Ask AI · Is SF Express’ slowdown in growth related to an increased share of low-priced business?

By Yang Wanli

SF Holding, a logistics giant with a market value of one trillion yuan (hereafter “SF Express”), has turned in a record-breaking set of results.

Recently, SF Express released its 2025 annual report. For the full year, SF Express’ revenue surpassed the 300 billion yuan mark, and net profit surpassed the 11 billion yuan mark, increasing by 9.3%. Owing to the growth shown in its financial results, the day after the financial report was released (March 31), SF Express’ A-share price rose by 3.48%, while its Hong Kong-listed share price rose by 5.76%.

In recent years, competition in the logistics industry has been fierce, with most companies stuck in the mire of price wars. SF Express’ record-breaking performance seems to suggest that the king of logistics is back on top.

However, the bigger the industry leader, the more focus points it has. If you shift your attention away from SF Express’ impressive performance and examine the fine details in the report, although SF Express’ 2025 performance has made progress in terms of overall scale, both revenue and net profit growth rates have fallen back to single digits. At the same time, SF Express’ profitability quality has declined—for example, the growth rate of non-recurring profit (profit after excluding non-recurring items) is lower than that of net profit, and its gross margin has fallen again.

Looking specifically at its business, the time-sensitive express delivery business—its “anchor”—has maintained single-digit growth. Its supply chain and international businesses have just turned profitable, but their profitability remains thin. Its same-city instant delivery business grew by more than 43% year over year; it has the highest growth rate, but it is small in scale and cannot carry the bigger picture.

Behind SF Express’ record-breaking performance, it also seems not to be “easy.”

In a turbulent business environment, development has never been smooth sailing, and even large enterprises encounter their own “growing pains.” Against this backdrop, SF Express has been actively embracing cutting-edge technologies such as AI and accelerating its “going global” efforts. From rapid growth to high-quality development, will SF Express be able to tell a compelling new growth story?

New highs in revenue and net profit scale, but growth slows

On the evening of March 30, SF Express disclosed its 2025 annual performance report. Last year, SF Express achieved revenue of 308.23B yuan, up 8.37% year over year; it achieved attributable net profit of 11.12 billion yuan, up 9.31% year over year.

According to data from the State Post Bureau, in the first half of 2025, total volumes in China’s express delivery sector reached 95.64B parcels, up 19.3% year over year. However, business revenue increased by only 10.1%, and the price per parcel fell to 7.52 yuan, down 7.7% year over year.

In the second half, with policy guidance helping prices return to rational levels, overall unit prices still remained at a relatively low level. Competition in the industry has been intense.

In this environment, SF Express’ performance is still relatively strong. As of now, SF Express is the only private express delivery company among A-share listed companies whose revenue scale has exceeded the 300 billion yuan threshold.

By business, SF Express’ full-year speed logistics business volume reached 16.63 billion parcels, up 25.4%, while the industry’s average growth rate is around 13.6%, meaning SF Express has outperformed the industry overall.

Time-sensitive express delivery is SF Express’ “anchor.” In 2025, the time-sensitive express delivery business generated revenue of 131.05B yuan, accounting for 42.52% of total revenue. Revenue growth was 7.2%, higher than 5.8% in 2024.

SF Express also saw growth in its economic express delivery business. In 2025, its economic express delivery business generated revenue of 32.05 billion yuan, with a revenue share of 10.40%. Revenue growth was 17.6%, higher than 8.8% in 2024.

Another point is that SF Express’ supply chain and international businesses achieved a turning point from loss to profit. In 2025, SF Express’ supply chain and international business revenue reached 72.94 billion yuan, up 3.5%, down from 17.5% in 2024. However, if you exclude the volatility impact of Kerry Logistics’ freight forwarding business, the growth rate of core international business revenue is as high as 32.3%. What matters is that this segment achieved net profit of 188 million yuan, turning loss into profit, but current profitability is still relatively thin.

SF Express’ same-city instant delivery business saw the most outstanding growth. Last year, this business generated revenue of 12.87B yuan, up 43.4%, higher than 22.4% in 2024. Reasons for maintaining high growth include expansion in the instant retail industry and increased market demand. For example, the “food delivery wars” among internet giants have made logistics companies taste success.

Some of SF Express’ businesses still face challenges. In 2025, the company’s express freight (small parcel truck) business achieved revenue of 42.13B yuan, representing 13.67% of total revenue. Revenue growth was 11.9%, lower than 13.8% in 2024.

Worth noting is that SF Express’ economic express delivery revenue growth was faster than its time-sensitive express delivery revenue growth. Some believe that a downward shift in product mix could dilute the overall profit margin. SF Express’ average revenue per parcel was 13.7 yuan in 2025, down 11.4% year over year. The reason is that changes in product mix led to higher revenue shares from low-price businesses such as economic express delivery and same-city express delivery, which dragged down the overall unit price. This seems to suggest that SF Express has not yet escaped the path of trading price for volume.

