Laopu Gold Revenue Surges 221% as Gold Rally Drives Record Demand

Laopu Gold's full-year revenue jumped 221% to 27.3 billion yuan, topping the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 26.9 billion yuan. Net income climbed 230% to 4.87 billion yuan, in line with forecast. The Beijing-based jeweler, whose glossy black boutiques sit inside some of China's most prestigious malls, declared a dividend of 11.95 yuan per share and issued first-quarter 2026 guidance pointing to sales of as much as 17.5 billion yuan and net profit of as much as 3.8 billion yuan.

The numbers arrived against a backdrop of extraordinary commodity movement. Gold hit a record $4,350 per ounce in October. Net profit rose 230% to 4.87 billion yuan, equivalent to $708 million. The weighted average price of gold reached 979.29 yuan per gram in December, up 55% from January 2025, while spot gold climbed nearly 65% across the full year, approaching 1,000 yuan per gram by year-end from sub-600 yuan levels in 2024. That move did not merely inflate the value of inventory: it reframed gold jewelry, in the minds of mainland consumers, as a store of value rather than a discretionary purchase, and Laopu's pieces sit precisely at the intersection of those two impulses.

Founder Xu Gaoming opened his first Laopu store in 2009 on Beijing's upscale Wangfujing Street, employing traditional Chinese techniques including elaborate filigreed shapes and enamel glazes. The designs play off cultural motifs such as gourds and Buddhist symbols, with modern touches including matte finishes and embedded diamonds or rubies. The brand's techniques trace back to artisans from the Beijing Gongmei Filigree Factory, whose lineage extends to Qing Dynasty imperial workshops. The company adopted a fixed-price model not directly tied to daily gold benchmarks, allowing it to capture higher premiums. According to Citi research, the brand implemented its steepest price hike of 27% in February 2025, following three earlier markups of 18% and 25% during the year. Rather than deterring shoppers, each increase was met with longer queues outside stores.

Citi analysts noted ahead of the full-year results that Laopu Gold's brand influence and market leadership significantly boosted overall revenue from both online and offline channels. According to Frost & Sullivan, Laopu's customer overlap with luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Cartier and Bulgari reaches 77.3%, affirming its high-end consumer base. While Western luxury groups such as LVMH and Kering have been dealing with softer demand in China, Laopu appears to be benefiting from shifting consumer behavior, particularly as rising gold prices encourage purchases tied to store-of-value dynamics.

The expansion of its physical footprint matched the financial momentum. In 2025, the brand opened five new stores in mainland China and Singapore and is now operational in 50 locations, including its first Singapore boutique at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands. This year, the company plans to add three to four additional stores in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Japan, with Tokyo's Ginza among the locations under consideration. That selective pace is deliberate: Laopu's per-unit-area sales efficiency ranked first globally among luxury brands, according to Futunn data, a figure that reflects both controlled scarcity and the intensity of consumer demand at each location.

Margin pressures, however, are real. Laopu's first-half 2025 gross margin dropped to 38.1% from 41.3% a year earlier, reflecting the higher cost of gold. Citibank analysts expected second-half margins to have declined slightly, though possibly less than anticipated. Gross margins remain consistently above 40% when averaged across product lines, compared to 22% at Chow Tai Fook and just 8% at Lao Feng Xiang. The March 20 gold price retracement, which pushed retail per-gram prices for many brands down to around 1,440 yuan from levels roughly 100 yuan higher just two days prior, added a note of volatility to an otherwise surging picture. Behind the stellar headline performance also lies a sharp rise in inventory to 16 billion yuan due to aggressive stockpiling, putting pressure on cash flow.

Laopu this year overtook Chow Tai Fook, a 96-year-old chain with more than 6,000 stores, to become the most valuable Chinese jeweler. Emerging rival Jemper opened five stores in 2025, mostly in malls where Laopu is already present. The competitive proximity is telling: copying the address, if not the craft, is the most direct tribute in Chinese retail. What Jemper and others cannot easily replicate is the sourcing of Laopu's goldsmithing lineage, the sensibility of pieces that carry cultural weight alongside commodity value, or the queue that forms before a boutique even opens its doors.