MINISO Group Holding Reports Q2 2026 Results: Full Earnings Call Transcript

On Friday, MINISO Group Holding (NYSE: MNSO ) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below. This content is powered APIs. 2% and operating cash flow rising 46%.

The company highlighted its strategic focus on building proprietary IP, expanding large store formats, and accelerating store renovations, achieving substantial growth in same-store sales. 9%, but profitability was impacted by a decline in distributor business and early-stage investments in direct-operated markets. Management emphasized the success of the proprietary IP strategy, with their first IP, UU, generating nearly RMB 500 million in revenue and achieving significant milestones like the UU × Disney Toy Story 5 collection.

Future guidance indicates high single-digit revenue growth in H2 2026 and mid-double-digit growth for the full year, with a focus on improving overseas operations and refining store models. Operational highlights include a significant increase in membership contributions to sales, robust performance of large store formats, and successful launch of new proprietary IPs like Chocho. Management remains optimistic about the long-term growth potential of the proprietary IP strategy and the expansion of large store formats, despite short-term challenges in overseas markets. Full Transcript OPERATOR Hello everyone.

Thank you for your patience, and welcome to MINISO 2026 interim earnings results presentation. All participants are currently in listening mode. Following management’s remarks, we will host the Q&A session. Before asking your question, please state your name and the institution you represent.

Please note that the event will be recorded. English simultaneous translation is available. For this call, you can select your preferred language by clicking Interpretation in the Zoom meeting. com.

Joining us here today are our founder and CEO, Mr. Ye Guofu, and our CFO, Mr. Zhang Jingjing. Before we continue, please refer to the Safe Harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call as we will be making forward-looking statements.

Please also note we will discuss non-IFRS financial measures today, which are explained in our earnings release and our filings to the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under IFRS. Unless otherwise stated, all figures are in RMB. In addition, we have prepared PPT slides containing financial and operational information for today's call. If you are using Zoom, you can see the information.

You can also preview it later on our IR website. Now I would like to welcome Mr. Ye. Ye Guofu, Founder and CEO Hello everyone.

4%. 2%, and operating cash flow rose 46%. Our global store count reached 8,674. MINISO today stands at a pivotal moment as we operate larger and better stores, build our own proprietary IP, and develop our overseas organizational capacity.

Opportunities and challenges coexist. I firmly believe the strategic direction and the stage-by-stage significance of those initiatives matter far more than the near-term numbers. I will walk you through our business performance this quarter across three segments, including MINISO China, MINISO Overseas, and TOP TOY. 3% on a year-over-year basis in H1 of this year.

2%, not only far outpacing broad retail sales but also exceeding our prior guidance. This was our fastest H1 growth rate in the past three years. Importantly, the quality of the growth is truly high, driven primarily by mid- and high-single-digit growth on the same-store side. As of the end of Q2 2026, MINISO China store count reached 4,665, with a net addition of 97 stores in H1, among which the Land format store recorded a net addition of 59; flagship format stores, 159; regular stores recorded a net closure of 121.

On August 22, MINISO Land’s Chengdu Eastern Suburb Memory store officially opened, marking our 100th Land store in China. Store count was growing solidly, but the quality is even more important. At the end of June, our China store count was up 8%, while revenue grew by 26%, reflecting a substantial increase in per-store output and healthy growth in overall sales per square meter. I’d like to show you three sets of data.

First, on sales per square meter and rent-to-sales ratio, month by month, the Land format store delivers sales per square meter roughly twice that of the regular store. Compared with existing stores, the stores newly opened in 2026 are significantly larger, yet the sales per square meter held steadily, with rent-to-sales ratio improving the most. Our new store is no longer a mere tenant, but also the engine for foot traffic. Secondly, our store renovation pace continues to accelerate.

We completed 189 store renovations in H1; post-renovation, store performance nearly doubled worldwide. Against a full-year renovation target of 355, we have every confidence to exceed it by the end of this year. Third, franchise returns continue to improve. Whether measured by payback period, profit margin, or proportion of profitable stores, the profitability of the MINISO Land nationwide and MINISO stores nationwide in H1 reached their best levels since 2019.

Franchisees are increasingly willing to open larger and better stores, which is the most direct endorsement of our channel strategy. From "swapping the cage for better birds" to large-store-driven growth, our channel upgrade strategy has been underway for two years and remains significant for the future. This is assessed with two facts. First, the proportion of renovated stores in China remains low, and second, we continue to innovate on store formats.

