After months of speculation, China’s largest freshly-made bubble tea chain Mixue Bingcheng (also called Mixue Ice Cream & Tea) filed for IPO at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 2 January 2024. The news came a day after the official opening of Mixue’s first Hong Kong store on New Year’s Day following a soft launch just before Christmas.
For the application, Mixue Bingcheng published its financial data. Up until 30 September, it currently had 36,153 locations including approximately 4,000 shops in 11 countries outside China. Mixue’s revenue reached 13.6 billion RMB (1.91 billion USD) in 2022 and 15.4 billion RMB (2.17 billion USD) in the first 9 months of 2023, growing 31.2% and 46.0% year-on-year, respectively. The profit for these two periods is 2 billion RMB (281.59 million USD) in 2022 and a 16% profit rate with 2.5 billion RMB (351.99 million USD) for the first 9 months of 2023.
Guming, or GoodMe, who ranks second in the new-style tea market, also filed for a Hong Kong IPO on the same day. With an 18% profit rate, Guming had a more profitable first 9 months in 2023, despite having less than half of Mixue’s total revenue and profit at 5.6 billion RMB (788 million USD) and 1 billion RMB (140.72 million USD) respectively.
As the number one brand in the new-style tea sector, Mixue’s IPO was long anticipated. The latest application in Hong Kong was also not the first time Mixue attempted to go public. In September 2022, it planned to start an IPO in Shenzhen. However, it didn’t go according to plan because consumer-facing enterprises like Mixue became “discouraged” to go public in China in early 2023. Mixue’s hope to go public since shifted to Hong Kong. In its prospectus, Mixue has expressed its intention to further expand, as well as build its IP.
