The recently initiated global layout is increasingly becoming an important part of the growth narrative for EASTROC BEVERAGE.
Co-President Jiang Weiwei recently stated that 2025 will be the &#34;year of going overseas&#34; for EASTROC, with products already entering more than 20 countries and regions, including Vietnam and Indonesia, and plans to continue accelerating overseas expansion next year.
In April 2025, EASTROC's investment of 1.2 billion yuan in its Hainan production facility was officially launched, which is planned to serve as a springboard for exploring the Southeast Asian and global markets while radiating surrounding regions;
The advancement of the Hong Kong stock listing process is expected to open an important overseas financing window for EASTROC.
In December, EASTROC's Hong Kong stock listing was filed with the Securities Regulatory Commission. The fundraising purposes include overseas supply chain layout, brand building, channel expansion, and exploring potential investment and acquisition opportunities.
The high-profile push for globalization is driven by intensified domestic market competition and a shift in EASTROC's own development stage.
From 2022 to 2024, the company's revenue compound annual growth rate exceeded 36%; in the first half of 2025, revenue reached 10.74 billion yuan, and net profit was 2.38 billion yuan, both maintaining a year-on-year growth of over 36%.
As the market expected its annual revenue to exceed 20 billion yuan, the growth momentum has shown some changes.
In the third quarter, EASTROC's energy drink revenue was 4.2 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate slowing to 15%, marking a three-year low; the growth rate in its Guangdong home market was only 2%.
In the domestic market, as the category dividend of &#34;replacing Red Bull&#34; weakens, the uncertainty of diversification exploration remains, and EASTROC may have to face the pressure of slowing growth.
Moreover, the overseas market environment varies, and the challenges of localized operations are significant; its domestic strategies may face adaptation issues during the transition.
How EASTROC will respond to the new competitive landscape remains to be seen.
<h2>Challenges of Going Overseas</h2>
EASTROC BEVERAGE's business strategy has always been closely tied to the core positioning of &#34;high cost-performance ratio.&#34;
Its core product, the 500ml &#34;Big Gold Bottle&#34; EASTROC Energy Drink, is priced at 5 yuan, which is 1 yuan cheaper than the similar 350ml Red Bull. In earlier years, it capitalized on the trend of mobile payment popularity, aggressively marketing &#34;scan to grab red envelopes&#34; and &#34;enjoy for 1 yuan,&#34; stimulating consumer repurchase.
Although the scan promotion is similar in form to the traditional &#34;another bottle,&#34; and many brands later followed similar strategies, none achieved results comparable to EASTROC.
Lu Shengzhen, General Manager of Spark Marketing Planning Company, told Xinfeng that the reason lies in the fact that most companies' mechanism designs lean more towards their own interests, resulting in high participation thresholds for merchants, cumbersome redemption processes, and insufficient immediate incentives.
The retail price of a bottle of EASTROC Energy Drink is 5 yuan, with an ex-factory price of about 2 yuan, leaving about 3 yuan of channel space. Combined with various discounts, fees, and red envelope incentives, the gross profit per bottle at the terminal is higher than the industry average.
Relying on the digital system connected by &#34;scanning,&#34; EASTROC has significantly reduced the loss of expenses in the intermediate links. Its &#34;five-in-one&#34; system achieves real-time control over inventory dynamics, not only improving overall turnover efficiency but also effectively curbing issues of product diversion and inventory backlog.
In 2024, EASTROC's sales expense ratio was 16.9%, lower than Nongfu Spring's 21.4% and China Resources Beverage's 30%; inventory turnover days were only 34 days, nearly one and a half months shorter than Nongfu Spring
As a result, even by consistently adhering to the cost-performance route and continuously offering benefits to channels, Dongpeng has fully released scale effects over the past three years, achieving a compound annual growth rate of 52% in net profit, significantly higher than the 36% revenue growth.
However, when Dongpeng turns its attention to overseas markets, the channel network and cost advantages formed over many years of deep cultivation are no longer applicable, and the mature domestic operating model is also facing challenges.
Southeast Asia, as the first stop for going overseas, has an energy drink market size exceeding 20 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 6.2% over the past five years, higher than China's 4.7%.
The consumer group is relatively young, with a high proportion of manual laborers, which aligns closely with the target customer base of functional beverages.
Deng Xin, an analyst at Huazhang Securities, pointed out that compared to Pepsi's Sting and mainstream Thai brands like Red Bull and M150, Dongpeng has an advantage in cost-performance; compared to local small and medium brands, it has superior brand strength, packaging specifications, and product added value.
In his view, Dongpeng's current opportunity lies in rapid localization to seize market growth dividends.
In the Southeast Asian market, Dongpeng has launched integrated marketing activities including event sponsorship and offline tasting, while simultaneously introducing interactive gameplay such as &#34;scan code red envelopes&#34; and offline advertising resources that have been validated domestically to enhance brand recognition.
In terms of pricing, the company mainly adopts a &#34;reverse pricing&#34; strategy, determining the terminal selling price based on the target market price range, and then ensuring profits through supply chain and cost control.
