HONG KONG — Pop Mart turned Labubu from an eccentric, sharp-toothed character into one of the world’s most recognizable collectible toys. Now, the Chinese company behind the global phenomenon is confronting a much harder test: proving that the extraordinary growth surrounding Labubu can survive once the initial frenzy starts to normalize.
Pop Mart shares came under pressure in Hong Kong after its first-half 2026 results revealed a striking split in its business.
Overall revenue was still growing strongly. For the six months ended June 30, Pop Mart generated 17.17 billion yuan, or roughly US$2.55 billion, an increase of 23.8% from a year earlier.
But underneath that headline number, the geography told a very different story.
Revenue in Asia-Pacific outside Greater China fell 9.7%, while sales in the Americas dropped 16.5% year on year. Greater China, by contrast, remained a powerhouse, with revenue climbing 47.3%.
That uneven performance was enough to worry investors.
Pop Mart shares fell sharply during Friday trading in Hong Kong, dropping as much as about 8.9% intraday before recovering part of the decline. The selloff represented one of the stock’s steepest intraday falls in months.
Pop Mart Is Growing—Just Not Where Investors Expected
The problem is not that consumers suddenly stopped buying Pop Mart products.
Far from it.
The company’s first-half sales remain significantly larger than they were a year ago. Pop Mart also reported adjusted net profit of 5.16 billion yuan, while its adjusted net profit margin reached approximately 30%.
Its gross margin stood at 69.7%, underscoring how profitable its character-driven collectible business remains.
The bigger concern is the dramatic slowdown from Pop Mart’s recent history.
In 2025, the company recorded revenue of roughly 37.12 billion yuan, representing extraordinary year-on-year growth of 184.7%.
Against that backdrop, 23.8% growth in the first half of 2026 looks very different—not weak by ordinary corporate standards, but a significant normalization for a company investors had become accustomed to watching expand at breathtaking speed.
That change in trajectory has put Pop Mart’s overseas strategy under scrutiny.
Citi, according to reports cited by CNBC and other financial outlets, said Pop Mart’s international business faced pressures ranging from inventory management and supply-chain problems to warehousing, logistics and store operations.
The bank reportedly expects Pop Mart’s overall revenue to decline 8% for full-year 2026 and lowered its price target for the shares to HK$198.
CEO and founder Wang Ning also indicated that the company’s previously stated target of around 20% revenue growth for 2026 would be difficult to achieve, according to several reports covering the earnings call.
The Americas Are Suddenly Pop Mart’s Biggest Warning Sign
One of the most striking numbers came from North and South America.
Revenue from the Americas declined 16.5% to roughly 1.89 billion yuan, compared with about 2.26 billion yuan during the same period a year earlier.
The weakness was particularly noticeable online.
According to figures from Pop Mart’s interim reporting, online revenue in the Americas dropped 45.6%, while revenue through its own app and official website fell 44.6%.
There was, however, an important counterpoint: revenue from Pop Mart’s physical retail stores in the Americas increased 22.5%, while sales through Amazon rose 34.6%.
That makes the picture more complicated than a simple collapse in American demand.
Instead, Pop Mart may be experiencing a shift in how consumers buy its products—combined with the operational difficulties that come with expanding stores, inventory and distribution networks across multiple countries.
Earlier in 2026, the company even established manufacturing operations in Mexico to help supply its growing U.S. business, demonstrating just how seriously Pop Mart had been preparing for continued expansion in North America.
Is the Labubu Craze Really Fading?
That is the question hanging over the company.
Labubu belongs to The Monsters, a character universe created by artist Kasing Lung that became Pop Mart’s most globally recognizable intellectual property.
Celebrity sightings, viral unboxing videos and scarcity helped transform the dolls and plush charms into fashion accessories as much as collectibles.
But investors have increasingly questioned whether any craze of that magnitude can continue indefinitely.
There were already signs that conditions in the resale market were changing. Reuters reported previously that falling resale prices did not necessarily mean consumers had abandoned Labubu; Pop Mart had also massively increased production, boosting supplies of plush products and making once-difficult-to-find releases easier to obtain.
That distinction matters.
A declining resale premium is not automatically evidence of disappearing consumer demand. It can also mean Pop Mart is succeeding at something it had struggled with during Labubu’s hottest period: actually producing enough toys to satisfy buyers.
Still, the company can no longer rely solely on Labubu’s viral appeal to justify aggressive long-term growth expectations.
And Pop Mart appears to know it.
There’s Another Character Quietly Becoming a Giant
The most interesting part of Pop Mart’s latest results may not be Labubu at all.
The company said six intellectual-property franchises each generated more than 1 billion yuan in first-half revenue: The Monsters, Twinkle Twinkle, Crybaby, Dimoo, Skullpanda and Hirono.
That diversification could become crucial.
According to reporting on the company’s results, The Monsters now represents roughly one-quarter of Pop Mart revenue, compared with around one-third previously.
Meanwhile, Twinkle Twinkle has emerged as one of the fastest-growing franchises, accounting for around 15% of group revenue after sales expanded approximately fivefold.
If that momentum continues, Pop Mart could eventually prove that its greatest asset was never Labubu itself.
It may be the system that discovered, marketed and monetized Labubu in the first place.
Pop Mart Has Another Weapon: A Massive Share Buyback
Management is also attempting to reassure shareholders directly.
Pop Mart announced plans to repurchase between 2 billion yuan and 5 billion yuan worth of its own shares over the following six months, according to the company’s first-half results statement.
At the maximum level, the buyback would be worth roughly US$740 million at recent exchange rates.
Buybacks can support a company’s share price and signal that management believes the market is undervaluing the business.
But they cannot answer the bigger strategic question.
Pop Mart spent the past several years proving that a Chinese collectible-toy company could build characters capable of becoming international cultural phenomena.
The next stage is more difficult.
It must demonstrate that those characters can produce predictable, sustainable global sales even after scarcity fades, viral social-media attention shifts elsewhere and consumers encounter the toys everywhere from malls to Amazon.
Labubu has already done something extraordinary: it helped turn Pop Mart into a global consumer brand.
Now investors want to know whether Pop Mart can do it again.
Because if Twinkle Twinkle, Crybaby, Skullpanda, Hirono and the company’s next generation of characters can follow Labubu onto the global stage, the recent overseas slowdown may eventually look like little more than a temporary correction.
But if Labubu turns out to have been an exceptional cultural moment that cannot easily be repeated, Pop Mart’s latest earnings could be remembered as the point when investors first realized that the hardest part of building a global toy empire begins after the viral sensation becomes famous.
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