Strategic analysis of MAO GEPING (01318) financial report: Profit model reconstruction driven by brand assets.

In 2025, against the backdrop of differentiated consumer willingness and intensified competition in the beauty industry, MAO GEPING (01318) delivered a report card that combines growth quality and structural resilience with clear strategic focus and multidimensional operational capabilities. The company not only achieved simultaneous high growth in revenue and profit, but also demonstrated systematic strategic execution in optimizing product categories, enhancing channel distribution, building brand assets, and expanding internationally. This article will analyze the competitive logic and long-term value path reflected in MAO GEPING's 2025 annual report from three perspectives: "profit efficiency and cost structure," "product category matrix and growth momentum," and "brand moat and global expansion." Sales expense ratio decreases against the trend, "content is channel" drives net profit margin elasticity The annual report shows that the company's revenue reached 5.05 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30%; net profit was 1.205 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37%. Both revenue and net profit recorded double-digit growth, with significant growth momentum exhibited in a "multi-engine" fashion based on the synergy of the three major product categories: makeup, skincare, and fragrance, in conjunction with Wuxi Online Offline Communication Information Technology Co., Ltd.'s comprehensive channel layout. In terms of profit structure analysis, MAO GEPING's profit improvement exhibits typical endogenous characteristics. The company has long adhered to a content-driven brand building strategy, achieving efficient coordination between precise online advertising and experiential offline marketing. In 2025, the sales expense ratio decreased by 0.7 percentage points year-on-year, reflecting the company's ability to achieve a balance between brand exposure and sales conversion efficiency in a market environment where traffic costs continue to rise and user attention becomes increasingly fragmented. This optimization of cost structure implies that the company's marketing investments are generating continuously increasing marginal returns, leading to a positive feedback loop in marketing efficiency. Moreover, the decrease in the sales expense ratio is not simply due to cost compression, but rather stems from the company's deep operational focus on brand assets and meticulous user relationship management. Instead of relying on high traffic acquisition to achieve short-term GMV growth, MAO GEPING focuses more on building a low-cost, high-sticky user reach system through high-quality content output, cultural storytelling, and emotional connection with users. For example, the company's deep partnerships with top cultural IPs such as the Forbidden City and China National Geographic Magazine, as well as the continuous promotion of brand cultural projects like "Oriental Beauty", essentially establish the company's own traffic entry points on the content side, reducing dependence on external traffic platforms. This operational logic of "content is channel, brand is traffic" not only improves cost efficiency but also significantly enhances user mindshare and brand loyalty. From a financial management perspective, the continuous optimization of the sales expense ratio is particularly crucial for its contribution to the profit side. With gross profit margin stability, the improvement in cost structure directly boosts the level of net profit margin, making the company's profit growth more elastic as revenue increases. More importantly, this efficiency improvement is not a product of short-term financial engineering, but is built on long-term factors such as brand strength enhancement, enhanced user repurchase, and optimized channel structure, making it sustainable. Compared to short-term growth driven by promotions or channel stocking, MAO GEPING's profit model demonstrates a stronger ability to withstand economic cycles and achieve higher capital return efficiency. From dual-drive to tripartite progress: the strategic leap of the product category matrix In 2025, MAO GEPING successfully achieved a structural transition from "single breakthroughs" to "matrix synergy" in its product category strategy. Financial data shows that the makeup and skincare "dual-drive" sectors have established a high-growth baseline, with stable core engines; the fragrance category has shown rapid growth, broadening the brand's boundaries. Firstly, the company's two core business sectors, makeup and skincare, both recorded annual growth rates of over 30%, confirming the brand's strong pricing power and user stickiness in the high-end beauty market, as well as constructing a strong revenue backbone resistant to risks. Specifically, the makeup sector employed a strategy of major single product innovation and iteration. Through a combination of "classic long tail + explosive new products," the company maximizes the value of the product lifecycle. For example, the Radiant Soft Veil Powder surpassed 300 million yuan in retail revenue, while the Soft Skin Make-Up Primer achieved over 7-fold growth, demonstrating the market dominance of core major products across cycles. Furthermore, the rapid growth of new products like the "Crystal Star Vault Eyeshadow" and the co-branded "Sculpting Crystal Eyeshadow" showcases the company's ability to continuously develop new growth curves, enriching the breadth and depth of the product matrix. The skincare sector saw a penetration of high-end products and an upgrade of product lines. With continued high demand, the luxurious Caviar Face Mask achieved sales revenue exceeding 1 billion yuan, establishing itself as a benchmark in the high-end repair segment. The impressive performance of auxiliary products such as the Eye Mask, Ampoule Essence, and Essence Honey signals the company's balanced penetration across all product categories. Of particular importance is the company's rejuvenation of the Black Gold series and the planning