This year we introduced a new member to our store matrix: Super MINISO, the most important innovation of 2026. Looking back at the evolution of our channel upgrades over the past two years: in 2024, MINISO Land validated the IP-immersive flagship store; in 2025, MINISO entered mid- and high-end shopping districts in the affordable luxury tier; in 2026, Super MINISO brings the IP experience to the broader mass consumer base. Its product matrix is 50% IP merchandise plus 50% general lifestyle products. Since its launch, it has become one of the most popular store formats among consumers.

The clever aspect of Super MINISO is not to overturn consumers’ existing brand perception; rather, it builds upon it. It retains consumers’ familiarity with MINISO’s value-for-money merchandise while injecting frankness and trend-driven experience through IP. Other formats like Friends, Land, and Space progressively deepen the IP merchandise and magic share, helping consumers move from lifestyle general merchandise to IP wonderland as part of the brand upgrade. I’d like to say the success of the large store is not merely channel innovation; it’s a systematic innovation of content plus space and operation.

The store is a space; IP is the soul to fill it. The momentum of the large store and the value of IP reinforce each other, forming an ever-accelerating flywheel. In June last year, we launched UU, our first proprietary IP. Within just one year, UU has entered into 53 countries worldwide, generating nearly RMB 500 million in related revenue in H1.

The most iconic milestone was UU × Disney Toy Story 5 collection. UU versions of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Slinky Dog sold strongly across stores in multiple countries. In just one year, UU’s success has propelled our proprietary IP to a new stage where it can engage top-tier global IPs as an equal. Beyond the MINISO flagship store and brand, TOP TOY has also built its own IP matrix.

Its flagship IP Nomi has surpassed RMB 300 million in cumulative GMV. You can see that while UU validated the methodology within our flagship brand, Nomi, Yui, and Duidui have proven different styles under the TOP TOY Land brand. Around proprietary IP, we have accumulated a full-chain SOP spanning artist signing, product definition, design to development, supply chain scheduling, all the way to pre-launch staging, debug, channel in-store events, and fan operation. Our group-wide target of RMB 1 billion in proprietary IP sales, set at the beginning of this year, was achieved ahead of schedule by the end of July.

This all proves our multi-IP, multi-category globalization strategy is successful. They fully demonstrate MINISO’s unique resource endowment. In building proprietary IP, we have full category coverage, all-channel penetration, a global footprint, and full-chain operation. Looking across the globe, MINISO possesses the greatest flexibility and expandability in product categories, strong cost control and innovation capacity in channels, and the broadest and highest-quality global store network in terms of footprint.

On the operation front, MINISO leverages full-chain advantages from signing artists to design, development, marketing, and selling products. We deeply empower artists at every stage, maximizing the potential of each IP. Those are precisely MINISO’s highly differentiated and scarce resources, and they are also the key to MINISO’s leap-forward development. In proprietary IP, there are four "forces" enabling us to complete the entire process from IP concept to shelf more efficiently than the vast majority of companies.

So everyone, UU is just at the beginning. On August 22nd, we newly launched artist IP Chocho, which sold out entirely on its debut day, far exceeding expectation. We have already signed multiple designer toy artists. You can see that on the evening of the 26th, 50,000 sets of Chocho were sold live within one second.

At the same time, we have already signed multiple designer toy artists, recruiting top creative talents worldwide through our IP Protégé program. Our ambition going forward is to lead 100 Chinese IPs onto the global stage. At the moment, the global IP market has entered an unprecedented boom. The rise of a great nation is inevitably accompanied by the birth of cultural symbols and their global ascent.

MINISO, backed by our world-leading channel, product, and IP operation, will secure our top position in this historical moment. Our vision is to become the world’s leading IP operating platform. Measured by channel scale, we are already the world’s largest retailer of IP products, and our proprietary IP business is building a new growth engine that is at once distinctive, explosive, and replicable. Our strategic pivot towards proprietary IP is a long-term choice grounded in the trend of our era.

We will sustain long-term investment. Even in the short term, the proprietary IP product line has delivered an excellent report card. Not only has UU proven to be a success, the same as Chocho, our second IP; in H1, its profit margin was above the company average. Inventory turnover was kept within 30 to 40 days.

The proprietary IP strategy has placed no pressure on overall profitability, laying a solid foundation to continue our IP ecosystem. Coming next, I’m going to talk about our membership strategy. Last year I said membership would become another important engine for MINISO’s growth. The value of the membership strategy is steadily materializing.

