Don't be fooled by Pop Mart's stock price.

Ask AI · How does the LABUBU movie change the POP MART IP ecosystem?

About two months ago, I wrote an article titled “POP MART is a Mystery,” attempting to analyze why the stock price of this trendy toy company fluctuates dramatically. Just recently, the “mystery” nature of POP MART has once again manifested.

POP MART delivered an explosive performance report, with annual revenue of 37.12 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 184.7%; net profit reached 13.01 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 293.3%. The gross profit margin even hit a historical high of 72.1%.

However, despite the soaring performance, after the financial report was released, POP MART’s stock on the Hong Kong market plummeted, ultimately closing down over 22%. Capital market concerns remain focused on POP MART’s heavy reliance on a single IP, with revenue from a single IP approaching 40%. The financial report shows that the MONSTERS series, where LABUBU belongs, contributed 38.1% of the group’s total revenue from a single IP.

But as I mentioned in the previous article, the fluctuations in POP MART’s stock price do not fundamentally depend on single IP reliance or the lifespan of IP. The capital market’s valuation of emotional businesses continues to sway between “trust and doubt.” As long as there are no competitors in the global trendy toy sector that can shake its position, the market will repeatedly embrace this company that cannot be measured by rational frameworks.

Compared to the stock price, another recent move is more noteworthy: POP MART is set to produce a big movie about LABUBU, bringing in Paul King, the director of Paddington.

Last year, Wang Ning personally witnessed how “Nezha 2” ignited a global box office of 15.9 billion with a single story and drove an entire licensing and collaboration industry chain. POP MART also became a beneficiary of this celebration, as the collaborative blind boxes sold out online within two days, with prices in the secondary market doubling, and pre-sales extending several months ahead.

Collaboration is merely “borrowing momentum.” If it can give LABUBU the same narrative depth, it won’t just be sharing a piece of the pie; it will directly turn on the money-printing machine. Whether it enhances the commercial value of the IP or prolongs its lifecycle, POP MART has every reason to take this step.

This is also a necessary path for global toy giants to achieve a leap in value after reaching a certain stage.

The Transformers movie series transformed Hasbro from a toy company into a top global content giant; The LEGO Movie allowed LEGO bricks to penetrate adult and female consumer groups; the success of the Barbie movie opened a new phase of comprehensive film adaptation for Mattel.

But this path is also fraught with thorns. The failure of Hello Kitty is still fresh in our minds. Mattel spent nearly two decades waiting for Barbie’s breakthrough, and LEGO once fell into financial difficulties due to over-expansion of film projects.

Nonetheless, under the transition from “light” to “heavy,” POP MART is stepping into a brand new phase, and Wang Ning is responding to the repeatedly asked question: Will young people still like LABUBU three years from now? The answer may lie in the upcoming LABUBU movie.

A

Since its inception, POP MART’s IP “hollowness” has always been questioned by the market, often compared to Disney. Unlike POP MART’s visual IP, Disney follows a typical narrative IP route, transforming the IP into a retail money-making machine through a series of films, remaining timeless.

However, even with light content, from the early days of blind boxes to now holding the top-tier IP LABUBU, POP MART’s ability to generate profit has always been considerable. Financial reports indicate that gross profit margin increased from 66.8% in 2024 to 72.1%, with the adjusted net profit margin reaching 35.2%, a significant increase of 9 percentage points from last year’s 26.1%.

In contrast to Disney’s stable stock performance, POP MART’s stock has always resembled a roller coaster, with rises and falls almost becoming a mystery: rising when believed, falling when doubted.

Wang Ning may have long been accustomed to the pull between stock price surges and plunges, but if there were a way to free the stock price from such wild fluctuations, he would likely be willing to give it a try.

Stabilizing the stock price may be one of the reasons Wang Ning is making a movie, but it may not be the one he cares about most. A longer lifespan and greater commercial value may be what Wang Ning values most.

