Category expansion drives growth, Haitai Seasoning’s first-quarter report hits new highs again.

"Soy Sauce Moutai" Haitian Flavour’s quarterly report has reached a new historical high.

In the first quarter, it achieved an operating revenue of 9.029 billion yuan, up 8.57% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.444 billion yuan, up 10.97% year-on-year.

If we combine observations for the fourth quarter of 2025, the company’s revenue and net profit attributable to shareholders grew by approximately 9.8% and 11.5% year-on-year, respectively, with growth trends remaining steady.

One of the variables supporting this round of growth is the marginal recovery of catering demand.

In the first quarter of 2026, national catering revenue increased by 4.2% year-on-year, with growth faster than retail sales, continuing the warming trend. For condiment enterprises, the recovery of the catering segment not only brings a rebound in usage, but also raises higher requirements for standardization and customization capabilities.

Against this backdrop, Haitian did not simply rely on recovering demand, but proactively undertook the incremental gains brought by industry recovery through upgrading product structure and capability systems.

In its 2025 annual report, the company stated it is transitioning from a supplier of condiments to a "provider of all-scenario cooking solutions," achieving structural growth by increasing per-customer value.

As the soy sauce market enters the stage of stock competition, the growth space for single categories tends to stabilize. The company has begun to expand into base categories such as vinegar, cooking wine, and peripheral tracks like compound seasonings, aiming to cover wider cooking scenarios and consumer needs.

The effect of this category expansion is already reflected in the quarterly report.

Structurally, the three core categories still form the main foundation. Soy sauce, oyster sauce, and seasoning paste achieved revenues of 4.751 billion yuan, 1.422 billion yuan, and 923 million yuan respectively, up 7.48%, 4.60%, and 1.12% year-on-year, maintaining overall stability.

Meanwhile, other categories represented by vinegar, cooking wine, and compound seasonings achieved revenue of 1.55 billion yuan, up 20.32% year-on-year, significantly outpacing the overall growth rate and becoming an important driver for revenue. Compared to 2025, this segment has shown a trend of accelerating quarter by quarter, with the category expansion moving from the planning phase to the scaling phase.

Aside from performance, the market also focuses on the dividend capacity of "Soy Sauce Moutai." In 2025, the company’s cumulative cash dividend reached about 7.95 billion yuan, with a dividend payout ratio of about 113%, at a relatively high level among consumer leaders.

This capability mainly stems from its solid cash flow foundation: on one hand, the condiment business has high turnover and advance payment attributes, so profits convert to cash efficiently; on the other hand, the company’s asset-liability ratio has long remained low, only about 12% this quarter, with weak leverage constraints.

On this basis, the company has made it clear that its dividend payout ratio for the next three years will not be less than 80%, further enhancing the predictability of shareholder returns. Meanwhile, the employee shareholding plan also sets growth constraints—taking net profit attributable to shareholders in 2025 as a base, the compound annual growth rate for net profit attributable to shareholders in 2027 must not be less than 11.5%.

Whether the category expansion can continuously offset the slowdown of the soy sauce base and support sustained high dividend payouts still awaits further verification from the scaling of new categories and sustained cash flow quality.

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