Upstream Medical Aesthetics, FY2025: A Head-to-Head Review of 12 Listed Companies

The end of April is the annual-report deadline. By then — Hong Kong-listed companies aside, where quarterlies are not mandatory — many A-share players have already published Q1 as well.

Every set of annual-report numbers can be read from more than one angle. I rarely take any single company’s own reading at face value; I would much rather put companies in the same category side by side, because that is what carries weight. A head-to-head is what lets you see how different companies perform and behave in the same conditions, and pick up the signals that carry a long way but have not yet broken the surface.

This one runs long and carries a lot of numbers. Save it and take your time if the subject interests you.

Now that the industry has moved into a fight over a fixed pool, neither a rise nor a fall is a single story any more. Selling expense ratio, recurring net profit, gross margin, accounts receivable, goodwill impairment — read those five together and most of the startling numbers become calm.

Scope: twelve companies (7 A-share + 4 Hong Kong + 1 Beijing Stock Exchange), covering FY2025 annual reports and Q1 2026 figures disclosed as of 28 April 2026.

Companies were selected on the test of having medical-aesthetics products in development, production or sale, with results already comparable.

Unit: RMB 100 million

The pure medical-aesthetics names (Imeik, Jinbo) run gross margins above 90% — on paper, Moutai territory. The diversified pharma groups are pulled down by low-margin distribution, but their medical-aesthetics segments are typically above 70%.

Case A:Bloomage vs Imeik — the same revenue decline, opposite strategies

This pairing needs two time windows read together: full-year 2025 and Q1 2026. Either one on its own shows you only half the story.

Bloomage cut nearly 40% of its selling expense in 2025 and net profit rebounded 67%. But Q1 revenue kept falling, down 20%, and net profit collapsed 58% — which says that a profit rebound bought with cost control does not carry.

Imeik saw both revenue and profit fall across 2025, then in Q1 revenue was down less than 5% while selling expense went from RMB 65.4m to RMB 109m (+67.3%). It is spending profit to defend share.

Bloomage is betting on contract first, then turn. Imeik is betting on spending more to hold share.

And it is not only Imeik. Jinbo Biological, top of the table on net margin, raised H1 2025 selling expense 67.77% (almost exactly Imeik’s Q1 +67.3%), and Giant Biogene’s full-year selling expense ratio rose to 37.3%. Hyaluronic acid (Imeik), recombinant collagen (Giant Biogene), recombinant type III collagen (Jinbo): the leading product companies have moved as a group into spend-more-to-defend-share mode. Slightly different categories, identical behaviour. Where those three take their selling expense ratios over the rest of this year matters more than the net profit figures themselves.

Case B:Lepu Medical — turnaround? rebound? or just repetition?

The RMB 250m goodwill impairment taken in 2024 drove the base to the floor; 2025 net profit rebounded to RMB 962m, +290% year on year, which looks handsome. But one quarter later Q1 was down 34.8% again, and RMB 3.879bn of goodwill is still hanging there. +290% is a rebound, not a turn in the story.

The PLLA approval in June 2025 is genuinely good news, but the real pace of sales cannot be verified until the middle of 2026. Welding a newly approved product to a low-base rebound and calling it a confirmed turnaround is two separate things forced together.

Remember the story six months ago about sales passing RMB 100m in three months?

RMB 100m including tax converts back to roughly RMB 88.5m excluding it — the same money as the RMB 86m in the financial statements. The number is broadly true. The definition was carefully chosen. On the strict basis used in the accounts, it had not passed RMB 100m as of 30 September.

But more interesting than the made-up definition is another set of hard numbers Lepu disclosed in its own 2025 annual report, which cannot be dressed up:

Put those three together and the truth about channel-loading sales is exposed: group revenue in 2025 rose only 6.22%, yet receivables as a share of revenue jumped 5.59 points in a single year — the growth in new receivables far outpaced the growth in new revenue, and the gap most likely came from loading the new product into the channel.

If collections on the new product were normal, the receivables ratio would not be setting a record at the same time.

I am looking forward to the breakdown of medical-aesthetics receivables and repeat-purchase rates in the 2026 annual report.

Read PE and ROE together and it becomes obvious which names are expensive for a reason and which are expensive with nothing underneath.

Valuation trough (low PE + solid fundamentals)

Rich valuation (needs high growth to support it)

These measures show the real state of things better than a year-on-year profit figure.

State backing, institutional ownership, Hong Kong small caps — the logic driving the share price is completely different in each case.

Weighted across five dimensions: profitability (25%), growth (25%), valuation (20%), financial health (15%), shareholder structure (15%). The weights are Giselle’s own, set as the author, and are offered for reference only.

A quick look at the core A-share names that had disclosed Q1 as of 28 April 2026. A single quarter should not be over-read; use it for directional signals.

Sources: each company’s FY2025 annual report, results announcements, profit alerts and Q1 2026 report; Cutia Therapeutics-B FY2025 results announcement (24 March 2026); Cutia Therapeutics-B FY2025 annual report (24 April 2026); Jinbo Biological FY2025 annual report (29 April 2026).