The huge commercial value of content IP was also personally felt by Wang Ning due to the explosive success of “Nezha 2.” The collaborative blind box series “Born Bond” sold out within two days, achieving over 10 million yuan in sales within eight days, with Tmall sales exceeding 100,000 units. This blind box also became the best-selling item for POP MART in the first quarter of 2025.

In the past, POP MART had also frequently collaborated with strong narrative IPs like Disney and Harry Potter, gaining significantly above-average premiums and popularity, but it never reached the level of a nationwide explosion like Nezha.

Interestingly, LABUBU’s “little devil” rebellious quality is very similar to Nezha, embodying a certain “rebellion” and “defiance” in the hearts of young people. If it can be story-driven through the movie, POP MART will not just share a piece of the pie; the commercial imagination space for LABUBU will leap from the hundred billion level to the trillion level.

On the other hand, turning LABUBU into a timeless IP can also alleviate POP MART’s transitional issue.
The speed of new releases at POP MART has been skyrocketing year by year. From fewer than 10 new IPs per year to 29 new IPs planned for 2024, and an explosive increase to 57 in 2025. The incubation cycle has also been compressed from six months to 1-3 months, with a pace of one IP per week emerging.

From the financial report, although the emerging IP “Star Person” contributed 120 million yuan in revenue in 2024 and has surged to 2.06 billion yuan in 2025, becoming one of the fastest-growing IPs, it still seems too small in the face of LABUBU and is not sufficient to undertake the responsibility of the “second growth curve.”

The approach of trendy toy brands “exchanging quantity for hits” is becoming increasingly difficult.

Looking at many global toy giants, they do not solve crises by “having more children” but by telling good IP stories, fighting beautiful battles of value leaps.

B

Looking back, making movies seems to be a “required course” for toy giants growing up. Barbie, The LEGO Movie, Transformers… the film adaptation of toy IP is not only feasible but also a narrow door for these toy companies to transition from mediocrity to greatness.

The reason for choosing toy companies rather than Disney as a reference point is partly because both belong to the IP type centered on strong visual images, and partly because although POP MART positions itself as an IP operation company, its revenue structure still heavily relies on toy sales, essentially remaining a company rooted in the toy business, making the business model more comparable.

Take Barbie, for example. This doll, which predates Hello Kitty, once became a dream carrier for girls with 250 different career identities. However, by the late 1990s, facing the impact of the internet and competition, this “sales queen” couldn’t escape the fatigue of growth.

The turning point came in 2018. Newly appointed CEO Kreiz has an impressive background; he was the head of Maker Studios, the largest MCN company on YouTube, and deeply understood the IP strategies of Marvel and Hasbro, setting a strategy for Mattel to “take toys from shelves to screens.”

The success of the 2023 Barbie movie not only revitalized a 60-year-old IP but also brought substantial financial returns. According to Stifel analysts, the Barbie movie is expected to generate 100 million dollars in revenue for Mattel, including 75 million dollars in toy sales, 13 million dollars in product licensing fees, and 11 million dollars in movie revenue.

The success of this film has also directly accelerated Mattel’s layout of its own cinematic universe.

The same script has played out with LEGO and Hasbro. The LEGO Movie grossed $469 million globally in 2014, directly pushing LEGO’s half-year sales up by 11%. That year, LEGO surpassed Mattel for the first time, taking the top position among global toy manufacturers. Meanwhile, Hasbro, through the Transformers movie series, has grossed over 5 billion dollars in global box office.

Beyond movies, series, games, theme parks… these giants have thickened their business through content, transforming from toy manufacturers into IP ecosystem operators, with company stock prices and valuations rising accordingly.

Clearly, once a toy company completes the initial construction of channel expansion, user accumulation, and product matrix, content becomes the key to connecting all age groups’ recognition, resisting lifecycle risks, and achieving IP value leaps.

This is precisely where POP MART currently stands at the crossroads. Today’s POP MART starts at a higher point than Mattel and LEGO did back then.

