Product sales decline: The myth of rapid growth in the "medical beauty" industry shattered

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Jingji reporter Chen Ting, Zhao Yi, Shenzhen report

“What was the reason for the 46.85% widening in the year-on-year decline of net profit in the fourth quarter? The selling expense ratio has surged to 15.8%—money was spent but products aren’t moving. How do you explain that?”

Recently, at a performance briefing of Aimei Ke (Love Aesthetic) (300896.SZ), an investor posed a “soul-searching question” to the company’s management. The 2025 annual report shows that Aimei Ke’s full-year revenue fell 18.94% year over year, while net profit fell 34.05% year over year. This marks the first time since the company went public that its performance has declined, and also its first double decline in both revenue and profit in nearly a decade.

During the reporting period, revenue for both of Aimei Ke’s two product lines declined. Among them, sales of solution-type injectable products centered on Sihai Ti (injection material used for neck wrinkle repair) fell 19.28% year over year; sales of gel-type injectable products, where Nur Bai Angel (a cross-linked sodium hyaluronate gel containing L-lactic acid–ethylene glycol copolymer microspheres) is located, fell 22.07% year over year.

Sihai Ti used to be the only Class III medical device approved in the neck anti-aging and wrinkle-repair segment. It was listed and sold in 2017, but now it finds itself in a multi-brand competition landscape.

Recently, the reporter from The China Business Journal saw on an e-commerce platform that the terminal price of Sihai Ti 1.5ml can be as low as 326 yuan per unit. According to Aimei Ke’s IPO prospectus, the average selling prices of Sihai Ti from 2017 to 2019 were 285.01 yuan per unit, 315.63 yuan per unit, and 352.61 yuan per unit, respectively. In other words, in some channels, the terminal price of this product has fallen back to the level seen at the time of its initial launch.

When asked by the reporter during an interview, Aimei Ke said: “Terminal prices fluctuate due to factors such as institution-sponsored promotions and bundle combinations. The company’s ex-factory price remains relatively stable. In 2025, affected by intensified industry competition and changes in the consumer environment, sales of solution-type products centered on Sihai Ti declined. The company is offsetting the pressure through product iteration, channel optimization, and promotion of new products.”

Core product sales decline

On March 19, 2026, Sihai Ti, which was approved a decade ago, successfully obtained a renewal of its registration with a validity period through March 18, 2031. At the same time, Aimei Ke released its 2025 annual report, but it turned in its first performance “answer sheet” showing a decline since going public.

Aimei Ke is mainly engaged in R&D and commercialization of biomedical materials and biologic pharmaceutical products, and is also a provider of medical aesthetic products. Its downstream customers are mainly medical aesthetic institutions, and the company uses a sales model combining direct sales and distributor sales.

The annual report shows that in 2025, Aimei Ke’s revenue was about 2.45B yuan, and its net profit was about 1.29B yuan—both recording double-digit declines. Everything seems to have some clues. In 2024, Aimei Ke’s growth rate in performance slowed for the first time since 2016, dropping to single digits. Before that, Aimei Ke’s revenue growth rate had never been below 25%, and its net profit growth rate had never fallen below 30%.

By quarter, in 2025 each quarter of Aimei Ke’s net profit showed a year-on-year decline. The decline in net profit in the second quarter and fourth quarter exceeded 40%. In addition, the company’s net cash flow from operating activities in 2025 decreased 31.29% year over year to about 1.32B yuan.

Aimei Ke told the reporter that the company’s performance is mainly affected by both the macro environment and the competitive landscape in the industry. In its 2025 annual report, Aimei Ke provided further elaboration: China’s medical aesthetics industry has entered a new cycle running in parallel between rapid development and deep restructuring. The prosperity of the supply side has brought increasingly intense market competition; residents’ willingness to consume has become more cautious. The industry is undergoing a critical transition from “scale expansion” to “quality deepening,” gradually returning to the essence of healthcare.

During the reporting period, Aimei Ke’s solution-type injectable products generated revenue of about 1.26B yuan, down 27.48% year over year, accounting for 51.57% of revenue; gel-type injectable products generated revenue of about 890 million yuan, down 26.82% year over year, accounting for 36.27% of revenue. The company’s overall gross margin fell 1.95 percentage points year over year to 92.71%. Among them, the gross margin for gel-type products remained as high as 97.32%, while the gross margin for solution-type products was 93.11%—both declined to some extent.

Aimei Ke’s main products include sodium hyaluronate-series injectable skin fillers, poly lactic acid injectable skin fillers, and polydioxanone facial implant threads, among others. Its core products include the Sihai Ti series, Nur Bai Angel, Siro Kela, the Emei series, and so on.

In 2009, Emei obtained a medical device registration certificate, becoming the first sodium hyaluronate-based injectable filler in China. Subsequently, Aimei Ke launched multiple products targeting repairs for wrinkles on the face and neck. In December 2016, Sihai Ti was approved for market as the first injection material applied to neck wrinkle repair in China. In the year Sihai Ti entered the market, Aimei Ke moved to pursue a listing on the ChiNext board.

