Pop Mart’s 2025 income exploded 185%, nevertheless it didn’t cease its inventory from plummeting
Stroll round in public, and also you’ll most likely see somebody clutching a furry, pointy-eared creature dangling from their bag.
There’s a excessive probability that it’s a Labubu—and it’s the rationale Chinese language designer toy firm Pop Mart has turn into one of many fastest-growing client manufacturers on the earth.
However Pop Mart’s greatest monetary 12 months on file didn’t cease its inventory from dropping greater than 20%. Right here’s why that’s occurred.
Pop Mart’s progress was genuinely staggering
Pop Mart’s full-year 2025 outcomes had been, by any standard measure, extraordinary.
Income rose 184.7% year-on-year to RMB¥37.12 billion (S$7 billion), whereas adjusted web revenue jumped 284.5% to RMB¥13.08 billion (S$2.46 billion). Gross margin hit 72.1%, barely above analyst estimates of 71.6%.
The corporate’s high IP, The Monsters sequence, delivered RMB¥14.16 billion (S$2.66 billion) in income, up 365.7% year-on-year, making Labubu the primary designer toy IP to surpass RMB¥10 billion (S$1.88 billion) in annual income. Plush toys turned Pop Mart’s largest product class for the primary time, with income surging 560.6% to RMB¥18.71 billion (S$3.52 billion).
Globally, Pop Mart is now not a China story.
The Americas market skyrocketed 748.4% to RMB¥6.81 billion (S$1.28 billion), with a web addition of 42 shops, totalling 64. Then again, Europe hit RMB¥1.45 billion, up 506.3% from 2024.
By the top of 2025, Pop Mart operated 630 retail shops and a pair of,637 merchandising machines throughout 20 nations and areas.
So why did shares fall over 20%?
But, when Pop Mart launched its annual outcomes on Mar 25, its Hong Kong-listed shares dropped greater than 20%—recording the steepest single-day fall in almost a 12 months. For a corporation that simply reported triple-digit revenue progress, that appears absurd.
Right here’s the best manner to consider it: a inventory value isn’t only a report card on the previous. It’s a wager on the longer term. And when buyers checked out Pop Mart’s outcomes, they noticed three issues that made them nervous about what comes subsequent.
Firstly, the enterprise is simply too depending on one character.
Virtually 40% of Pop Mart’s whole income got here from The Monsters sequence. That’s almost double from 23% the 12 months earlier than and has remained the corporate’s “main progress engine,” a unprecedented focus for what is meant to be a multi-IP enterprise.
In different phrases, the extra profitable Labubus bought, the extra the entire firm’s destiny turned tied to a single toy and the extra fragile Pop Mart turned. Traders don’t love that.
Secondly, progress began slowing down in the direction of the top of the 12 months.
Whereas the primary half of 2025 was explosive, Morningstar fairness analyst Jeff Zhang flagged a fabric slowdown within the last quarter, suggesting the Labubu frenzy might have already peaked.
Shares like Pop Mart are priced on expectations, not simply outcomes. When buyers are paying a premium as a result of they consider progress will hold compounding, even one quarter of “much less explosive than earlier than” is sufficient to set off a sell-off.
Thirdly, the administration’s personal targets weren’t precisely bold.
CEO Wang Ning mentioned the corporate is concentrating on progress of “a minimum of 20%” in 2026, which sounds first rate till you keep in mind Pop Mart simply grew at almost 185%. Going from that to twenty% is a drastic slowdown.
The dividend payout ratio additionally dropped from 35% to 25% in 2025, which means shareholders are getting much less again than earlier than regardless of spectacular income progress the identical 12 months.
In brief, the market and buyers checked out these numbers and noticed a peak, reasonably than a launchpad for larger progress.
Over-reliance on one IP
Pop Mart’s complete enterprise is constructed on characters and mental property (IP).
It creates or licenses designer toy figures, packages them in “blind packing containers”—sealed packaging the place you don’t know which variant you’re getting till you open it—and sells them to collectors who hold shopping for, hoping to land the uncommon ones.
It really works brilliantly when an IP goes viral. Labubu went viral in a manner few client merchandise ever do. Celebrities had been noticed carrying it. Resellers had been flipping it for multiples of retail. It turned each a standing image and a collector’s obsession on the similar time.
The character was even invited to take part within the century-old Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the primary time in 2025, additional increasing the model’s cultural attain.
The uncomfortable reality, although, is that Pop Mart didn’t actually engineer that. Viral moments like Labubu occur, however they’re not a components you possibly can repeat on demand.
Pop Mart has six main IPs surpassing the RMB¥2 billion (S$380 million) income mark and 17 different IPs that every crossed RMB¥100 million (S$18.79 million) in income in 2025.
The subsequent-largest—SKULLPANDA at RMB¥3.54 billion (S$670 million), CRYBABY at RMB¥2.93 billion (S$550 million) and MOLLY at RMB¥2.9 billion (S$545 million), whereas all are sturdy performers, usher in almost 5 occasions much less income than Labubu’s The Monsters sequence at RMB¥14.16 billion.