In the past year, POP MART’s overseas performance has also been impressive. By 2025, overseas revenue reached 16.27 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 291.9%, with its share of total revenue rising significantly from 31.8% in 2024 to 43.8%. Among them, revenue from the Americas market surged by 748.4%, while Europe and other regions grew by 506.3%.

The channels and products have successfully gone overseas, but what is missing is the “soul” that can make global audiences remember.

POP MART has also tried “light content,” such as the animated short “MOLLY’s Monster University” and “The LABUBU Song.” But to be honest, the volume is still not large enough, and fragmented content cannot support a grand worldview.

Now, POP MART has chosen to collaborate with Sony Pictures rather than independently develop film content, with the core goal being to leverage Sony’s global film resources to quickly break through the dilemma of “easy to go overseas, difficult to break circles” for domestic trendy toy IPs, accelerating LABUBU’s mainstream breakout on a global scale.

Once the movie is successful, subsequent games, theme parks, and licensing collaborations will follow naturally. This path has been walked by Mattel, LEGO, and Hasbro. Now, it’s POP MART’s turn.

C

Of course, the higher the potential reward, the greater the risk. Especially for a visual IP that originally broke out without a story, crossing into content carries a higher probability of failure than success.

As early as the 1980s, Hello Kitty stumbled.

At that time, Sanrio wanted to enter North America and collaborated with MGM to create a TV animation called “Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theater.” To align with American tastes, the producers forcefully gave Kitty a mouth, made her talk, and added American humor.

This infuriated the fans. They loved Kitty for being “mouthless and emotionless,” allowing them to project their feelings onto her. If you insist on turning her into a specific character, is she still my Kitty? The result was dismal ratings; the originally planned 18 episodes were cut short to 13, and all investments went down the drain.

Later, Sanrio didn’t give up and produced several animated films, even spending huge sums to build a theme park in Tokyo, but the results were continuous losses, becoming a long-term financial burden.

It wasn’t until 2020 when the second-generation president, Tsuji Tomokazu, took office and completely abandoned the idea of imposing a story on Kitty, instead opting for a multi-IP matrix, that things began to improve. Even so, Kitty still faced a “midlife crisis,” ranking only fifth in the internal evaluation of 2020, despite being a long-time “sweetheart.”

On the flip side, even for successful ones, the journey has been incredibly difficult. Mattel, which began exploring film adaptation as early as 2000, took nearly two decades to wait for Barbie’s explosion, and LEGO once fell into financial difficulties due to over-expansion of film projects.

Currently, the details of POP MART and Sony’s collaboration have not been disclosed, but according to Hollywood conventions, it is likely that POP MART will provide IP licensing, with Sony investing primarily, and then sharing profits and selling merchandise together.

If it follows this model, POP MART wouldn’t have much financial risk.

However, even disregarding financial risks, the biggest risk of film adaptation falls on the LABUBU IP.

LABUBU’s breakout has never relied on a single, fixed character but rather on the “emotion container” that Wang Ning describes as being “hollowed out.” When happy, it is a companion; when sad, it is a comfort. In the eyes of a thousand players, there are a thousand LABUBUs.

Core fans have long been accustomed to this sense of free companionship. But movies are different; they must define characters, character arcs, and worldviews. If the LABUBU image on the big screen does not match fans’ expectations, that subtle connection might instantly break, potentially leading to a mass exodus of fans.

For such a super IP that contributes nearly 40% of the group’s revenue, the risk of character collapse is enormous.

Of course, if they win the bet, with both critical acclaim and box office success, POP MART’s ceiling will be completely opened. But if they lose, it’s not just one movie that gets hurt; it could shake the market’s confidence in the entire POP MART IP operation system.

Compared to Disney’s massive IP matrix, POP MART’s foundation still seems somewhat thin. Placing all bets on a single top-tier IP comes with considerable pressure.

But at the very least, Wang Ning has already taken a seat at the table. He is working to respond to the question that has been asked countless times: Will young people still like LABUBU three years from now?