Yanghe peaked at ¥33B as China's baijiu No.3 — then the winter came

Yanghe rose from a Jiangsu distillery to the third name in China's premium baijiu on two inventions: the Blue Classic brand line launched in 2003, and a deep-distribution model that pushed product into thousands of distributor warehouses. National expansion began in 2015; by 2022 the company had entered the ¥30 billion club, and 2023 was the peak — revenue ¥33.126 billion, attributable profit ¥10.016 billion, both records. For 14 years Yanghe held the title of China's No.3 baijiu maker.

FY2025 was the second year of the decline, and the brutal one: revenue ¥19.211 billion, down 33.47%; attributable profit ¥2.206 billion, down 66.94%; Q4 alone lost ¥1.769 billion on ¥1.121 billion of revenue. Operating cash flow flipped from +¥4.63 billion to -¥763 million. Mid-to-high-end liquor fell 32%, ordinary liquor 43%, in-province and out-of-province alike; ¥125 million of goodwill on the Shuanggou unit was written off. Selling expenses of ¥5.21 billion came down barely 6% against a third of the revenue gone.

The distributor network broke first. 495 accounts left during the year, and the exodus became visible in H1, when 268 out-of-province distributors quit — the first net reduction since the 2015 expansion began — as support was pulled toward a new 'regional focus' on Jiangsu and the Yangtze delta. On July 1, 2025, chairman Zhang Liandong resigned mid-term, apologising to investors for being 'relatively lagging in this round of development'; Gu Yu, the district head of Sucheng, took over. The dividend held at ¥2.214 billion — more than the full-year profit.