Dissecting Chongqing Beer: Growth Remains, But Challenges Have Shifted

Questioning AI · Domestic brands under pressure, international brands growing, how do the dual matrices collaborate?

The beer industry has bid farewell to the era of rapid overall growth, shifting competition focus to a comprehensive balance of price, volume, profit, and brand.

By 2025, Chongqing Beer achieved both revenue and profit growth amid declining industry output, but the quality of its growth and operational challenges have significantly changed.

As the core platform for Carlsberg Group’s operations in China, the company faces new challenges such as pressure on domestic brands, uneven regional development, and shifting growth drivers.

Growth persists, but structural concerns remain

In 2025, the total output of nationwide large-scale beer companies decreased by 1.1% year-on-year, making industry contraction the norm. Chongqing Beer maintained its basic growth in adversity, with annual beer sales of 2.9952 million kiloliters, a slight increase of 0.68% YoY; revenue of 14.722 billion yuan, up 0.53%; net profit attributable to parent company of 1.231 billion yuan, up 10.43%.

This performance appears stable, but underlying structural issues exist. The company’s net profit excluding non-recurring gains and losses declined by 2.78% YoY, with a performance inflection point in the fourth quarter—net profit attributable to parent was -10.0338 million yuan, and net profit excluding non-recurring items was -34.3397 million yuan, turning from profit to loss in a single quarter.

Compared to peers, Zhujiang Beer’s revenue and net profit growth rates are higher than Chongqing Beer’s; Yanjing Beer’s net profit is expected to increase by 50%-65%, indicating that the growth rate of heavy beer brands no longer holds an advantage.

Chongqing Beer (600132.SH)’s profit growth is not driven by comprehensive expansion of core business but results from improved gross profit margins, cost reductions, and gains from non-recurring gains and losses.

In 2025, its beer business gross profit margin was 52.03%, up 2.32 percentage points YoY, with operating costs down 3.77% YoY; simultaneously, non-recurring gains and losses shifted from -107 million yuan in 2024 to 43.1735 million yuan, directly boosting net profit attributable to parent.

On the expense side, there is divergence: sales expenses increased by 5.66%, management expenses by 15.77%, while R&D expenses dropped sharply by 29.94%. The change in expense structure has not fully translated into profit, and the resilience of core profitability still needs strengthening.

International brands rising, domestic brands under pressure

Relying on Carlsberg Group, Chongqing Beer has built a dual-brand matrix of international and domestic brands. In 2025, the performance of these two segments diverged sharply, becoming a major contradiction in the company’s operations.

International brands (Carlsberg, Tuborg, 1664, etc.) performed well, with revenue up 3.47% YoY, sales up 5.27%, and gross profit margin at 53.82%. Volume and profit growth became the core growth engine. Domestic brands (Ursus, Chongqing, Shancheng, etc.) faced adjustments, with revenue down 0.64% and sales down 1.22%, and gross profit margin at 50.92%.

Cost optimization helped domestic brands maintain profitability; operating costs decreased by 7.01% YoY, outperforming the 2.32% increase in international brands’ costs. Even with revenue and sales declines, profits remained under pressure.

Product segmentation shows a stark contrast: high-end and mainstream products exhibit different trends. High-end products (Carlsberg, Red Ursus, etc.) saw sales volume increase by 3.23% YoY and sales revenue grow by 2.19%, maintaining steady momentum; mainstream products (Chongqing, regular Ursus, etc.) experienced a 1.95% decline in sales volume and a 1.03% decrease in revenue, with mass-market prices under significant pressure; economic products grew slightly in volume by 0.53% but revenue declined by 1.80%.

In the short term, growth in high-end products supports the revenue quality of Chongqing Beer, but if mainstream products—accounting for nearly 70% of total sales volume (2.0768 million kiloliters)—continue to weaken, it will directly drag down overall revenue growth.

New channels boosting growth, regional imbalance

Channel structure optimization provided a growth buffer for Chongqing Beer. In 2025, the proportion of non-traditional channels continued to rise, with emerging channels such as instant retail, e-commerce, and convenience stores performing well. The 1L new product became a key growth driver in non-traditional channels, and high-end markets maintained rapid growth, effectively offsetting pressure from traditional channels.

Regionally, the company’s nationwide network shows significant imbalance. Revenue in the Northwest increased by 3.65% YoY, and the South by 1.67%, becoming the main pillars of performance; the Central region’s revenue declined by 1.43%, with a gross profit margin of only 46.72%, far below the Northwest’s 52.10% and South’s 59.10%, highlighting operational weaknesses.

From production and sales data, the high-end, mainstream, and economy product production and sales rates are 104.38%, 104.53%, and 103.67%, respectively, indicating rapid product turnover and no obvious terminal sales pressure. However, cash income has declined; financial income decreased YoY due to lower deposit interest rates, and the parent company’s investment income (dividends from subsidiaries) fell from 1.428 billion yuan to 1.087 billion yuan, weakening cash-generating capacity.

High dividends behind: growth still depends on breaking through core business

Chongqing Beer’s 2025 dividend plan is very generous, with an interim dividend of 1.30 yuan per share, and a planned year-end dividend of 1.20 yuan per share, totaling 1.21 billion yuan for the year, with a high payout ratio of 98.30%, reflecting strong shareholder returns.

However, the sustainability of high dividends ultimately depends on the profitability of the main business. The company currently faces multiple operational pressures that need urgent improvement.

At the industry level, overall volume decline, with CR5 exceeding 90%, and niche brands and imported beers fragmenting the market;

At the company level, domestic brands and mainstream products remain under pressure, with weak performance in the Central region; profit growth relies on non-recurring gains and losses and cost control, with insufficient endogenous growth momentum.

The 2025 performance proves that Chongqing Beer’s growth has not stagnated, but the growth logic has fundamentally changed—from past total volume expansion to high-end positioning, channel optimization, and cost management.

Whether it can break through growth bottlenecks in the future depends on three key points: whether domestic brands can halt their decline, whether mainstream products can recover growth, and whether regional operations can develop more balanced.

Chongqing Beer’s 2025 results are a typical reflection of the stock-competition era in the beer industry: slight volume increase, profit pressure, and structural differentiation. The company relies on Carlsberg’s brand matrix and channel advantages to maintain a bottom line amid industry downturn, but issues such as “strong international brands, weak domestic brands, high-end products increasing, mainstream products decreasing, regional disparities” are increasingly prominent.

High dividends can only boost market confidence in the short term; long-term growth still depends on consolidating core business. 2026 will be a critical year for Chongqing Beer to break through; whether it can activate domestic brand potential, stabilize the main product base, and balance regional development will directly determine the quality and height of its future growth.