The hole between Labubu and different IPs is big—not the type of factor you paper over with a number of first rate performers.
One analyst at International X ETF highlighted the persistent debate, with “bulls centered on ongoing IP monetisation and abroad progress … [and] bears query sturdiness and cycle danger. Earnings (in 2025) did little to shut that hole,” he mentioned. The 2025 outcomes didn’t settle that debate both manner.
CEO Wang Ning pushed again, saying Pop Mart is extra than simply Labubu—and in contrast the strain on the corporate to a rookie racing driver being thrown straight into System One. That’s a good level, however buyers wish to see the following driver, not simply hear that one exists.
What occurs when the hype has nowhere to go?
Pop Mart is aware of it has a niche to shut in comparison with its rivals.
Its personal government director Si De has mentioned the corporate is actively learning Disney—particularly the way it has managed to maintain Mickey Mouse commercially related for almost 100 years. Whereas that’s an admirable ambition, it additionally reveals precisely what Pop Mart at the moment isn’t.
Take into consideration what it means to be a Marvel fan, or a Disney fan, or perhaps a Hey Kitty fan. You possibly can watch the movies, stream the exhibits, learn the comics, comply with the lore—most of it without spending a dime, particularly the older ones.
The merchandise comes later, as an extension of one thing you already love. The IP earns your loyalty first, and monetises it second.
Pop Mart works in reverse. Being a younger model that launched in 2010, the characters—Labubu, MOLLY, SKULLPANDA, DIMOO—are the product earlier than they’re anything.
There is no such thing as a present to observe, no storyline to comply with, no free entry level into the universe. If you wish to interact with Labubu, you must purchase a collectible. That’s a basically completely different relationship between a fan and an IP, and a way more fragile one constructed on momentary blind-box dopamine hits.
Critics have lengthy argued that Pop Mart’s characters lack the narrative depth of Western franchises like Disney or Sanrio. Pop Mart’s counter has all the time been that emotional resonance and aesthetic attraction are sufficient that you just don’t want a backstory to really feel one thing once you have a look at MOLLY’s clean expression or Labubu’s toothy grin.
And for some time, that argument held. Labubu didn’t want a film to go viral, however Lisa from BLACKPINK to hold one on her bag.
The issue is endurance—Virality is a second, however fandom is a relationship.
Disney has spent almost 70 years constructing its IP empire round a single core precept: nice content material on the centre, all the things else radiating out from it. That content material—the movies, the parks, the tales—is what retains followers emotionally tethered even after they’re not actively shopping for.
What Pop Mart is doing about it
Pop Mart is now making an attempt to construct that infrastructure in reverse, and quick.
A Labubu movie co-developed with Sony Footage is at the moment within the scripting stage, which might prolong the IP’s cultural life significantly. A FIFA World Cup collaboration that includes Labubus was additionally launched in Apr. Each are good strikes, however they’re each bets on Labubu, not on the broader roster.
Pop Mart can also be branching out into dwelling home equipment, themed dessert shops, and is upgrading its 40,000 sqm bodily theme park in Beijing.
Past its present IPs, it is usually persevering with to push for collaborations and new content material. Sanrio, Japan’s character manufacturers, partnered with Pop Mart on two crossover sequence in Mar, however considered one of which didn’t fail to function Labubu.
Whether or not any of this produces the following cultural phenomenon—or whether or not Labubu was all the time lightning in a bottle—is the query the corporate can’t but reply.
What it means for Singapore
Pop Mart’s Singapore presence is small relative to its international scale, nevertheless it issues for a similar causes it issues elsewhere: the city-state’s difficult retail scene is a regional testing floor and a legitimacy stamp for manufacturers increasing throughout Southeast Asia.
A Pop Mart with a diversified IP portfolio is a really completely different operator from one driving a single character’s cultural second.
If Labubu fatigue units in sooner than the corporate can develop its subsequent breakout IP, the aggressive worldwide growth begins to look shakier—and the premium retail house Pop Mart holds in markets like Singapore turns into a legal responsibility, not a calling card.
For now, queues at Pop Mart shops stay, and the resale market remains to be lively.
However buyers have seen sufficient one-hit client manufacturers to understand how the story can go. Furthermore, as of Could 25, a easy Google search turned up outcomes displaying an outlet at Lot One, and momentary pop-ups at Bugis Junction and Suntec Metropolis marked as completely closed.
5 different shops stay, with the Plaza Singapura outlet mentioned to be beneath renovation. Vulcan Submit has reached out to Pop Mart for affirmation.
But when these closures are actual, are these quiet indicators of Pop Mart’s shrinking footprint right here? The 20% inventory drop then begs an enormous query: what would Pop Mart appear like with out Labubu?
And Pop Mart wants to offer a convincing reply if it desires to stay a global market participant.
Learn different articles we’ve written on Singaporean companies right here.
