Kuaijishan overtakes Guyue Longshan in H1 revenue, reshaping China's yellow wine ranking

Source: 创业最前线 (Frontier of Entrepreneurship) Author: Guo Yuan Editor: Dan Zong Designer: Xing Jing Reviewer: Song Wen

For years, Guyuelongshan was the undisputed leader in China's yellow wine (huangjiu) market. That changed in the first half of 2026, when rival Kuaijishan overtook it in revenue.

In the first half of 2026, Kuaijishan reported operating revenue of 853 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.43%, and net profit of 129 million yuan, up 37.04%. In contrast, Guyuelongshan posted revenue of 787 million yuan, a decline of 11.89%, and net profit of 92 million yuan, up just 1.38%.

For the first time since its listing, Kuaijishan surpassed Guyuelongshan in semi-annual revenue, with faster growth across several key metrics.

So, where did Guyuelongshan, also a major yellow wine producer, fall short?

1. Mid-Year Exam Failure: Lack of Growth Momentum

In 2025, the two companies' revenues were already very close. Guyuelongshan reported 1.831 billion yuan, down 5.45% year-on-year, while Kuaijishan reported 1.822 billion yuan, up 11.68%. The gap narrowed to just 9 million yuan, with Guyuelongshan barely holding onto the top spot.

Since 2022, the competition between the "Yellow Wine Duo" has intensified, with the revenue gap steadily shrinking. By the first half of 2026, Kuaijishan's revenue exceeded Guyuelongshan's by 66 million yuan, achieving a clear overtake.

Guyuelongshan had long led Kuaijishan by several hundred million yuan. Now, a decade-long industry hierarchy is being rewritten.

Objectively, this semi-annual overtake does not fully prove a permanent shift in the pecking order. However, the pressure on Guyuelongshan to defend its title is mounting.

This leadership change was not sudden. In the third quarter of 2025, Kuaijishan's revenue had already surpassed Guyuelongshan by 102 million yuan. Guyuelongshan managed to reclaim the lead in the fourth quarter, thanks to traditional peak-season channel restocking, securing the top spot for full-year 2025 revenue.

But in terms of profit, Kuaijishan had already taken the lead: in 2025, its net profit was 245 million yuan, exceeding Guyuelongshan's 222 million yuan.

In the first half of 2026, the gap in operational performance widened. Whether Guyuelongshan can rely on the second-half peak season to stabilize its position remains highly uncertain.

Beyond revenue, Guyuelongshan's profitability is under severe pressure. In the first half of 2026, Kuaijishan's net profit excluding non-recurring items was 104 million yuan, nearly double Guyuelongshan's 53 million yuan. Kuaijishan not only sold more but also earned more.

However, Kuaijishan's high growth has come at a significant cost. (See: Under Fang Chaoyang's Leadership, Kuaijishan Spent 500 Million Yuan on Advertising in 3 Years: Can Sparkling Yellow Wine Sustain Its Sales Boom?)

In the first half of 2026, Kuaijishan's selling expenses reached 236 million yuan, with a selling expense ratio of approximately 27.7%. Advertising and promotional expenses alone were 132 million yuan, 6.6 times that of Guyuelongshan. This is a classic "spending for growth" model, the sustainability of which remains to be seen.

In terms of gross margin, Kuaijishan's cost of revenue was 377 million yuan, yielding a gross margin of 55.86%. Guyuelongshan's cost of revenue was 467 million yuan, with a gross margin of 40.62%.

The over 15-percentage-point gap in gross margin indicates that Guyuelongshan's product pricing power is weaker than Kuaijishan's. This is directly linked to Kuaijishan's higher proportion of premium products and stronger brand pricing authority.

Cash flow also tells a concerning story. In the first half of 2026, Kuaijishan's net operating cash flow was 43 million yuan, a significant improvement from -8.84 million yuan in the same period last year. In contrast, Guyuelongshan's net operating cash flow was -310 million yuan, worsening from -150 million yuan a year earlier, which the company attributed to lower revenue.

