Pop Mart’s 2025 revenue exploded 185%, but that didn’t stop its stock from plummeting.
Walk among people, and you’ll likely see someone holding a furry, pointy-eared creature hanging from their bag.
There’s a big chance it’s Labubu—and that’s why Chinese designer toy company Pop Mart is one of the fastest-growing consumer brands in the world.
But Pop Mart’s best fiscal year on record didn’t stop its stock from falling more than 20%. Here’s why that happened.
Pop Mart’s growth was truly amazing
Pop Mart’s results for the full year 2025 were, by any standard measure, extraordinary.
Revenue rose 184.7% year-on-year to RMB¥37.12 billion (S$7 billion), while adjusted profit rose 284.5% to RMB¥13.08 billion (S$2.46 billion). Gross margin came in at 72.1%, slightly above analyst estimates of 71.6%.
The company’s top IP, The Monsters series, brought in RMB¥ 14.16 billion (S$2.66 billion) in revenue, up 365.7% year-on-year, making Labubu the first toy IP designer to surpass RMB¥ 10 billion (S$1.88 billion) in annual revenue. Plush toys became Pop Mart’s largest product category for the first time, with revenue up 560.6% to RMB¥18.71 billion (S$3.52 billion).
Globally, Pop Mart is no longer a Chinese affair.
The US market increased by 748.4% to RMB¥6.81 billion (S$1.28 billion), adding 42 stores, for a total of 64. On the other hand, Europe reached RMB¥ 1.45 billion, an increase of 506.3% from 2024.
By the end of 2025, Pop Mart operated 630 stores and 2,637 vending machines in 20 countries and regions.
So why are stocks down more than 20%?
However, when Pop Mart released its annual results on March 25, its Hong Kong-listed shares fell more than 20%—recording the steepest one-day fall in nearly a year. For a company that recently reported triple-digit profit growth, that seems absurd.
Here’s a simple way to think about it: the stock price isn’t just a report card from the past. Betting on the future. Then when investors looked at Pop Mart’s results, they saw three things that made them nervous next time.
First, the business is very dependent on one character.
About 40% of all Pop Mart’s revenue came from The Monsters series. That’s nearly double from 23% a year ago and remains a “primary growth engine,” an impressive focus on what should be a substantial IP business.
In other words, the more successful Labubus became, the more the company’s fate was tied to one toy and the more fragile Pop Mart became. Investors don’t like that.
Second, growth started to slow towards the end of the year.
While the first half of 2025 was booming, Morningstar equity analyst Jeff Zhang flagged a decline in assets in the last quarter, suggesting Labubu’s frenzy may have already peaked.
Stocks like Pop Mart are valued on expectations, not just results. If investors are paying a premium because they believe growth will continue to grow, even one quarter of “smaller fireworks than before” is enough to trigger a sell-off.
Third, the management’s intentions were not ambitious.
CEO Wang Ning said the company is targeting growth of “no less than 20%” by 2026, which sounds respectable until you remember that Pop Mart recently grew nearly 185%. Going from that to 20% is a huge drop.
The dividend payout ratio has also dropped from 35% to 25% by 2025, meaning shareholders are getting less return than ever despite impressive revenue growth in the same year.
In short, the market and investors look at those numbers and see a high value, rather than a launchpad for massive growth.
Overreliance on a single IP
Pop Mart’s entire business is built on characters and intellectual property (IP).
It creates or licenses designer toy figures, packages them in “blind boxes”—sealed packages where you don’t know what’s unique until you open them—and sells them to collectors who keep buying, hoping to find rare ones.
It works best when the IP is infected. Labubu went viral in a way few consumer products ever have. Celebrities were seen carrying it. Wholesalers were flipping it to resell. It became both a status symbol and a collector’s obsession at the same time.
The character was even invited to participate in Macy’s Centennial Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time in 2025, further expanding the brand’s cultural reach.
The unfortunate truth, however, is that Pop Mart didn’t engineer that. Viral moments like Labubu happen, but they are not a formula that you can repeat when needed.
Pop Mart has six major IPs that exceed the RMB¥2 billion (S$380 million) revenue mark and 17 other IPs that each exceed RMB¥100 million (S$18.79 million) in revenue by 2025.
The next biggest—SKULLPANDA at RMB¥3.54 billion (S$670 million), CRYBABY at RMB¥2.93 billion (S$550 million) and MOLLY at RMB¥2.9 billion (S$545 million), while all strong performers, delivered almost five times the income than Labubu’s series The Monsters with RMB¥14.16 billion.