In addition, the decline in price per parcel and the increase in costs, to a certain extent, weakened SF Express’ profitability. On profitability, in 2025, SF Express’ gross margin was 13.32%, down 0.61 percentage points year over year, interrupting the upward gross margin trend since 2022. In 2025, SF Express’ operating costs increased by 9.14% year over year, exceeding the growth rate of revenue for the period.

It is also worth noting that in 2024, SF Express’ revenue growth rate was 10.07%, while the growth rate of net profit attributable to shareholders was 23.51%. Compared with 2024, the revenue and profit growth rates in 2025 fell by a large margin. In addition, in 2025 SF Express’ non-recurring profit (after excluding non-recurring items) increased by 1.29% year over year, while the growth rate of non-recurring profit in 2024 was 28.20%.

From this perspective, SF Express’ 2025 performance report includes both the亮 eyes moment of surpassing the 300 billion yuan revenue scale and a slowdown in growth driven by a decline in revenue per parcel and cost growth.

Left hand embraces frontier technology, right hand doubles down on “going global”

As SF Express’ scale grows and competition in the logistics industry intensifies, the difficulty of sustaining high-speed growth also increases. And in the context of China’s express delivery industry “pushing back against endless internal competition,” cost reduction and efficiency improvement, as well as finding new growth points, have become the way for every express company to break through.

SF Express’ long-term vision is to develop into a globally leading provider of smart logistics solutions that are highly respected. In 2025, SF Technology was selected for Fortune’s “China’s Top 50 Technology” list, becoming the only logistics technology company on the list.

For a long time, logistics has been viewed by outsiders as a traditional industry. As an industry giant, what is SF Express’ tech-related strength?

In 2025, SF Express accelerated the application of frontier technologies in logistics scenarios, including artificial intelligence, big data, operations research, and digital twins.

For example, in the case of artificial intelligence, SF Express’ logistics vertical large model has an average daily Token consumption of over ten billion, and its large-model system is widely used across more than 30 business scenarios.

According to disclosures from SF Express, the company has more than 5,000 smart agents of various types internally, and active AI smart agents have become an important “digital workforce.”

At the logistics network layer, AI deeply empowers SF Express’ operations across pickup and delivery, dispatching, sorting/transshipment, and transportation. AI also plays an important role in boosting revenue from operations and improving customer experience. Meanwhile, relying on AI enablement and end-to-end digitalization, SF Express provides enterprise-wide one-stop smart supply chain services.

By leveraging frontier technologies such as AI, SF Express has improved operational efficiency to a certain extent. Actively “going global” is another initiative SF Express has taken to find additional growth opportunities.

In its 2025 annual report, SF Express views its supply chain and international business as its second growth curve. By the end of 2025, that segment achieved revenue of 72.94 billion yuan, accounting for 23.66% of total revenue.

Although there is uncertainty in the international situation, SF Express has strong resolve to “go global” and reshape overseas supply chains.

SF Express’ specific measures to advance its international strategy include three points: first, a breakthrough in business models—shifting from selling resources to selling integrated solutions, breaking through industry chain-leading customer constraints; second, upgrading core resources—building differentiated barriers around air trunk routes, land-rail transportation, customs clearance, and overseas warehouses; third, investing to strengthen capacity—tying overseas partners through strategic investments, such as strategically investing in J&T Express.

In mid-January this year, SF Express subscribed to about 822 million newly issued B-class shares of J&T Express. At the same time, SF Express issued an additional 226 million H shares to J&T Express. After the transaction was completed, SF Express will hold a 10% stake in J&T Express, while J&T Express will hold a 4.29% stake in SF Express.

SF Express says that by mutually subscribing for the newly issued shares of the other party, it will further deepen the strategic partnership. This cooperation will help SF Express achieve resource interconnection and complementary advantages. In the future, it will also explore more possibilities for cooperation in areas such as building global logistics networks, infrastructure planning, and coordinated business development.

In recent years, SF Express has accelerated its global expansion. In November 2024, SF Express successfully listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, becoming the first “A+H” listed company in the express and logistics industry. Chairman Wang Wei said, “Listing in Hong Kong is of great significance to SF Express. The Group can better develop international markets by relying on the Hong Kong platform.” In addition, SF Express has expanded into cross-border logistics by measures such as purchasing full-freighter aircraft, building the Huahu Airport in Ezhou, and investing nearly HK$20 billion to acquire Kerry Logistics, among other international logistics companies.

In 2025, SF Express’ supply chain and international business achieved net profit of 190 million yuan, turning losses into profits year over year. However, profitability is still weak, with a profit margin of less than 0.3%. SF Express also admitted that issues such as large fluctuations in international transport capacity prices have brought challenges to the operation of its international business.

In addition, SF Express also has to face competition from global logistics giants. According to the 2025 ranking of international express delivery brands, the three major players DHL, UPS, and FedEx together account for more than 55% of the global market share, while SF Express’ international brand market share is only 7.5%. In mature markets, facing these international giants that have been deeply entrenched for decades, the gap in brand awareness and service networks is significant.

Overall, SF Express achieved a breakthrough in revenue scale in 2025 and also made strategic deployments. However, weaker profitability indicators and thin profits in the international business have become real challenges. How SF Express will perform in its subsequent operations—we will continue to pay attention.