Member scale and contribution continue to reach new levels. In H1, our China membership grew by 31%, reaching 130 million, an all-time high. Member-contributed sales rose from 57% in the same period last year to 60% for the full year last year, 63% in Q1, and further to 77% now. At the same time, membership is the latest evidence of MINISO’s growth shifting from opportunity-driven to system-driven.

The value of membership is manifested in two sides. The core engine is lifting average transaction value. Average transaction value rose by 5%. Working with global IPs, for example Sanrio, Disney, and Harry Potter, as well as Chocho, combined with the blockbuster effect of our proprietary IP, large stores have become the core stronghold of high-value members.

As a result, per-customer contribution of China members was two times higher than non-members. Average transaction value of IP members is more than three times that of non-IP members. Secondly, membership is the top-level engine to improve retention through precise targeting and benefit-driven retention that can further extend active lifetime. Precise identification of member consumption preferences and category needs enables new products to reach target consumers efficiently, while upgraded benefits such as cashback credits turn one purchase into direct momentum for the next purchase.

IP members newly acquired in 2025 saw a retention rate in H1 that was 8 percentage points higher than non-IP members, with purchase frequency two times higher than non-IP members. 6 times more frequently than those who don’t. IP-driven acquisition, large-store quality upgrades, and repurchase extension is our underlying formula to achieve highly sustainable membership value. When we have scale, structure, and frequency driving together, they will be able to sustain long-term success.

Let’s also take a look at the overseas market. 06 billion. Store number reached 3,644. Frankly speaking, overseas performance fell short of our expectation and weighed somewhat on our group profit.

The overseas contribution to company profit declined from 35% to 40% in 2023 to 10% to 15% in H1 of this year. The impacts came from two factors: first, a decline in distributor business revenue; and secondly, our direct-operated markets outside North America still remain in the early investment stage. The store models are still in refinement and not yet profitable. We also made some internal review of those issues.

Expanding our overseas directly operated stores, we will be more focused and more prudent, vigorously assessing ROI of new stores, concentrating resources to deepen our presence in priority markets. I asked the teams to slow down the pace of store openings unless you have 100% confidence. In H2, we will first concentrate on operating our existing 800 overseas directly operated stores and replicate after a single-store model materializes. The overseas market is our vast horizon.

Short-term fluctuations won’t change our long-term growth trends. We have corrected our past growth approach that overemphasized shipments and store count so that terminal sales growth, inventory turnover, and headquarter shipment once again would form a closed loop in a healthy way. Now it is also the time for us to really improve performance in overseas markets. Our overseas business is now in the holding stage.

We need to refine our store model and, more importantly, ensure the China transformation will be successfully validated in international markets. It’s time for another upgrade for the international market. We have already made significant adjustments and transformation. So I would like to take this opportunity to encourage our overseas teams.

From 2015 to now, our overseas journey has spanned 11 years. The deeper we go overseas, the more profoundly I realize how difficult it is for a Chinese company to truly gain a solid foothold and earn sustainable profit abroad. It is not only product strength and supply chain; it is also organizational capacity, management control model, and localization strategy. MINISO’s overseas business has been profitable from day one.

Yet we must recognize the overseas challenges today are precisely a sign that MINISO globalization has entered the deep-water stage. As the share of direct-operated business rises, we must settle again and pursue refined operation, localization, stronger organizational capacity, and a globalized management control model. While solidifying our management fundamentals, we see many international consumer brands that entered China did well in the past decade but started incurring losses in recent years.

So no matter whether international brands come to China or Chinese brands go to international markets, we have to be adaptive; otherwise, profit would be nothing to talk about. This is also the so-called secondary upgrading and transformation every company needs to face if they go for internationalization. MINISO’s China transformation over the past few years achieved great success. We have preliminarily realized brand upgrade and business model iteration.

China business has started to burst with fresh vitality. The challenge we are facing for the overseas business today is essentially the same as China three years ago: shifting from scale-first to quality-first. Over the past three years, China delivered its transformation report card—from land-grab expansion to wonderland-style upgrade and then to refined operation. This methodology applies equally to the overseas market.

We are never short of product, supply chain, or channel. What we lack is more patience to fully refine the single-store model. Going global is a marathon. Every adjustment and every investment we make today lays a solid foundation for long-term value.

Every additional good store MINISO opens overseas, every additional consumer well served, every additional member accumulated brings us one step closer to our vision of becoming the world’s leading IP operating platform. I have faith in my overseas team. Give them time, give them patience. I believe that the overseas market tomorrow will surely be better than what we have today.