Wuliangye reports a 48.25% drop in third-quarter profit

Yibin Wuliangye Co., one of China’s largest listed baijiu producers, reported a sharp drop in third-quarter profit and revenue even as its results for the first nine months of 2026 remained higher than a year earlier.

According to figures published Tuesday by Chinese financial outlet Caiwen and attributed to Wuliangye’s latest results announcement, the company’s attributable net profit for the third quarter fell 48.25% from a year earlier to 958 million yuan. Quarterly revenue dropped 37.68% to 4.442 billion yuan.

The scale of the slowdown was notable for a company that had still been showing solid cumulative growth earlier in the year. Based on the figures cited by Caiwen, Wuliangye’s third-quarter revenue was down from 7.128 billion yuan in the same period of 2025, an absolute decline of about 2.686 billion yuan. Attributable net profit fell from 1.851 billion yuan, a drop of about 893 million yuan.

The company said the weaker quarter was driven by soft demand and lower sales volume, according to Caiwen’s report. That explanation points to pressure in China’s domestic baijiu market, where Wuliangye sells its products. Baijiu is China’s traditional distilled liquor and remains a large consumer category, but demand has been uneven as spending trends shift.

The third-quarter weakness stood in contrast to the company’s cumulative performance for January through September. Over the first nine months of 2026, revenue rose 7.25% from a year earlier to 32.858 billion yuan, while attributable net profit increased 49.98% to 9.711 billion yuan. The gap between the year-to-date figures and the most recent quarter suggests that the company’s early-year momentum did not continue through the end of the summer.

The cumulative growth appears to have been supported mainly by a strong first quarter and a lower comparison base in 2025. That means the year-to-date gains do not fully reflect the deterioration seen in the latest three-month period. For investors and analysts, the third quarter may carry more weight as a sign of current operating conditions than the headline growth in the nine-month totals.

Even within 2026, the picture was mixed. Caiwen’s figures show that third-quarter attributable net profit rose about 38% from the second quarter, when it was about 690 million yuan. That sequential improvement, however, was not enough to offset the steep decline from the same quarter a year earlier, and revenue still showed a sharp annual contraction.

The company is based in Yibin, in Sichuan province, which also serves as its production base. Its flagship Wuliangye brand is a strong-aroma baijiu that remains one of the best-known names in the sector. In 2025, Yibin Wuliangye Co. reported full-year revenue of 40.529 billion yuan. During the first half of 2026, products under the Wuliangye label generated 23.632 billion yuan in sales.

The results cited Tuesday were not audited quarterly statements. Caiwen published the figures at 18:24 local time and said they came from Wuliangye’s own earnings announcement. A related stock market document located separately carries a later date, so the figures available Tuesday came through the secondary report rather than a same-day primary filing.

The new numbers add to signs that China’s premium liquor market remains under pressure despite pockets of earlier improvement. For Wuliangye, the latest quarter showed a much weaker operating environment than the cumulative figures alone would suggest, with both revenue and profit falling sharply as lower demand weighed on sales volume in its home market.