How did Aimeike transition from high growth to its first "double decline"?

Interface News Reporter | Huang Hua

Interface News Editor | Xie Xin

On the evening of March 19, Aimeike released its financial report for 2025, with the company’s revenue and net profit excluding non-recurring items at 2.45 billion yuan and 1.1 billion yuan, respectively, down about 19% and 41% year-on-year. This marks the company’s first decline in both profits in nearly a decade.

On March 20, Aimeike’s stock fell over 7% during trading. By the close, the company’s share price was 128.88 yuan per share, down 7.19%, with a latest market capitalization of 39 billion yuan.

In response, Aimeike told Interface News reporters: Faced with market pressure, the company has maintained strategic stability, and its current efforts are being translated into long-term development resilience, with full confidence in stable future growth; the company will adhere to innovation in research and development and industrial integration, further clarify its development strategy internally, increase and accelerate R&D, and externally steadily advance investment and merger layouts to accumulate momentum for long-term development.

Aimeike was once known as the “leader in medical beauty” in the A-share market, founded in 2004 and listed in 2020. As a supplier in the medical beauty and skincare field, the company has developed a series of influential brands, such as RuBai Angel and HiTi.

In the past, Aimeike’s growth was evident. Over the past decade, its revenue increased from over 100 million to over 3 billion yuan, and net profit jumped from tens of millions to nearly 2 billion yuan. In the early period after its IPO, from 2021 to 2023, the company’s lowest profit growth rate was also above 30%.

However, in 2024, Aimeike’s era of high profit growth came to a complete end—both the revenue and net profit growth rates for the year were in single digits. By 2025, the aforementioned figures fell sharply.

Regarding the changes in performance, Aimeike mentioned in its annual report the external environment of fluctuations in the macroeconomic landscape and the cautious consumer spending willingness, and also stated that the industry is undergoing a transformation from scale expansion to quality cultivation, believing that the future development direction is a return to the essence of medical care.

Aimeike’s performance changes Illustration: Interface News Reporter Huang Hua

The growth logic of the medical beauty industry in the past was relatively clear; in an environment with strong consumer willingness, new products were developed in multiple directions to obtain early approvals for market launch, rapidly capturing market share and enhancing performance.

Aimeike was no exception. In its early days, the company had several products that enjoyed significant market influence and sales performance.

Aimeike is the holder of the first sodium hyaluronate injection filler in China, and its hyaluronic acid beauty injection—Yimei was approved as early as 2009. If we define the changes in the medical beauty industry through the lens of ingredients, hyaluronic acid was the pioneer of the first generation, and Aimeike actually occupied the forefront early on.

Of course, by the time Aimeike went public in 2020, Yimei was no longer the company’s main product. Between 2017 and 2019, its annual sales fell from 10 million to 2 million yuan.

After Yimei, Aimeike also launched several iterative products in the sodium hyaluronate injection field, such as Yimei Plus One and HiTi. By 2019, the annual sales of HiTi reached 240 million yuan, accounting for nearly half of that year’s revenue. HiTi can be considered Aimeike’s representative product in the sodium hyaluronate injection field.

Aimeike’s actions of “self-competing” in the sodium hyaluronate injection field indicate that compared to the product iteration speed of pharmaceutical companies, which can take a decade to refine a product, Aimeike faces greater pressure from product iteration. This could become a constraint on the company’s development in the new environment.

Following sodium hyaluronate, L-lactic acid—commonly known as the “youth needle” has become the new darling of medical beauty, with its popularity continuing to this day.

In this category of products, in June 2021, Aimeike’s RuBai Angel was approved. In the same year, Changchun Shengboma’s Aivilan was approved, and a company under Jiangsu Wuzhong announced it would act as the agent for AestheFill. Later, AestheFill was approved in January 2024, becoming the first imported “youth needle” approved in the country.

Among the aforementioned three products, Aivilan is a relatively pure poly-L-lactic acid micro-sphere injection, RuBai Angel is a composite product combining hyaluronic acid and poly-L-lactic acid micro-spheres, and AestheFill uses poly-D-lactic acid (PDLLA micro-spheres). According to data from the Toubao Research Institute, based on the institutional procurement prices in 2022, the market shares of Aivilan and RuBai Angel were 34.7% and 21.8%, respectively.

RuBai Angel should be another main product for Aimeike at present. Currently, the company’s financial report does not disclose its sales data separately.

However, the company’s annual report data shows that the sales of gel injection products, where RuBai Angel is located, increased from 385 million yuan to 1.2 billion yuan from 2021 to 2024. The growth rates for 2022 and 2023 were 65% and 80%, respectively. Meanwhile, in 2024, the sales of solution injection products represented by HiTi reached 1.74 billion yuan.

Aimeike also started a battle for agency rights with Jiangsu Wuzhong in July 2025. This means that if there are changes in the agency rights for AestheFill in the future, Aimeike may gain additional incremental market.

In addition to sodium hyaluronate and L-lactic acid, Aimeike has also laid out plans for botulinum toxin. Moreover, the company’s investment in botulinum toxin occurred in 2018. In January of this year, the A-type botulinum toxin product exclusively distributed by Aimeike was approved. It comes from the South Korean company Huons BioPharma (referred to as “Huons BP”).

It is worth noting that the botulinum toxin market has also undergone significant changes in recent years. Prior to 2021, there were only four botulinum toxin products in China—Lanzhou Biological’s Hengli, Allergan’s Botox, Ipsen/Galderma’s Dysport, and Revance’s DaxibotulinumtoxinA. However, this situation of limited supply has likely changed. As of now, seven products have been approved domestically, in addition to Aimeike’s product, there are Xeomin from Maishimei and DaxibotulinumtoxinA from Fosun Pharma. In comparison, Aimeike seems to have “arrived late.”

Aimeike’s procurement announcement on March 9 of this year also indicated that the expected transaction amount for the botulinum toxin purchased from Huons BP within 2026 will not exceed 60 million yuan. This also means that the current domestic market demand for this is relatively average. At the same time, the procurement ceiling of 60 million yuan implies that the aforementioned product will have limited assistance to Aimeike’s annual performance.

Additionally, some industry self-media recently claimed that the price of this botulinum toxin product is expected to be close to the domestic brand Hengli. In response, Aimeike did not directly address the pricing issue, only stating that “the botulinum toxin product from South Korea’s Huons BP will mainly focus on the mid-to-high-end market in the future.”

From an industry perspective, medical beauty or consumer healthcare was a hot direction for pharmaceutical companies to expand into and seek incremental opportunities in recent years, with companies hoping to turn their fortunes around or seek greater development opportunities, but there are few very successful cases. Compared to pharmaceutical companies that can revert to their main business, medical beauty is Aimeike’s entire asset, and the company has no retreat. How to seek breakthroughs in the environment of declining consumption will become an important topic for Aimeike’s future development.

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