On May 21, Yibin Wuliangye Co., Ltd. (Wuliangye) announced that it would invest up to 10 billion yuan to repurchase company stocks. With the continuous decline of the Chinese liquor industry, Wuliangye’s stock price has dropped by three-quarters from its peak.
Wuliangye issued a “Repurchase Report on Repurchasing Company Shares through Centralized Competitive Trading” on the 21st. The announcement stated that it would repurchase “the A-shares of the company,” with a total repurchase fund amounting to not less than 8 billion yuan and not more than 10 billion yuan.
The announcement also mentioned that the expected repurchase quantity would be no less than 52,086,724 shares, accounting for approximately 1.34% of the total shares currently issued by the company.
At the extraordinary shareholders’ meeting of Wuliangye held on May 18 in Yibin, Sichuan, the stock repurchase plan had already been approved by the shareholders.
Wuliangye is one of the leading enterprises in the Chinese liquor industry, second only to Maotai for a long time. However, with the continuous downturn of the Chinese liquor market in recent years, Wuliangye has also been affected, experiencing declining profits and a continuous drop in stock prices, which have fallen below 90 yuan.
On April 30, Wuliangye released its financial report for 2025 and the quarterly report for this year. The annual report showed that in 2025, Wuliangye achieved operating income of 40.529 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 54.55%, and a net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company of 8.954 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 71.89%.
A “Pre-Correction of Accounting Errors Announcement” was also issued, adjusting the performance of the first three quarters of 2025: the total operating income for the first three quarters of 2025 was revised from the original 60.9 billion yuan to 30.6 billion yuan, a decrease of 30.3 billion; and the net profit attributable to the parent company was revised from 21.5 billion yuan to 6.5 billion yuan, a decrease of 15 billion.
After the adjustment data was released, the capital market responded swiftly. The stock price of Wuliangye was 97.74 yuan per share on the opening day of April 30. As of the close of trading on May 21, the stock price of Wuliangye was 85.35 yuan per share, a decrease of 0.14%. The price has fallen by three-quarters from its peak of 334.81 yuan per share.
According to a Tencent News report on May 20, in the Chinese liquor market, there is still a phenomenon of Wuliangye’s factory price being higher compared to the market price. The core product, the 8th generation Wuliangye, has a factory price of 1019 yuan per bottle, but the market price has long been hovering at 820 to 840 yuan, with prices on e-commerce platforms even as low as 750 yuan per bottle, resulting in a price difference of over 200 yuan per bottle.
A senior liquor industry practitioner who represents both Maotai and Wuliangye pointed out that the gap between Maotai and Wuliangye is gradually widening, which is clearly not a situation that Wuliangye would like to see.