In the past, the former “number one hotpot chain” is still struggling in a continuous losing battle. Haidilao, the long-established hotpot giant, recently released a half-year performance forecast showing that despite narrowing losses, the company has failed to make a profit for four consecutive years, indicating that the path to transformation remains challenging.
On the evening of August 4th, Haidilao Catering Management (China) Holdings Co., Ltd. released a performance forecast for the first half of 2025. The data shows that the company expects to achieve a revenue of approximately 1.9 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a decrease of 18.9% compared to the same period last year. However, the net loss is expected to narrow to between 80 million yuan and 100 million yuan.
The company explained in the announcement that the narrowing of losses is mainly due to a series of cost control measures. In addition, the strategy of closing inefficient restaurants and focusing on new restaurants in high-potential areas has also supported performance improvement.
Haidilao expects that the provision for impairment losses on closed and continuously loss-making restaurants will decrease by approximately 64.1% compared to the same period in 2024.
In recent years, Haidilao’s financial condition has been continuously impacted by impairment losses. In the past few years, the losses related to restaurant closures and losses have repeatedly been the main reasons for the decline in performance. In 2024, this loss was approximately 260 million yuan; in 2023, the related impairment losses amounted to as much as 160 million yuan.
Looking at a longer time frame, from 2021 to 2024, Haidilao Group has been losing money for four consecutive years, with accumulated losses exceeding 1.2 billion yuan. In 2024, the total annual loss of the company reached 398 million yuan, further expanding from the 190 million yuan loss in 2023. These figures intuitively reveal the operational challenges faced by this long-established hotpot chain enterprise.
Against the backdrop of performance pressure, significant changes are taking place in the store layout of Haidilao Group. In 2024, the company closed 219 restaurants, including 138 Haidilao and 73 HaiDiLao Hot Pot. As of December 31, 2024, the total number of restaurants under the group had decreased to 957, showing a significant contraction in scale.
Established in 1998, Haidilao Group went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2014, owning well-known hotpot brands such as HaiDiLao and HaiDiLao Hot Pot. As the former “number one hotpot chain,” the company once held an important position in the industry. However, the current stock price of Haidilao has fallen to 0.77 Hong Kong dollars, with a market capitalization of only 8.36 billion Hong Kong dollars, starkly contrasting its past glory.
Currently, with China’s economy continuing to stagnate, the phenomenon of “downgrading consumption” and “not consuming unless necessary” has become the norm, leading to a lackluster peak season and even duller off-peak season in the catering industry. An article published by Sohu earlier highlighted the grim situation in the catering market in 2024, particularly in hotpot, tea drinks, and bakery shops. The growth rate of hotpot restaurants has significantly slowed down, and the number of registered enterprises in popular sectors like hotpot and tea drinks has decreased substantially, with bakery and tea drink registrations declining by about 30% year-on-year.