Population policies are becoming a national strategic priority, with "substantial" childcare subsidies landing in 2025 further signaling encouragement for fertility. Against this backdrop, Saint Bella Group (2508.HK) - the world's first family care listed company - delivered its inaugural semi-annual report, announcing a major breakthrough: achieving overall profitability for the first time with net profit attributable to shareholders reaching 327 million yuan, completely reversing the loss from the same period last year.
As the industry leader, how substantial is Saint Bella's "turnaround" debut performance?
**Comprehensive Margin Improvements, Emerging Businesses Become Second Growth Engine**
From a financial performance perspective, Saint Bella's comprehensive maternal and infant care service business model has been validated by the market, demonstrating strong profitability.
**Revenue Growth Across All Segments**
Saint Bella's full-cycle service matrix has taken shape, with emerging businesses leading growth rates. In the first half of 2025, Saint Bella Group (including managed postpartum care centers) achieved total revenue of 523 million yuan, up 35% year-over-year. The company recorded operating revenue of 450 million yuan, with growth of 25.6%, significantly outpacing industry averages and continuing to expand market share.
Notably, the company's growth has transcended the limitations of traditional postpartum care center operations. By expanding service boundaries around the full lifecycle needs of maternal and infant families, it has successfully cultivated a second growth curve.
Specifically, postpartum care centers, as the foundation business, generated operating revenue of 387 million yuan, up 25.3% year-over-year. Family care services showed explosive growth with revenue reaching 38.6 million yuan, surging 41.7% year-over-year. Health food business also climbed steadily, achieving revenue of 24.3 million yuan, up 10.5% year-over-year. All three segments outperformed peer performance, highlighting ecosystem synergies.
**AI-Driven Operational Efficiency**
From the expense perspective, deep AI technology applications have continuously optimized expense ratios. Saint Bella's operational efficiency improvements are clearly reflected in expense management. In the first half of 2025, marketing expense ratio decreased to 12.0% (down 0.6 percentage points year-over-year), while administrative expense ratio significantly declined to 22.1% (down 4.4 percentage points year-over-year). Scale effects combined with deep AI technology applications became key drivers.
For instance, in postpartum care center operations, the company fully utilizes SaaS and AI systems to build a data-based standardized service system. This not only enhances customer experience but significantly improves customer loyalty: referral rates from existing customers rose to 40.2% in the first half of 2025 (up 3 percentage points year-over-year), with over 90% of postpartum clients repurchasing other services or products. High conversion rates from organic traffic effectively reduce customer acquisition costs.
**Profitability Surge Across Business Lines**
From the profit perspective, store scale expansion and emerging business contributions drove high-quality growth. Benefiting from the asset-light model, the company rapidly expanded stores globally, adding 36 new locations in the first half. As of June 30, 2025, the company operates 113 stores worldwide with steadily increasing market share.
Among these, managed postpartum care centers added 34 new locations in the first half, bringing the total to 53, with managed store revenue reaching approximately 73 million yuan, up 160% year-over-year.
Simultaneously, profitability improved significantly. The first half of 2025 delivered gross profit of 169 million yuan, up 38.9% year-over-year. Adjusted net profit reached 38.78 million yuan, surging 126.1% compared to the previous year, effectively doubling profits. By net profit attributable to shareholders, the company achieved profitability of 327 million yuan, representing comprehensive profitability compared to losses in the same period last year.
Emerging businesses demonstrated excellent profit quality. In the first half of 2025, postpartum care center business gross margin was 35.5%, up 3.5 percentage points year-over-year. Family care services gross margin reached 36.5%, up 1.4 percentage points year-over-year. Health food business gross margin performed particularly well at 72.4%, up 11.3 percentage points year-over-year.
Overall, Saint Bella has proven through performance that its comprehensive family care ecosystem not only effectively opens up a second growth curve but is reshaping the value creation logic of the family care industry, achieving leapfrog development with both volume and profit growth.
**Clear Growth Path Under Policy Benefits**
This turnaround performance not only demonstrates Saint Bella's current solid financial results but also outlines its future growth trajectory.
**Policy Support Creates Market Opportunities**
From a policy perspective, enhanced fertility support policies open up trillion-yuan market imagination. With continued implementation of supportive policies including fertility subsidies and childcare burden reduction, the family care industry receives strong momentum, with leading enterprises expected to benefit preferentially.
According to Frost & Sullivan forecasts, China's family care market will grow from 805.3 billion yuan in 2025 to 1,443.8 billion yuan in 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4%.
Analysis indicates that current rising female self-care awareness and changing family structures parallel early development backgrounds of postpartum care industries in South Korea and Taiwan. This suggests potential to offset birth population fluctuations through penetration rate improvements (mainland China's 2024 rate of approximately 6% remains far below the 60%+ in Taiwan and South Korea).
Saint Bella's pioneering asset-light standardized operating model offers greater risk resilience compared to traditional heavy asset investments, positioning it to achieve both offensive and defensive capabilities in industry development.
**Differentiated Competitive Advantages**
At the company level, Saint Bella's "ecosystem + technology + globalization" three-core drive constructs differentiated barriers. Currently, Saint Bella's unique "full family ecosystem + globalization + AI technology empowerment" strategy is forming a competitive matrix difficult for other players to replicate.
According to plans, the company intends to steadily advance overseas market expansion, bringing high-quality Chinese family care services and cultural concepts globally. The "luxury hotel + professional care" asset-light model has strong replication capabilities, with full lifecycle ecosystem forming differentiated competitive barriers. Future globalization, AI digitization enhancement, and elderly care layout will bring long-term competitiveness.
**Valuation and Outlook**
From a valuation perspective, as a scarce industry leader with premium positioning, growth potential remains promising. Based on high growth characteristics, significant scale effect release, and scarcity of domestic premium brands, multiple securities firms have given "buy" ratings.
Huatai Securities provides high valuation recognition for Saint Bella: projecting adjusted net profits of 121 million/205 million/306 million yuan for 2025-2027, corresponding to EPS of 0.19/0.33/0.49 yuan. Assigning 27x PE for 2026, with target price of 9.76 Hong Kong dollars, initiating coverage with "buy" rating.
**Conclusion**
Looking back from the mid-2025 perspective, Saint Bella's semi-annual report represents not just financial results but a microcosm of China's family care industry transformation and upgrading. While the industry still debates "postpartum centers vs. maternity nurses" in point competition, Saint Bella has pioneered a new track of "services + products + ecosystem" through ecosystem construction, technology empowerment, and scenario synergy.
Looking forward, with deepening implementation of the "14th Five-Year Healthy Aging Plan" and continued AI technology penetration in care scenarios, Saint Bella leverages family as a fulcrum to activate a trillion-yuan healthy consumption ecosystem covering pregnancy preparation, childbirth, postpartum care, childcare, and even elderly care, potentially releasing greater value.
This transformation beginning with maternal and infant care may ultimately reshape Chinese families' understanding and consumption patterns regarding health management. The future holds promise.