Another key indicator is contract liabilities, which represent advance payments from distributors. This "reservoir" reflects distributors' expectations for future sales and profitability. In the first half of 2026, Guyuelongshan's contract liabilities fell by 60.05% year-on-year, suggesting that distributors are cautious about placing orders.

Sun Yang (a pseudonym), a yellow wine distributor in East China, told Frontier of Entrepreneurship that since the second half of 2025, Guyuelongshan has significantly increased pressure on distributors to stock up, but end-market sales have been sluggish. Some distributors' inventory cycles have stretched from the usual 2-3 months to 4-6 months. Many were unwilling to make advance payments even for the first-quarter "strong start" campaign, reflecting cautious channel expectations for future sales.

Overall, Guyuelongshan appears to be lacking growth momentum.

2. Imbalanced Business Structure: Losing Ground in Its Home Base

If financial performance is the outcome, then the divergence in business structure is the root cause.

Both Guyuelongshan and Kuaijishan have adopted strategies of "premiumization and youth orientation." However, their approaches and results differ significantly across three dimensions: product, channel, and region.

Frontier of Entrepreneurship visited several supermarkets in Guiyang and observed that yellow wine shelf space is limited. Products are typically aged 3-5 years and priced between 10-30 yuan per bottle. Common brands include Guyuelongshan's Qingchun Three-Year, Kuaijishan's Chunzheng Five-Year, and Nverhong Three-Year. In many stores, Guyuelongshan products had production dates from June and December 2025, indicating slow inventory turnover.

Some supermarkets place yellow wine in the condiment section, alongside cooking wine. Premium yellow wine products are rarely seen on shelves. Even so-called high-priced yellow wines are generally priced between 100-200 yuan per bottle, with only one or two varieties available.

"Sales of high-priced yellow wine are very low. Sometimes we don't sell a single bottle in a month," said a supermarket sales assistant, Xu Qianqian.

Beyond physical stores, premium yellow wine also struggles online. On Guyuelongshan's Tmall flagship store, products priced over 1,000 yuan typically sell only single-digit units per month.

In recent years, both companies have tried to break the stereotype of yellow wine as a cheap beverage.

In the first half of 2026, Guyuelongshan scaled back low-margin ordinary wines and adopted a "volume control and price stabilization" strategy for its Guoni series, reallocating resources to mid-to-high-end products like Qinghuazui and Guoni.

During this period, Guyuelongshan's total wine revenue was 773 million yuan, down 12.08% year-on-year. Mid-to-high-end wine revenue was 560 million yuan, down 9.9%, but its share of total wine revenue rose to 72.45% from 70.71% a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Kuaijishan's total wine revenue was 826 million yuan, up 5% year-on-year. The share of mid-to-high-end yellow wine increased to 72.03% from 66.23% in the same period last year.

Both companies are compressing ordinary wine and increasing the proportion of mid-to-high-end products. However, Kuaijishan achieved double-digit growth in mid-to-high-end revenue, while Guyuelongshan's mid-to-high-end segment continued to shrink. This contrast highlights a growing gap in their ability to build premium brands.

In addition to selling at higher prices, both companies are trying to appeal to younger consumers.

Kuaijishan found a breakout hit with its "Yiri Yixun" sparkling yellow wine, which achieved over 100 million yuan in sales in 2025. Guyuelongshan, on the other hand, pursued a "matrix strategy," launching products like "Wugaodi," coffee yellow wine, lime yellow wine, and Yuexiaopi. However, most of these products have received a lukewarm market response, with sales far below Kuaijishan's sparkling wine. Guyuelongshan's product line is broad but lacks a standout hit.

In terms of market strategy, Guyuelongshan set its "Four Modernizations" strategy (premiumization, youth orientation, globalization, digitalization) as early as 2018. Kuaijishan, meanwhile, chose to focus on premiumization and youth orientation without prioritizing national expansion. Instead, it concentrated on its core markets in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai.

From a market layout perspective, Guyuelongshan is trying to fight a "single-point breakthrough" battle with a "full-frontal defense" posture.