for the 2026 "Luminous Revival Series", which demonstrate the strategic determination to continuously explore higher price ceilings through product iteration and consolidate the high-end brand's moat. The rise of the fragrance category was the highlight of the company's 2025 financial report, marking a successful breakthrough into new territory beyond existing product categories and opening up a "third growth curve". Since the official commercial operation in May 2025, the fragrance category has generated nearly 34 million yuan in revenue within a few months. This "fast victory" not only validates the high conversion rate of the brand's fans but also reflects the market's high recognition of MAO GEPING's "Oriental Aesthetics" concept in non-makeup areas. Relying on the "Aesthetic Essence of the East Season 6 - Discovering the East" series in partnership with the Forbidden City, the company has deeply integrated cultural connotations into product genetics. This differentiated competition strategy of "culture + fragrance" not only avoids direct price wars on traditional fragrance tracks with international giants but also constructs a highly recognizable brand identity and emotional premium through unique Eastern storytelling, laying a solid foundation for brand asset scaling. MAO GEPING's optimization of product categories in 2025 is not simply a scaling stack but a deep vertical integration based on the core IP of "Oriental Aesthetics". The "dual-drive" of makeup and skincare provides stable cash flow and profit foundation, while the rapid rise of the fragrance category opens up long-term growth potential. This business structure of "steady progress, multi-point blossoming" significantly reduces operating risks arising from fluctuations in a single product category, enhances the resilience and sustainability of the company's overall profit model, and provides a more attractive long-term investment value for the capital market. From cultural storytelling to financial value: the endogenous accumulation of brand assets and the construction of long-term barriers In the macro background of the overall slowdown of the consumer industry and the peak of traffic dividends, MAO GEPING's ability to achieve simultaneous high growth in makeup, skincare, and fragrance categories in 2025 stems fundamentally from the endogenous accumulation of brand assets. In 2025, the company continued to promote high-quality brand cultural projects around the core concepts of "Oriental Aesthetics" and "Light and Shadow Aesthetics", significantly elevating the brand's spiritual barriers and cultural premium capacity. In terms of brand building paths, MAO GEPING has transitioned from "product function storytelling" to "cultural value storytelling". The fragrance series "Aesthetic Essence of the East Season 6 - Discovering the East" in collaboration with the Forbidden City and the "Earth Eye Shadow" series with China National Geographic Magazine, use national-level cultural IPs as anchors to transform traditional cultural images into product languages, constructing an irreplicable brand moat. More profoundly, in the third episode of the "Beauty Continues the Orient" project released on "One Belt, One Road" international day, the company transformed historical figure narratives into contemporary emotional resonance, reflecting philosophical contemplations on perseverance and resilience in Eastern philosophy. This cultural practice beyond the product level essentially builds brand exclusivity in the minds of consumers, forming a low-cost, high-sticky user reach mechanism. The continuous accumulation of brand assets is manifested financially in the improvement of membership systems and repurchase rates. In 2025, the company's offline membership reached 6.4 million and online membership reached 15.6 million people, with improved repurchase rates both online and offline, indicating that brand loyalty has been translated into quantifiable user lifetime value. Compared to customer acquisition models reliant on traffic acquisition, this user stickiness driven by brand mindset exhibits stronger marginal benefits. In terms of channel and market expansion, the company emphasizes both "high-quality store openings" and "same-store growth". In 2025, 36 new stores were added, penetrating high-end business districts in top-tier cities and building flagship stores like SKP and Hangzhou MixC, increasing the brand's momentum in core business districts. Same-store revenue growth in existing counters validated the impact of refined operations on store efficiency. The international expansion strategy is advancing synchronously, with the opening of the first store in Hong Kong yielding positive performance, accumulating reusable operational experience and market awareness for the brand's internationalization. In conclusion, MAO GEPING is constructing a long-term value barrier with both depth and breadth through the path of "culture empowering the brand and brand driving growth". In the new stage where the consumer industry transitions from incremental competition to stock competition, this business model with brand assets as the core moat is expected to continuously unleash competitive advantages that are resistant to cycles and high in premiums. In summary, what MAO GEPING's 2025 annual report reveals is not just the financial performance of a beauty company but a verification of a business model traversing cycles. In an industry environment where the traffic dividend is waning and marketing costs are soaring, the company's focus on brand assets as a core moat and growth engine through cultural storytelling has built a low-cost, high-sticky, and sustainable user reach system. The decrease in the sales expense ratio, the simultaneous high growth of the three major product categories, and the continuous improvement in member repurchase rates together outline a clear picture of "quality-driven growth". For the capital market, what MAO GEPING demonstrates is the value transition of domestic beauty from "scale dividend" to "brand dividend", providing a high-quality target with attractive long-term investment value.