MNSO - Miniso's Penny-Wise Empire Finds Big Bucks In Rich Countries | Benzinga
Key Takeaways:
- Miniso accelerated its new store openings abroad in the first quarter to offset sluggish sales in its home China market
- About a third of the retailer’s revenue comes from stores outside China, as it moves to lower its reliance on shaky domestic demand
By Xia Fei
As the listing fate of Chinese fast fashion sensation Shein meets resistance on stock markets in New York and London, another Chinese retail brand is finding the going far smoother in those and other global destinations with its blistering worldwide expansion and record profits.
Already occupying iconic locations such as Times Square in New York and on Oxford Street in London, Miniso Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE: MNSO), a lifestyle-goods retailer that sells budget products from cosmetics to kitchenware, is showing no sign of curbing its ambition to reach more corners of the world.
The retailer opened a mega-store on Paris’s tourist-crammed Champs-Elysees late last month, in one of its showiest displays so far on its journey abroad. Spanning two floors and colored bright pink, the shop – its largest in Europe – reported 580,000 yuan ($79,764) in sales on the first day, marking a new record for single-day performance among its overseas outlets, according to the company.
The Paris opening is just the latest step in Miniso’s ambition to add 900 to 1,100 new stores this year, half of those outside China. The retailer, founded by Chinese billionaire Ye Guofu in 2013, had over 6,600 stores as of March, including nearly 2,600 outside China.
It’s not just its store count that’s soaring. The company’s revenue rose 26% in the first quarter from a year earlier to a new high of 3.72 billion yuan, while its net profit climbed 24% to 586 million yuan. Miniso’s gross profit margin also hit a fresh high of 43.4% for the quarter, up 4.1 percentage points from a year earlier. The strong growth contrasts with Miniso’s domestic peers, many reporting weakening consumer sentiment as China’s economy slows after years of rapid growth.
Miniso’s overseas success is a relative rarity among globally minded Chinese retailers in today’s stormy geopolitical environment. High-profile Chinese firms such as Shein, ...