On February 14, 2025, Mixue Ice City Co., Ltd. officially passed the listing hearing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking that this ready-made beverage giant with "high quality and parity" as its core strategy is about to land in the capital market.As the largest ready-made beverage company in China and even in the world, Mixue Ice City relies on its huge size of more than 45,000 stores (including more than 4800 overseas stores) and revenue of 18.7 billion yuan and 3.5 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2024. With a net profit of 100 million yuan, its listing process has not only become a hot event in the consumer field, but also reflects the unique path of China's new tea and beverage industry in sinking the market and expanding globally.

From the perspective of business model, Mixue Ice City's success is rooted in its highly standardized franchise system and entire industry chain layout.99% of the company's revenue comes from selling ingredients, packaging materials and equipment to franchisees, rather than relying on franchise fees.This model allows it to quickly penetrate into county and township markets with extremely low single-store investment thresholds (far below the industry average).As of September 2024, Mixue Ice City has covered 4900 towns and villages in mainland China, with stores in third-tier cities and below accounting for 57.2%, and 84% of the township market still needs to be developed.This strategy of "surrounding cities from rural areas" not only avoids direct competition with high-end tea brands, but also dilutes supply chain costs through economies of scale-its 2023 purchase costs of milk powder and lemon are 10% and 20% lower than the industry average respectively, providing a solid cost moat for terminal pricing of 6 yuan.

The deep integration of the supply chain is the core competitiveness of Mixue Ice City that distinguishes it from other tea brands.The company has built a self-developed and self-produced system covering all categories such as sugar, milk, tea, coffee, and fruits. The annual production capacity of the five major production bases reaches 1.65 million tons. It has further expanded upstream through the joint venture with Junlebao to build "Snow King Ranch".The wide-area coverage of the logistics network (97% of stores in mainland China have cold chain coverage, and 90% of county-level areas have 12-hour access) ensures stable supply in low-tier cities and overseas markets.This end-to-end closed-loop system has enabled Mixue Ice City to achieve a gross profit margin of 32.4% in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 2.7 percentage points, maintaining profitability even in the context of intensified industry price wars.

The continued growth in financial data confirms the sustainability of its business model.2022-2024 In the first three quarters of this year, the company's revenue increased from 13.6 billion yuan to 18.7 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 21.2%. Net profit climbed from 2 billion yuan to 3.5 billion yuan, and net interest rate increased to 18.7%.It is worth noting that the average daily cup volume of a single store will reach 662 cups in 2024, and the performance of newly opened stores is even better than that of old stores, showing the health of the franchisee network.This growth momentum stems from both the deep penetration of the domestic market and the outbreak of overseas, especially Southeast Asian markets-the size of the existing tea and beverage market in Southeast Asia will reach US$20.1 billion in 2023, and Mixue Ice City has more than 4000 stores in the region, occupying key markets such as Indonesia and Vietnam.

However, the expansion of Mixue Ice City is not without hidden concerns.As the tea and beverage industry enters a stage of stock competition, its core operating indicators have shown signs of pressure.Although the prospectus does not specifically disclose the growth rate of same-store sales, Zhuoshi Consulting data shows that the growth rate of the size of China's existing beverage market in 2023 has dropped from 37.5% in 2021 to 17.6%. Coupled with the risk of saturation of store density in the low-line market, future growth may rely more on the expansion of overseas and coffee brands "Lucky Coffee".In addition, risks such as food safety, franchisee management, and geopolitics (such as Southeast Asian market regulation) may also pose challenges to its globalization process.

Looking to the future, the capitalization path of Mixue Ice City may become a watershed in the industry.Among the fundraising purposes disclosed in the prospectus, supply chain upgrading, digital construction and overseas expansion rank among the top three, which is highly consistent with its "global century-old brand" strategy.If we can use the Hong Kong stock platform to open up international capital channels, further optimize supply chain efficiency and replicate domestic sinking market experience to emerging economies, Mixue Ice City is expected to occupy a larger share of Southeast Asia's expected market size of US$49.5 billion in 2028.At the same time, its youthful brand image built through the "Snow King" IP (with more than 28.6 billion social platform exposures) may help it tap the user life cycle value in the existing market and realize the transformation from scale expansion to quality growth.