For a long time, Guyuelongshan has positioned itself as the leader in nationalizing yellow wine, following a path of "early breakout, full coverage." In March 2026, it established a Southwest branch, using a contract system to drive market expansion. Starting in September, it extended this responsibility-and-authority model to Shandong, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and the three northeastern provinces, incentivizing local teams to seize market share. Its outward expansion has been rapid.

However, the cost has been a decline in sales in its core home market (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai). The incremental gains from outside these regions have not yet filled the gap left by the home market.

In the first half of 2026, Guyuelongshan's revenue grew only in Shanghai; all other regional markets saw declines. Revenue from markets outside Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai accounted for about 40.28% of total revenue, giving it a solid foundation for national expansion and making it the most nationalized yellow wine brand.

Kuaijishan, by contrast, followed a "stabilize the base, then expand outward" approach. It chose to deepen its presence in its stronghold markets of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, while simultaneously developing its premium Lanting series and aggressively recruiting major baijiu distributors to build a national channel.

This has led to Kuaijishan gradually overtaking Guyuelongshan in the latter's traditional stronghold markets. In the first half of 2026, Kuaijishan achieved growth in all markets except Zhejiang.

Jiang Sixiang, a wine marketing strategy expert and former regional director of Kuaijishan's Lanting division, commented: "Guyuelongshan operates yellow wine with a scale-driven mindset. It uses five brands—Guyuelongshan, Nverhong, Jianhu, Zhuangyuanhong, and Shenyonghe—across all price points and regions, diluting consumer mindshare and marketing budgets. As a result, the main brand hasn't been established, and the home base has collapsed first."

"Guyuelongshan needs to simplify—cut the scattered brand resources, concentrate all firepower on one main brand, one price point, and one model market, and fight a battle of single-point breakthrough," Jiang said.

3. Losing on Management Style?

Guyuelongshan's gradual decline in the competition with Kuaijishan may appear to stem from differences in market tactics, but the deeper cause could be related to management style.

As two listed yellow wine companies, Guyuelongshan is state-owned, while Kuaijishan is privately owned. The former tends to adopt a broad, sweeping approach, while the latter moves quickly and focuses on single-point breakthroughs. From a market perspective, Kuaijishan is more agile, while Guyuelongshan must balance multiple priorities, often falling into the trap of wanting "everything at once."

This difference is particularly evident in market competition. For example, Kuaijishan has invested heavily in its premium Lanting series and youth-oriented "refreshing wine." Guyuelongshan, in contrast, has been more conservative in its market actions, with insufficient investment in specific regions or products and relatively restrained marketing spending.

Guyuelongshan seems to have recognized this issue. Between late 2019 and the first half of 2020, its management underwent three rounds of changes. General Manager Bai Hong and Deputy General Manager Zhou Juanying resigned successively. In June 2020, then-Chairman Qian Xiaohua stepped down and was replaced by Sun Aibao.

Since 2025, Guyuelongshan has experienced an unusually high frequency of senior management changes.

Deputy General Manager Lyu Danlin, who had long been responsible for brand youth orientation and premiumization, resigned at the end of July. Deputy General Manager Pan Liangcan, who oversaw the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai markets, left in October due to a "job transfer." Board Secretary Wu Xiaojun also resigned for "personal reasons." In June 2026, Deputy General Manager Hu Zhiming, who was in charge of production technology, retired.

Such frequent management changes inevitably affect the continuity of strategic execution.

Although Guyuelongshan brought in a post-90s board secretary, Zhang Leiguang (born 1990), in December 2025, the core management team remains dominated by those born in the 1960s and 1970s.

The deeper issue may lie in the management structure. Based on the resumes of Guyuelongshan's current senior executives, many core members have backgrounds in government or party affairs, but lack direct market-facing or brand marketing experience.

For example, Chairman Sun Aibao previously served as Deputy Secretary-General of the Shaoxing Municipal Party Committee, and General Manager Ma Chuan was formerly Deputy Director of the Shaoxing Municipal Development and Reform Commission. Among the six deputy general managers, four have backgrounds in the wine industry, but primarily in production rather than marketing.

