The Miniso, nurtured by overseas markets and TOP TOY, where is the next growth pole?

Ask AI · How can high-growth overseas markets balance costs and risks?

With the global consumer market still facing many uncertainties, MINISO released its annual performance announcement for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 on March 31.

During the reporting period, the company achieved total revenue of 21.44 billion yuan, up 26.2% year over year in 2024. Among them, revenue from the main brand MINISO reached 19.525 billion yuan, up 22%, while revenue from the sub-brand TOP TOY was 1.916 billion yuan, up 94.8%.

From the figures on paper, this is a set of results featuring both growth in scale and growth in momentum.

However, behind the rapid surge in revenue, the profit side has exposed a “gap/shortfall of higher revenue but not higher profit.”

The financial report shows that net profit attributable to the parent company during the period was only 1.205 billion yuan, a significant year-over-year drop of 53.96%. The main reason for this “halving” of profit was the large loss dragged down by the company’s heavy investment in Yonghui Superstores (29.4% stake).

That said, if these non-recurring gain/loss items are stripped out, the adjusted net profit recorded 2.898 billion yuan, up 6.53% year over year, proving that the profitability “base color” of its core business is still there.

But once you peel away the headline high growth rate and look through how the revenue structure has evolved, you can clearly see the real commercial environment MINISO faces at present: the domestic “base business” is entering a stock-and-fluctuation game, overseas markets shoulder the “pioneering” task, and new business lines are looking for a balance between scale expansion and profit models.

In the 19.525 billion yuan revenue of the main brand, one signal that cannot be ignored is the shift of growth momentum outward.

The financial report specifically points out that this growth was mainly driven by both China’s mainland and overseas markets. Overseas market revenue grew significantly by 29.3% year over year, clearly outpacing the main brand’s overall growth rate of 22%.

Objectively speaking, overseas markets are indeed becoming the core incremental growth area for MINISO at this stage.

Against the backdrop of extreme competition in domestic retail channels and the end of the growth dividend in lower-tier markets, expanding into North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia is MINISO’s inevitable choice. Its underlying logic is to leverage cost advantages from the domestic supply chain to achieve a “lower-dimensional attack” overseas—maintaining nearly 30% growth in overseas revenue.

However, the other side is the marginal costs and potential risks of operating across borders.

High growth in overseas markets usually comes with heavy investment in directly operated stores with high asset intensity, more complex local compliance costs, and logistics and warehousing expenses that remain high.

In 2025, as global trade frictions intensify and geopolitics becomes more complicated, a model that relies solely on China’s supply chain to supply the world is facing double pressure from tariff barriers and exchange rate fluctuations.

For MINISO to move overseas from “channel rollout” to “brand deepening,” its capabilities in refined operations and cross-cultural management are being tested more strictly than ever before.

The most eye-catching indicator in the financial report is TOP TOY’s revenue growth of as high as 94.8%. With annual revenue of 1.916 billion yuan, this means the sub-brand has already fully moved past the early stage of concept incubation and now has the capability to create a tangible impact on the group’s total revenue.

The capital market has also assigned a high valuation to its phased results. It is reported that TOP TOY has already received strategic investment from Temasek, with an estimated valuation of about HKD 10 billion. On the channel side, its global store footprint has expanded to 334 locations, including 30 overseas stores—its overseas map has begun to take shape.

But for the trend toy industry, doubling revenue does not automatically mean a moat has been built. TOP TOY’s rapid growth still depends to a large extent on the swift rollout of its store network—channel-driven growth—and a broad “all-category” strategy (including blind boxes, building blocks, figurines, etc.).

Unlike leading players in the same track that are driven by strong proprietary IP, TOP TOY still has a relatively strong “trend toy collection store” attribute, and it relies heavily on external well-known IPs.

Although its own IP has recently started to gain traction and generated some buzz in certain niche market circles, overall the product lineup is still led by licensed IP, and it has not yet formed an absolute original-IP barrier.

This leads to a core financial and strategic concern: the procurement cost of external licensed IP will continue to suppress its gross margin space. When its revenue scale approaches the 2 billion yuan mark, the marginal benefits brought by store expansion will gradually diminish.

If TOP TOY cannot, within the next one or two years, prove to the market that it has the ability to continuously incubate breakthrough, phenomenon-level “own IP,” the quality of its high growth and its long-term profitability will remain in question.

MINISO is indeed trying to tell the capital market a new story: it is no longer just a “ten-yuan shop” that drives volume by extreme cost-performance, but a global “IP design and consumer operation operator.”

Its revenue base of 21.44 billion yuan proves the preliminary effectiveness of its strategic transformation. But in the coming cycle, the metrics the market will scrutinize will become more stringent:

First, is the high growth in overseas markets achieved at the expense of cash flow or through overly high marketing expenses? Is the per-store efficiency healthy?

Second, after TOP TOY’s scale has gained momentum, can it run through its profit model and achieve a turnaround from “a channel distributor” to “an IP source”?

For MINISO, fiscal year 2025 is a successful bid to break out in step with the shift in the consumer cycle. It won by decisively going after blank overseas markets and pre-positioning for emotional consumption value.

But after crossing the 20 billion yuan threshold, the real test is only just beginning. How to stabilize its fundamentals amid a complex and volatile global environment will determine the course of this retail giant going forward.