Earnings Labs

Yatsen Holding Limited (YSG)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 17, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Yatsen Holding Limited Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Irene Lyu, Vice President, Head of Strategic Investment and Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Irene Lyu

Management

Thank you, operator. Please note that discussion today will contain forward-looking statements relating to the company's future performance, and our intent to qualify for the safe harbor and liability as established by The U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors. Some of these risks are beyond the company's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those mentioned in today's press release and this discussion. A general discussion of the risk factors that could affect Yatsen Holding Limited's business and financial results is included in certain filings of the company with the Securities Exchange Commission. The company does not undertake any obligation to update its forward-looking information except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes. Please see the earnings release issued earlier today for a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results. Joining us today on the call from Yatsen Holding Limited's senior management are Mr. Jinfeng Huang, our Founder, Chairman, and CEO, and Mr. Donghao Yang, our CFO and Director. Management will begin with their prepared remarks, and the call will conclude with a Q&A session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on Yatsen Holding Limited's Investor Relations website at ir.yatsenglobal.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Jinfeng Huang. Please go ahead, sir.

Jinfeng Huang

Management

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 earnings call. The beauty market in China continues to show signs of recovery in the third quarter, particularly in the skincare category, which remained robust and supported overall industry growth. Amid this improving backdrop, we remain focused on executing our long-term strategy to build a competitive, resilient brand portfolio anchored in R&D and innovation. Through disciplined execution, we delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, with total net revenues increasing by 47.5% year over year and exceeding the high end of our guidance. Our momentum continues to be driven by strong growth from skincare and sustained performance of our hero product engine, rather than short-term promotions. Our skincare brands grew by 83.2% year over year and reached 49.2% of total revenue, making another step forward in our category upgrade strategy and reinforcing our transformation toward a more sustainable, margin-accretive portfolio. Meanwhile, our net loss narrowed meaningfully as a result of the improved gross margin, optimized operating efficiency, and a more disciplined resource allocation. Net loss margin improved significantly from 17.9% in the prior year period to 7% this quarter, demonstrating the continued progress in our profitability trajectory. These results reflect the strength of our brand as well as our commitment to distinct execution. Looking ahead, our priority is to continue progressing toward profitability in a disciplined and sustainable way. We expect further improvement to be driven by a higher skincare mix, ongoing gross margin optimization, and greater marketing efficiency. While we will continue to invest in innovation and hero products, we remain disciplined in balancing growth with profitability. Now let me share some brand and product highlights during this quarter. Galani delivered strong momentum and remained one of the fastest-growing premium skincare brands. The brand's PO series continued to…

Donghao Yang

Management

Thank you, Jinfeng, and hello, everyone. Before I get started, I would like to clarify that all financial numbers presented today are in RMB amounts, and all percentage changes refer to year-over-year changes unless otherwise noted. Total net revenues for the 2025 increased by 47.5% to RMB 998.4 million from RMB 677 million for the prior year period. The increase was primarily due to an 83.2% year-over-year increase in net revenues from skincare brands combined with a 25.2% year-over-year increase in revenues from color cosmetics brands. Gross profit for the 2025 increased by 51.9% to RMB 780.5 million from RMB 513.8 million for the prior year period. Gross margin for the 2025 increased to 78.2% from 75.9% for the prior year period. The increase was primarily driven by an increase in sales of higher gross margin products. Total operating expenses for the 2025 increased by 31.9% to RMB 864.1 million from RMB 655.2 million for the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, total operating expenses for the 2025 were 86.5% as compared with 96.8% for the prior year period. Fulfillment expenses for the 2025 were RMB 61.8 million as compared with RMB 50.4 million for the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, fulfillment expenses for the 2025 decreased to 6.2% from 7% for the prior year period. The decrease was primarily driven by fulfillment costs optimization coupled with the leveraging effect of higher total net revenues in the 2025. Selling and marketing expenses for the 2025 were RMB 682.3 million as compared with RMB 494.4 million for the prior year period. As a percentage of total net revenues, selling and marketing expenses for the 2025 decreased to 68.3% from 73% for the prior year period. The third quarter included a portion of…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, begin the question session. And if you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question, please immediately repeat your question in English. And our first question will come from Maggie Huang with CICC. Please go ahead.

Maggie Huang

Analyst

Thank you for taking my question. This is Maggie Huang from CICC. Firstly, congratulations on beating our revenue guidance. I have two questions. My first question is about our performance during the Double Eleven festival. Is that in line with our expectations? And have we observed any change in the competition from foreign high-end brands? And my second question is, how do we expect the profitability of the fourth quarter and the next year? That's my questions. Thank you.

