New stock previewAnnual income of 1 billion but trapped in growth bottleneck: The joy and worry of Fubei Pet's sprinting to the Hong Kong stock market.

At present, more and more people are starting to pursue spiritual "self-fulfillment consumption", and "pet raising" is one of them, especially under the strong drive of "single economy" and "silver economy", China has become one of the fastest growing pet markets in the world, and the pet economy has entered a period of explosive growth. The "2026 China Pet Industry White Paper" pointed out that by 2025, the size of the urban pet consumption market reached 312.6 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of 4.1% compared to 2024, with the dog consumption market reaching 192.3 billion yuan and the cat consumption market reaching 218.4 billion yuan. In this fast-growing track, pet food, as the highest frequency and most essential subdivision field, naturally becomes the focus of capital pursuit. Recently, Shanghai Fubon Pet Supplies Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fubon Pet") submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and planned to list on the main board. Established in 2005, the company primarily focuses on pet premium food as its core business and is the second player in the third-party manufacturing industry of pet food in China, while also owning its own brands such as "Beile". However, a contradictory picture emerges from this lengthy prospectus: the company has been steadily growing in the ODM business, with a stable market position, but there has been a significant decline in its own brand business, leading to a halving of overall net profit in 2025. In the background of the continuing release of the "self-fulfillment consumption" bonus, why has Fubon Pet not been able to fully enjoy this wave of growth dividends? ODM moving steadily forward, while OBM facing headwinds Fubon Pet's core business model is the dual-driven "ODM+OBM". The ODM business provides a one-stop customized service for other pet food brands from formula design to production delivery; while OBM directly faces end consumers with its own brands. In theory, this model forms a virtuous closed loop of "scale manufacturing contributes to brand quality, market insight guides research and development", but from the financial data, the speeds of the two wheels are clearly diverging. It is noted that the company's ODM business performance has been robust. From 2023 to 2025, Fubon Pet's revenue from the ODM business was 613 million yuan, 624 million yuan, and 630 million yuan respectively, accounting for 58.6%, gradually rising to 61.7%. These data indicate that even in the slight decline in overall revenue in 2025, the ODM sector still achieved positive growth, deepening the company's reliance on the ODM business. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, based on the 2025 revenue, Fubon ranks second in the third-party pet food manufacturing industry in China, with a market share of 5.3%; it also ranks second in the third-party manufacturing industry of pet main food, with a market share of 8.5%. However, the performance of its own brand business is worrisome. From 2023 to 2025, revenue from the OBM model decreased from 432 million yuan to 350 million yuan, with its share of total revenue shrinking from 41.3% to 34.3%. Among them, the revenue of the core brand "Beile" decreased from 409 million yuan to 333 million yuan, a reduction of nearly 20% over the three years. The company explained this as "adjusting the product portfolio, removing legacy products and launching new series, resulting in a transitional period for new product customer development and market penetration". While this reasoning is valid - the introduction of high-end product lines such as the "Staged Nutrition Series" and the "Oriental Nutrition Series" requires time for market cultivation, it also exposes Fubon Pet's structural dilemma in brand building: as a company that started from ODM, there is still a gap in brand awareness in consumers' minds compared to purely consumer goods companies. Based on 2025 retail sales, Beile is only the tenth largest domestic pet food brand in China, with a market share of less than 1%. In a highly fragmented and competitive market, transitioning from a "behind-the-scenes manufacturer" to a "name remembered by consumers" requires continuous and substantial investment in marketing. What's more noticeable is the change in distribution channels. In the OBM business, revenue generated by distributors plummeted from 254 million yuan in 2023 to 166 million yuan in 2025, while direct sales revenue rose slightly from 152 million yuan to 157 million yuan. The number of distributors decreased from 324 to 223. The company stated that this is a "proactive optimization of the distributor structure, focusing on high-quality distributors", but this contraction also reflects the pressure on the channel end under intensified market competition. Behind the fluctuation in performance It is also noted that, in the