The founder era of Milkground has come to an end.
Recently, the board of directors of Milkground decided to remove founder Chai Xiu from the positions of vice chairman, general manager, and legal representative.
This founder, who once led the company to pioneer the &#34;children's cheese stick&#34; blue ocean market, has exited the core management team early through dismissal.
Simultaneously with Chai Xiu's resignation, Mengniu's professional manager Kuai Yulong has fully ascended, taking over as the company's general manager and concurrently serving as the financial director.
The direct trigger for Chai Xiu's dismissal was a default event involving a guarantee debt related to an external merger and acquisition fund.
The creditor of this debt is none other than Mengniu, the current largest shareholder of Milkground.
The chain of events dates back several years.
In June 2018, Milkground invested 100 million yuan to subscribe to shares of the &#34;Shanghai Xiangmin Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership).&#34;
Two years later, the original actual controller Chai Xiu acquired the general partner of the merger fund, making another limited partner of the fund, &#34;Jilin Yaohe Economic and Trade Co., Ltd.&#34; (controlled by Chai Xiu's related party), a related party of Milkground.
In December 2020, shortly after Mengniu became the controlling shareholder of Milkground through a private placement of about 3 billion yuan, it provided a loan of 700 million yuan to &#34;Jilin Yaohe&#34; through a trust plan.
The guarantee for this substantial loan was provided by the &#34;Shanghai Xiangmin&#34; merger fund and its subordinate entities.
As a result, the listed company began to indirectly bear the risk of related party debts.
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In response, Chai Xiu had previously issued a commitment to the listed company in his personal capacity, guaranteeing that if the guarantee caused losses to the company, he would provide full compensation.
However, the actual risk was not mitigated by the commitment.
In September 2024, Mengniu informed Milkground that the borrower Jilin Yaohe had defaulted on the trust loan principal and interest, officially defaulting on the debt.
By early 2025, the merger fund's duration expired, but due to the underlying assets being pledged and frozen, Milkground was unable to recover its 100 million yuan investment, and the risk was fully exposed.
On the other hand, Chai Xiu's compensation commitment had not been fulfilled for a long time, leading the Milkground board to ultimately decide to initiate arbitration.
This &#34;bad debt&#34; brought a direct financial impact. After considering the effects of income tax, its fair value change is expected to reduce Milkground's net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company by 119 million to 127 million yuan in 2025.
Regardless of the arbitration outcome, this incident objectively further strengthened Mengniu's control over Milkground.
In 2024, Mengniu injected its cheese business into Milkground, making it the only cheese operation platform within the group. In December 2025, Mengniu further increased its stake in the company and clearly planned to continue increasing its holdings in the next three months.
In contrast to the turmoil in the governance structure, Milkground's main business is showing signs of recovery.
In the first three quarters of 2025, the company achieved revenue of 3.957 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.09%; net profit reached 176 million yuan, a substantial year-on-year growth of 106.88%
Huaxi Securities analyst Kou Xing pointed out that under the support of the raw milk price environment for domestic substitution and the continuous efforts to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the industry, the B-end domestic cheese industry trend is beginning to emerge. In the long-term trend, it is optimistic that domestic cheese can occupy half of the domestic market space, and Milkground is expected to capture half of the domestic cheese market share, corresponding to a revenue increment of tens of billions

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