only about 19%, while the net profit margin for franchisees is between 8% and 10%.
This interest margin intuitively shows that bulk snack sales have never been a business supported by single product profits, but rather an extreme high turnover game that uses turnover efficiency to dilute fixed costs.
From this perspective, the breakthrough for growth will primarily occur at the operational level, specifically in the upgrade of per square meter efficiency at the store level.
In the past two years, BUSYMING has actively promoted the transformation of a new generation of store types, introducing daily chemicals, fresh food, low-temperature frozen products, and freshly baked goods, extending from &#34;snack specialty&#34; to &#34;high-frequency discount retail,&#34; thereby raising the revenue ceiling by broadening the product moat.
This expansion remains restrained.
Although the group requires each store to maintain at least 1,800 SKUs, external statistics show that the snack category still accounts for 40% to 50% of the total.
An investor who has long observed the consumer sector pointed out to All Weather Technology: under a high turnover model, consumption frequency takes precedence over everything. Recklessly pushing for a full category expansion not only dilutes the consumer mental anchor of &#34;bulk snacks,&#34; but also easily lowers overall turnover efficiency due to the backlog of long-tail products, thereby eroding the foundation of the entire business model.
The supply chain cooperation model also maintains the original route.
By 2025, although BUSYMING launched its own brand system featuring cost-effectiveness with the &#34;Red Label&#34; and quality emphasis with the &#34;Gold Label,&#34; it has not viewed this as a core lever for profit extraction.
The management's explanation is: traditional retail does private labels to gain pricing power and high margins because their products have a high overlap with external ones. However, BUSYMING's products are inherently differentiated, and the company prefers to position its stores as &#34;showcase windows&#34; for excellent Chinese food manufacturers, rather than turning them into mere OEM factories.
There is another layer of reason behind this restraint: compared to front-end expansion, the extreme optimization of back-end efficiency is currently a more certain, urgent, and higher-return focus.
As of the end of 2025, although BUSYMING has about 3,000 more stores than Wanchen and revenues approximately 15 billion yuan higher, the net profit levels of the two are basically on par, with Wanchen's net profit margin exceeding nearly 2 percentage points.
In the razor-thin profit retail industry, this reflects a significant management gap.
To address this, the company is attempting to complete the transition from &#34;experience-driven&#34; to &#34;prediction-driven&#34; through digital means, covering self-developed site selection, AI store inspections, and intelligent ordering systems, in order to fill the gap in management premium.
On the supply chain side, Yan Zhou pointed out at the performance meeting that the company will systematically promote the construction of hot food and cold chain capabilities: hot food includes instant consumption products like grilled sausages and egg tarts, while the cold chain covers refrigeration and freezing, with a focus on low additives, short shelf life, and health trends.
Short shelf life foods require higher standards for storage environments and turnover speed; algorithmic prediction errors or logistics delays can lead to inventory impairment or food safety risks.
Currently, BUSYMING has a total of 56 warehouses, more than half of which rely on third-party operations. Its Hong Kong IPO prospectus disclosed that the company plans to use part of the raised funds to focus on building smart warehouses and cold storage, while also improving the cold chain distribution system
At the same time, BUSYMING seems to have quietly begun exploring &#34;new species.&#34;
Market rumors suggest that &#34;You·Recommendation,&#34; which was launched in Wuhan at the beginning of the year, is its attempt in the fresh snack sector, but this news has not been officially confirmed to date.
According to a research report by Huazhang Securities, the project plans to adopt a model of &#34;mainly direct sales, supplemented by joint operations,&#34; with approximately 800 stores to be established nationwide. By 2026, the core goal will be &#34;scaling up,&#34; focusing on key business districts in high-tier cities and expanding the service radius through instant retail.
The same report also pointed out that in terms of the supply chain, the company has built a full-chain model of &#34;central factory + cold chain logistics + in-store production.&#34; A central factory of 10,000 square meters is planned in Wuhan, of which 5,000 square meters have already been put into operation; the core categories are controlled by its own factory, while other categories are benchmarked against Sam's Club production line standards.
The expansion of store types, efficiency optimization, and deepening of the supply chain overlap to jointly form the upward space of BUSYMING's single-store model.
For the company, the real key is not how many paths are available to choose from, but when it can solidify a replicable and scalable certainty model, thereby opening up new imaginative space for growth before the pace of scale slows down

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BUSYMING released its first annual report after going public in Hong Kong, with nearly 22,000 stores and a GMV of 93.6 billion yuan. Revenue for 2025 is projected to be 66.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.2%; net profit is expected to be 2.692 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 194.9%. Despite the impressive performance, the market expresses doubts about its future growth momentum, facing multiple strategic choices. Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2028, the market share of BUSYMING and WanChen Group will approach 80%. The regional structure is unbalanced, and second-tier cities still have development potential

BUSYMING is still missing a growth "bonus question"