Perhaps due to its state-owned enterprise structure, Guyuelongshan's market competitiveness and operational efficiency are lacking. Whether in national expansion or premiumization, it seems to be borrowing from the baijiu industry playbook—for example, pricing its premium products to compete with Moutai and using inventory control to stabilize prices.

Guyuelongshan proposed its "Four Modernizations" strategy in 2018 and has since replaced one batch of management. Now, Sun Aibao has been chairman for over six years, yet the company has still not resolved its national expansion and premiumization challenges.

Notably, since Sun took office, the company has repeatedly set ambitious growth targets, only to consistently miss them—a point of significant investor criticism.

In 2021, Guyuelongshan set a target of "20% growth in wine sales and 20% growth in profit," but failed to achieve it. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, it lowered the target to "over 12% growth in wine sales and over 12% growth in profit," yet still fell short.

In 2025, the company further reduced its target to "over 6% growth in wine sales and 3% growth in profit." However, wine revenue ultimately declined by 5.42% year-on-year, a clear deviation from its commitment.

Five consecutive years of missed targets have eroded market confidence.

Driven by factors such as the premiumization of yellow wine and favorable policies, the stock prices of both Guyuelongshan and Kuaijishan have risen significantly, even hitting the daily limit. However, Kuaijishan's overall trend has been more aggressive. As of the close on September 24, Guyuelongshan's stock was trading at 11 yuan per share, down 2.91% from the previous trading day, with a total market capitalization of 10.027 billion yuan. Kuaijishan, meanwhile, was trading at 38.04 yuan per share, up 3.51%, with a market cap of 18.239 billion yuan.

In fact, after Guyuelongshan released its 2026 semi-annual report, some shareholders publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Sun Aibao and the management team on the investor interaction platform:

"The company's performance has fallen short of expectations and targets for many years in a row. This is really hard to justify. Is there inefficiency or overstaffing within the company? Do senior executives frequently go to the front-line market to conduct in-depth research and truly solve the various problems reported by distributors, retailers, and consumers?"

After repeatedly missing performance targets, Guyuelongshan stopped setting specific goals in 2026, stating only that it has formulated detailed operational targets and profit assessment indicators, which have been broken down and assigned to subsidiaries and sales branches.

Facing performance pressure, Guyuelongshan has been pushing forward multi-dimensional reforms in 2026.

On one hand, it established a Southwest branch and piloted a contract system reform, using institutional innovation to integrate regions such as Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Tibet, implementing a "three-contract" model covering targets, expenses, and profits.

On the other hand, it is advancing product focus and price control. In 2026, Guyuelongshan plans to cut more than 75 SKUs, concentrating resources on building core flagship products. To maintain its pricing system, it has placed anti-counterfeiting QR codes inside bottle caps, physically preventing cross-regional price dumping and protecting distributor and channel interests.

However, given its loss to Kuaijishan in the first half of 2026, the reforms are still in a painful adjustment period, with short-term results unlikely. Whether Guyuelongshan can truly restore channel confidence and improve profitability through product, pricing, and market strategy adjustments remains to be seen in the long term.

Objectively, the national expansion, youth orientation, and premiumization of the entire yellow wine industry are still progressing steadily. From a semi-annual perspective, Kuaijishan has achieved a阶段性 victory. However, whether its high marketing spending can translate into sustainable growth remains a question mark. Guyuelongshan, though temporarily behind, possesses decades of brand heritage, production capacity, and a foundation for national expansion that should not be underestimated. The second-half peak season will be a crucial test of its reform effectiveness.

The battle for the "Yellow Wine King" title is never just about the ranking of two companies. As the entire category struggles with labels of "low price" and "regional," the key is which company can truly achieve the leap in premiumization and national expansion. The second half of the yellow wine duopoly's battle has only just begun.

Note: The lead image in this article is from Guyuelongshan's official Tmall store; other uncredited images are from Guyuelongshan's official WeChat public account.