The gap between Labubu and other IPs is huge—not the kind of thing you write off a few decent players.
One Global X ETF analyst highlighted the ongoing debate, “with bulls focused on continued IP monetization and overseas growth … [and] carries the question of durability and the danger of the cycle. Salaries (in 2025) did not do much to close that gap,” he said. The 2025 results did not resolve that debate in any way.
CEO Wang Ning pushed back, saying Pop Mart is more than just Labubu—and compared the pressure on the company to a rookie racing driver being thrown straight into Formula One. That’s a good point, but investors want to see the next driver, not just hear that he’s there.
What happens when the hype has nowhere to go?
Pop Mart knows it has a gap to close compared to its competitors.
Its chief executive Si De said the company is learning about Disney—especially how it managed to keep Mickey Mouse commercially relevant for nearly 100 years. While that’s an admirable aspiration, it also clearly shows that Pop Mart doesn’t exist.
Think about what it means to be a Marvel fan, or a Disney fan, or a Hello Kitty fan. You can watch movies, stream shows, read comics, follow your imagination—most of it for free, especially for adults.
Merchandise comes later, as an extension of something you already love. IP earns your loyalty first, then monetizes it second.
Pop Mart works in reverse. Being a new genre that started in 2010, the actors—Labubu, MOLLY, SKULLPANDA, DIMOO—were a product before they became anything else.
There’s no show to watch, no storyline to follow, no free-to-enter universe. If you want to interact with Labubu, you have to buy the collectible. That’s a very different relationship between a follower and an IP, and a very fragile one built on temporary hits of blind-box dopamine.
Critics have long argued that Pop Mart’s characters lack the narrative depth of Western franchises like Disney or Sanrio. The Pop Mart counter has always been that the emotional dynamics and aesthetic appeal are enough that you don’t need a backstory to feel something when you look at MOLLY’s empty expression or Labubu’s toothy grin.
And for a long time, that argument remained. Labubu didn’t need a movie to spread, but Lisa from BLACKPINK to carry it in her purse.
The problem is staying power-Virality for a moment, but fandom is a relationship.
Disney has spent nearly 70 years building its IP empire around one core principle: great content at the center, everything else flows from it. That content—movies, parks, stories—is what keeps fans emotionally engaged even when they’re not buying.
What Pop Mart does with it
Pop Mart is now trying to build that infrastructure in reverse, and fast.
Labubu’s film in association with Sony Pictures is currently in the scripting stage, which could greatly extend the cultural life of the IP. A FIFA World Cup partnership featuring Labubus was also launched in April. Both are smart moves, but both are betting on Labubu, not on a broader list.
Pop Mart is also involved in home appliances, themed dessert shops, and is developing its own 40,000 sqm virtual theme park in Beijing.
Aside from its current IPs, it continues to push for collaborations and new content. Sanrio, the Japanese character brands, partnered with Pop Mart in two crossover series with Mar, but one of them did not fail to include Labubu.
Whether any of this portends the next cultural phenomenon—or whether Labubu was always lightning in a bottle—is a question the company cannot answer.
What does it mean for Singapore
Pop Mart’s Singapore presence is small compared to its global size, but it’s important for the same reasons it’s important elsewhere: the city’s challenging retail space is a regional testing ground and an official stamp for products expanding across Southeast Asia.
Pop Mart with a diverse IP portfolio is a very different operator from a single actor cultural time-ride.
If Labubu fatigue sets in faster than the company can develop its next IP, aggressive international expansion begins to look shaky—and the prime selling point Pop Mart has in markets like Singapore becomes a liability, not a calling card.
For now, the lines at Pop Mart stores are still there, and the resale market is still active.
But investors have seen enough types of buyers to know how the story might play out. Furthermore, as of May 25, a simple Google search yielded results showing the Lot One outlet, as well as temporary outlets at Bugis Junction and Suntec City marked as permanently closed.
Another five stores remain, while the Plaza Singapura outlet is said to be under construction. Vulcan Post reached out to Pop Mart for confirmation.
But if these closings are real, are these silent signs of Pop Mart’s declining foothold here? A 20% stock drop begs the big question: what will Pop Mart look like without Labubu?
And Pop Mart needs to provide a satisfactory response if it wants to remain a player in the international market.
- Read other articles we’ve written about Singapore businesses here.