However, to maintain its &#34;high cost-performance&#34; competitive barrier in overseas markets in the long term, Dongpeng must make more refined and targeted strategic adjustments in the execution of different regions.
Hu Yajun, Vice President of Dongpeng Group, has stated that if using the domestic supply chain, it is necessary to assess its adaptability to the target market. For example, Africa faces high logistics costs and about 25% tariffs, making operations difficult; Europe also faces high freight costs and tariffs exceeding 20%.
Hu Yajun revealed that Dongpeng is attempting a diversified overseas model, in addition to agency cooperation, forming local teams, and establishing joint ventures with foreign capital, it is also exploring a franchising model similar to Coca-Cola's &#34;bottling plant.&#34;
In the future, Dongpeng plans to undertake production from the factories under construction in Hainan, Kunming, and Indonesia, gradually replacing the current model of shipping from the Guangdong base to reduce operating costs.
Currently, although Dongpeng products have been sold to 25 countries and regions worldwide, its overseas revenue accounts for less than 1%, and its impact on overall performance is still minimal.
<h2>The Challenge of Diversified Categories</h2>
According to Guotai Junan's forecast, Dongpeng Special Drink is expected to become the fourth beverage product to reach an annual sales scale of 20 billion yuan by 2026, following Coca-Cola, Red Bull, and Nongfu Spring.
Faced with the gradually emerging growth ceiling of a single category, diversification has become a realistic choice for Dongpeng to explore a second growth curve and promote the next stage of development.
Starting in 2023, Dongpeng has been intensively promoting the launch of new products, continuing its consistent high cost-performance, &#34;1 yuan shopping&#34; promotions, and generous channel profit strategies.
Among them, the electrolyte drink &#34;Bu Shui La&#34; has performed brilliantly in the market, achieving sales revenue of 390 million yuan in its first year after launch, with revenue rapidly jumping to nearly 1.5 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year growth rate of 280%, establishing its position as the second growth curve
After establishing a modular approach, Dongpeng's expansion into more categories such as tea beverages and coffee drinks will theoretically become smoother.
However, similar to Dongpeng Special Drink, the success of &#34;Bushi La&#34; cannot ignore the benefits brought by the overall market dividend.
In 2022, as the National Health Commission repeatedly emphasized the importance of supplementing electrolytes during exercise, high temperatures, and special medical conditions, the domestic electrolyte water market experienced an explosion.
At that time, the market structure had not yet solidified, and domestic brands represented by Yuanqi Forest's &#34;Alien Electrolyte Water&#34; quickly rose, capturing nearly half of the market share.
At the same time, the consumption scenarios of electrolyte water and taurine energy drinks highly overlap, allowing Dongpeng to efficiently release market momentum through brand extension and channel reuse strategies.
The success of &#34;Bushi La&#34; is still a reproduction of the competitive advantage formed by the &#34;Dongpeng Special Drink&#34; product.
However, as category expansion continues and gradually exceeds its advantageous boundaries, similar market opportunities may be difficult to sustain for Dongpeng in the future.
According to Lu Shengzhen, Dongpeng's success in the functional beverage sector largely stems from relying on price advantages to fill the market gaps that high-end brands have not fully covered during the stage when consumers cannot determine the actual differences in products.
&#34;But when the competitive stage shifts to a broader beverage category, facing numerous mature leading brands and followers in the market, Dongpeng's product differentiation advantages are not prominent. In this context, both terminal profit margins and upstream supply chain links lack sufficient maneuvering space,&#34; said Lu Shengzhen.
For example, the juice tea beverage &#34;Guo Zhi Cha,&#34; which Dongpeng sees as having the potential to become the third growth engine, targets flavors similar to the iced tea series of Master Kong and Uni-President, as well as the mature sugary tea products like Nongfu Spring's Tea π.
The competition for these new products has essentially shifted to competing for market share with these giants.
However, compared to giants like Nongfu Spring that have achieved deep national coverage, Dongpeng Special Drink's national layout has not yet reached a &#34;complete state,&#34; leaving room for potential growth.
In the third quarter of 2025, Dongpeng achieved a year-on-year growth rate of 42% outside its home base in Guangdong.
This is attributed to the development of new regions and the continuous deepening of existing channels.
In recent years, Dongpeng has increased its investment in terminal freezers: the number of freezers grew rapidly from less than 80,000 units in 2022 to over 300,000 units by the end of 2024, with another 150,000 units planned for 2025.
Currently, Dongpeng has about 450,000 existing freezers, which still have significant penetration improvement space compared to its total of over 4 million terminal points.
In December of this year, Dongpeng's first production base in the north, located in Tianjin, officially landed, marking that 10 out of the planned 13 production bases have been established, which will support its further opening of the northern market.
For fast-moving consumer goods companies, the gap in channel capabilities directly affects the efficiency of new product promotion and market capture.
If it can continue to strengthen channel capabilities and improve coverage balance and penetration, it may benefit its multi-category expansion strategy to open up faster

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