overall growth environment of the pet consumption market, Fubon Pet's performance trend is significantly weaker than the industry average. From 2023 to 2025, the company's total revenue was 1.046 billion yuan, 1.033 billion yuan, and 1.021 billion yuan respectively, remaining stable overall, but the profit side fluctuated dramatically: gross profit increased from 374 million yuan to 392 million yuan and then dropped to 323 million yuan, with gross profit margins increasing to 35.7%, 37.9%, and then dropping to 31.6%; net profit plunged from 164 million yuan to 98 million yuan, nearly halving. The rise in gross margin in 2024 was mainly due to the decrease in raw material costs. The cost of raw materials and consumables decreased from 586 million yuan to 535 million yuan that year, a decrease of about 8.7%, while revenue only decreased by 1.2%, directly driving the improvement in gross margin. However, in 2025, raw material costs rebounded to 556 million yuan, while depreciation and amortization surged from 27.3 million yuan to 37.46 million yuan, and employee welfare expenses increased from 26.05 million yuan to 41.32 million yuan. The soaring depreciation and labor costs are directly related to the new production capacity put into operation - Fubon had three new production bases in 2024, but the utilization rate of these capacities was significantly low in the initial stages. Taking the Fuxin base as an example, its utilization rate was only 7.2% in 2024, rising to 20.1% in 2025, still significantly lower than mature production lines. This mismatch of "capacity first, orders lagging" is the most direct reason for the sharp decline in profit in 2025. The expense side is also worth examining. Sales and marketing expenses increased from 106 million yuan to 133 million yuan over the three years, accounting for 10.1% to 13.0% of revenue, in line with the company's strategy of increasing brand promotion and online traffic investment. However, against the backdrop of declining OBM revenue, the marketing efficiency is alarming - investing more money has not resulted in more sales of its own brands, indicating that the current brand strategy may need to be recalibrated. Research and development expenses continued to shrink from 24.06 million yuan to 11.51 million yuan, although the company explained it as "optimization of research and development management", but with the company's continued emphasis on "research and development-driven", the reduction in research and development investment raises questions about the effectiveness of this core selling point of "research and innovation". From an industry perspective, the pet food market in China is still in a growth phase. With a total consumption market size of 312.6 billion yuan and an annual growth rate of 4.1%, it indicates that there is still sufficient room for growth in this field. What's more noteworthy is the structural changes: the growth rate of domestic brands is significantly faster than international brands - from 2020 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate of domestic brands is 11.0%, while that of international brands is only 4.9%. This provides structural opportunities for domestic enterprises like Fubon Pet. However, the fragmented market landscape also means exceptionally fierce competition. Based on 2025 retail sales, the market share of the top ten pet main food brands combined is only 22.1%, with no single enterprise having an absolute dominant position. In the third-party manufacturing track, the combined market share of the top five companies is 30.4%, with Fubon Pet ranking second with a share of 5.3%, showing a significant gap compared to the industry-leading company with 14.3% market share. This "one strong, many weak" situation means that although Fubon is at the forefront in the ODM business, it still faces competition pressure from top competitors. In other words, Fubon is the "runner-up" in the third-party manufacturing field, not the "leader", and is even just a "gatekeeper" in the own brand field, making its market position under a double squeeze not as stable as it may seem on the surface. In summary, Fubon Pet is a company with a solid foundation but is currently in a period of structural adjustment. Its manufacturing capabilities and customer base in the ODM sector form a stable foundation, but the growth curve of its own brand has not yet entered an upward trajectory. In the context of the continuing release of the "self-fulfillment consumption" bonus, Fubon has failed to fully benefit from this wave of growth dividends, primarily due to its own brand construction lagging behind market changes, and excessive reliance on the ODM model leading to insufficient brand premium capabilities. In the future, whether Fubon Pet can truly achieve the leap from a "manufacturing giant" to a "strong brand enterprise" through this Hong Kong IPO depends not only on the recognition of the capital market but also on whether it can rediscover a steady growth pace in the fierce market competition.