In the first few years after Sihai Ti’s listing, thanks to its first-mover advantage and exclusivity, its market penetration increased steadily. From 2017 to 2019, the proportion of Sihai Ti revenue in the company’s total revenue rose continuously from 15.34% to 43.5%, reaching about 243 million yuan. As late as 2024, the period of high growth in solution-type products centered on Sihai Ti no longer continued; in that year, revenue growth for this category dropped to 4.4%.

In 2025, Aimei Ke’s solution-type product sales volume was 5.1225 million units, compared with 6.3463 million units in 2024. Inventory increased from 856.5k units in 2024 to 1.0603 million units.

Nur Bai Angel is regarded as the second growth curve for Aimei Ke after Sihai Ti. In June 2021, Nur Bai Angel obtained a Class III medical device registration certificate, and was commercialized in China in the second half of 2021. The revenue share of the gel-type products containing Nur Bai Angel increased from 32.91% in 2022 to 40.18% in 2024. After experiencing growth of over 50% in 2022 and 2023, the category’s growth rate fell to 5.01% in 2024. In 2025, Aimei Ke’s gel-type products sold 696.4k units, compared with 893.6k units in 2024.

Intensifying market competition

Aimei Ke told reporters frankly that, affected by both the macro environment and the industry’s competitive landscape, the overall growth rate of China’s medical aesthetics market slowed somewhat in 2025. With more registration certificates for medical aesthetic products being approved for market, industry competition has intensified.

As early as June 2025, a sodium hyaluronate-based solution injectable product for injection manufactured by Swiss Hyd Medical (Hai Ya Mei) under Hyd Medical was approved for market, to be used for intradermal dermal layer injection filling in the neck skin to correct moderate-to-severe transverse neck lines. In August 2025, a cross-linked sodium hyaluronate gel injection containing lidocaine under the Changzhou Institute of Pharmaceutical Research was approved for market, for use for injections from the middle layer to the deep layer of the dermal tissue to correct moderate-to-severe transverse neck lines. Earlier than that, a sodium hyaluronate composite solution injection product under HYC (688363.SH) was approved in July 2024 for intradermal dermal layer injection filling to correct moderate-to-severe transverse neck lines in adults.

In the neck wrinkle reduction market, Aimei Ke is no longer the sole dominant player.

Looking across the entire medical aesthetics injection track, according to data from Yaizhi.com, as of August 2025, there were 92 registered medical aesthetic injection device products containing hyaluronic acid within their validity period. Of these, 41 were domestic and 51 were imported, and risk management classification is all Class III. Based on intended use, products can roughly be divided into two categories: injection fillers and “water light” injectables.

The annual report shows that Aimei Ke’s selling expenses in 2025 increased 39.72% year over year to about 387 million yuan, mainly due to increases in labor costs, advertising and publicity expenses, and conference fees. The selling expense ratio (selling expenses divided by operating revenue) was 15.8%. Of that, advertising and publicity expenses were about 32.73 million yuan, more than double the amount in 2024.

At the performance briefing, Aimei Ke’s management said that, by quarter, the year-on-year increase in selling expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 was relatively large, mainly because on one hand the company increased market activities in the fourth quarter, so market spending correspondingly increased to enhance brand influence. On the other hand, after acquiring Regen in South Korea, the company took over its product sales business in China, and related market personnel and marketing were in an investment stage; as the business gradually ramps up, the selling expense ratio will return to a reasonable level.

In March 2025, Aimei Ke announced the acquisition of equity in Regen. A product called AestheFill, a “medical aesthetics regenerative injection,” developed by Regen, branded as “Younger-looking Injection,” obtained marketing authorization from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) in January 2024, and began sales from April of that year. As early as August 2022, Jiangsu Wuzhong (now delisted) obtained exclusive distribution rights for AestheFill in mainland China. After Aimei Ke took over Regen, Jiangsu Wuzhong was released from the agreement by Regen in July 2025. On March 24, 2026, Aimei Ke’s management revealed that AestheFill has been selling normally in the domestic market.

Aimei Ke told the reporter that in 2026, the company will seize the historical opportunity of the industry’s transition from scale expansion to high-quality development. Driven by a dual engine of “R&D innovation + industrial integration,” it will deepen its product ecosystem layout covering all categories, all scenarios, and all time horizons, and accelerate the implementation of its internationalization strategy. The 2025 annual report shows that in the future, Aimei Ke will focus its efforts on the weight management track, increasing R&D investment in the product semaglutide, which is currently still in the clinical trial stage.

In January this year, an A-type botulinum toxin product for injection that Aimei Ke exclusively distributes obtained a drug registration certificate approved and issued by the NMPA. As early as September 2018, this exclusive distribution deal had already been finalized. To date, there are already seven botulinum toxin products approved in China, and market competition is fierce.