Donghao Yang

Management

Well, I think first of all, the Double Eleven performance for the whole company in general is in line with our expectations. And of course, some of the brands are exceeding our expectations. So having said that, I think we are very happy to observe some of not only the existing hero SKUs are doing well, but some of the newly launched products have gained very strong momentum during the Double Eleven Shopping Festival, which will contribute to further growth potentials in coming quarters. Those products we already mentioned in the earnings call. Going back to your question about the challenges and also competition coming from the foreign high-end brands, we did observe a very big challenge and also competition. For the past Double Eleven Shopping Festival, some of the high-end brands are struggling with very big O2O price up the hero product. We did see that with our R&D supporting some of our new product launches, those products are still gaining very strong momentum. Looking forward, I think the competition during the Double Eleven Shopping Festival will load some of the pantry for some of the foreign high-end brands, which means it will hurt their long-term growth. So having said that, I'm happy to see that our high-end brands are still keeping a very strong momentum by balancing the price promotion. And also, we are focusing on promoting some of the new SKUs. So going back to the Q4, I think we are on the right track to reach profitability. And that's our long-term goal. And then we are seeing the balance of growth and also the right track for profitability.

Maggie Huang

Analyst

Okay, got it. It's very clear. Thank you very much. And I have no more questions.

Donghao Yang

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next question will come from Lucia Zhang with CP Securities. Please go ahead.

Lucia Zhang

Analyst

Thank you for taking my question. This is Lucia Zhang from CP Securities. I also have two questions. The first one is we can see that the skincare business of the company has achieved rapid growth this year. So from which efforts should we make efforts to sustain the growth maybe in the last quarter and next year? And the second question is about profitability. So in which aspects will the company make efforts to continuously improve their profitability? Thank you.

Jinfeng Huang

Management

Well, so going back to the fundamental drivers for our skincare business, I think the number one thing is about the R&D. The beauty market has always been driven by further and better innovation. So we are very happy to see that, yeah, with our R&D growth engine, we can launch a very strong pipeline this year and also for the coming years as well. The second thing we can think of is with our expansion for our skincare portfolio, including the benefit expansion and also product line expansion, we see further link sales for our product portfolios, which can help us to drive further marketing ROI. The third thing is our skincare brand. I think overall, for the three major skincare brands, we still have a pretty far potential to reach their optimized revenue level. So during this process, as we continue to drive brand awareness and also continuously drive the customer base, we still have the potential to grow our existing skincare brand. And last but not least, I think for us, we focus on launching some new products on some of the key channels. And then in the future, we will expand into other channels and also drive a better channel mix. So with that, I think that will contribute to the sustainable driver for the allocation. Going back to your questions about how can we continuously improve, I think as we said many times before, I think the product mix optimization and the channel mix optimization can help us drive the gross margin and also the further ROI on the marketing expenses. The second one is as we focus more on the customer CIM and also the product link sales, this will help us to further drive better ROI on the marketing expenses. The third thing is very important. For some of our brands, those brands are reaching what we call the optimized threshold. And in the future, as the brands like the revenue scale grow up, we will see further leverage on the true branding expenses ROI. So those are some of the things we see as very important to drive continuous improvement for profitability.

Lucia Zhang

Analyst

Thank you. That's really helpful and clear.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Jennifer Wong with Hightower Securities. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Wong

Analyst

Hi. This is Jennifer Wong from Hightower Securities. So congratulations on the company's great performances. Could you please introduce just give us some colors on expected expenses of the company in the future? And maybe could you please share how do you view the increasingly fierce competition in the online channel? Thank you for your answers.

Donghao Yang

Management

Bob, can you help me to clarify what you mean by expenses?

Jennifer Wong

Analyst

Like, general expenses, operating expenses, etcetera, just generally speaking.

Donghao Yang

Management

Okay. Well, if you look at our financial statements, I see we see pretty stable G&A expenses in the past quarters. But having said that, I think moving forward, as the scale of our total revenue grows, I think we will see some operational leverage on the general and administrative expenses. We will continue to invest in some of what we think short-term wise, we will categorize as expenses, but we see it more like an investment, including R&D, and also for branding dollars to really build up the brand equity. Those are some of the areas that we focus on. And what sorry. What was your second question?

Jennifer Wong

Analyst

Oh, that's how do you view the ongoing sales competition on the online channel? How do you think our company is going to face such kind of situation? Thank you for your answers.

Donghao Yang

Management

I think as we said before, when we are looking at the beauty market, there are so many players, and then one of the reasons that we can continuously and also accelerate our growth is mainly driven by some of the investments we have devoted to R&D in the past few years and also our continuous commitment to brand building. So we did something right before why we are getting the growth today. So if we are looking at the competition, as long as we continue to focus on what we have done right, and then we will see more and more robust product lineup and better innovation is coming. And we will see the higher brand awareness so that we can get some more operational and also brand building optimization. And also, we will see some of the operational efficiency improving by our product mix and the channel mix optimization. And we will see some organization growth, but we focus on the cornerstones of our product innovation, customer focus, CIM, and etcetera. So as long as we focus on doing the right thing, we think in the future, we will achieve the long-term sustainable growth result. Thank you.

Jennifer Wong

Analyst

Thank you for your kind response. We're very looking forward to seeing the company's rapid growth.

Donghao Yang

Management

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any additional or closing comments. Please go ahead.

Irene Lyu

Management

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at Yatsen Holding Limited directly. Our contact information for IR in both China and the U.S. can be found in today's press release. Thank you and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.