The 9.9‑yuan Discount Recedes — Who’s Left Exposed? Full Analysis of the 2025 Annual Reports of Six Leading New Tea Beverage Companies

A brutal split at the top

The 2025 annual reports of six leading Chinese new‑tea chains paint a stark picture: winners look industrial, losers look retail‑heavy. Mixue Bingcheng (蜜雪冰城), Guming (古茗), Chabaidao (茶百道), Hushang Ayi (沪上阿姨), Nayuki (奈雪的茶) and Bawang Chaji (霸王茶姬) all reported in 2025, but their results could not be more different. Mixue led with roughly RMB 33.56 billion in revenue and RMB 5.93 billion in net profit; Guming followed with about RMB 12.91 billion and RMB 3.11 billion profit. By contrast, Nayuki is the only loss‑maker among the six, reporting revenue down to RMB 4.33 billion and a RMB 0.241 billion net loss, with stores shrinking from 1,798 to 1,646. It has been reported that tens of thousands of outlets across the sector have closed in the past two years.

Supply‑chain industrialization versus high‑end direct retail

Why did low‑price, high‑volume brands beat premium, direct‑run concepts? The answer is structural. Chains such as Mixue and Guming engineered a transformation from C‑end retailers into B2B supply‑chain platforms: the bulk of their revenue now comes from selling goods and equipment to franchisees, backed by large production bases and regional logistics. They capture manufacturing scale and logistics margin. Premium players that insist on heavy direct operation—Nayuki being the clearest example—carry the three retail mountains: mall rents, high labor costs, and premium ingredient bills. Management expense ratios tell the story: Nayuki’s management costs ran high, while many franchise models show single‑digit management ratios. Put simply: this is not an app business; it’s manufacturing plus distribution.

Valuation reset, the end of the “9.9” era

Capital markets have forced the reckoning. It has been reported that hype valuations—historically modeled on internet PS multiples—have given way to PE and even PB scrutiny as investors demand real earnings. Stocks have re‑rated sharply: Nayuki’s Hong Kong price fell to HK$0.8 and several peers have lost well over half their peaks. The brutal driver was twofold: upstream commodity inflation (sharp rises in coffee, coconut, lemon and dairy prices) and a consumer base trained by years of “9.9‑yuan” subsidies to expect rock‑bottom prices. How can a drink whose unit economics already approaches RMB 9 survive a 9.9 price point once platform fees are taken out? It can’t—so the industry is moving from indiscriminate subsidies to targeted promotions, modest price re‑ups and a renewed focus on supply‑chain efficiency. Overseas expansion offers a second life for some—Mixue has scaled quickly abroad—but it has been reported that overseas revenue remains marginal for most chains and geopolitical trade frictions add uncertainty to that path.

The industry’s upheaval is not an apocalypse but a reset. The era of growth‑at‑all‑costs and flowery “new consumer” narratives is over; what follows is a cycle where scale, manufacturing economics and logistics discipline matter far more than branding alone.