---
title: "Market Value Evaporates 35 Billion! Has the 'Bread King' Become a Cash Cow for Capital?"
description: "In 2025, Toly Bread delivered a disappointing performance to the capital market: for the full year 2024, revenue was 6.087 billion yuan, down 9.93% year-on-year; net profit was 522 million yuan, down 9.05%. Notably, this is the first time since its listing in 2015 that the Northeast baking leader has seen a 'collapse-style' decline in both revenue and net profit. Once the 'king of short-shelf-life bread' that swept the nation with its 'central factory + wholesale' model and earned over 6 billion yuan annually, why is it now facing a 'midlife crisis'?"
author: "程信"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2025-04-23"
language: "en"
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# Market Value Evaporates 35 Billion! Has the 'Bread King' Become a Cash Cow for Capital?

> In 2025, Toly Bread delivered a disappointing performance to the capital market: for the full year 2024, revenue was 6.087 billion yuan, down 9.93% year-on-year; net profit was 522 million yuan, down 9.05%. Notably, this is the first time since its listing in 2015 that the Northeast baking leader has seen a 'collapse-style' decline in both revenue and net profit. Once the 'king of short-shelf-life bread' that swept the nation with its 'central factory + wholesale' model and earned over 6 billion yuan annually, why is it now facing a 'midlife crisis'?

**Source** | Winning Power
In 2025, Toly Bread delivered a performance that left the capital market 'broken':
**For the full year 2024, the company's revenue was 6.087 billion yuan, down 9.93% year-on-year; net profit was 522 million yuan, down 9.05%.**
Notably, this is the first time since its listing in 2015 that the Northeast baking leader has seen a 'collapse-style' decline in both revenue and net profit.
Once the 'king of short-shelf-life bread' that swept the nation with its 'central factory + wholesale' model and earned over 6 billion yuan annually, why is it facing a 'midlife crisis' at the age of 30?
What's wrong with 'Toly Bread'?
Data shows: 2024 was the first year its operating revenue declined after listing, while net profit attributable to shareholders had been declining since 2021.
From 2015 to 2024, Toly Bread's operating revenue never reached 7 billion yuan, and net profit attributable to shareholders never reached 1 billion yuan.
By product category, revenue from various products also declined.
Among them, core products Toly Bread and pastries generated 5.906 billion yuan, mooncakes 126 million yuan, and other products 53.883 million yuan, down 9.85%, 14.95%, and 30.26% respectively year-on-year.
**By region, both the northern market with high sales share and the southern market the company has been expanding into saw revenue declines.**
According to the financial report, in 2024, Toly Bread's operating revenue in North China, Northeast China, and South China all saw double-digit declines, with South China experiencing the largest drop, but due to the large base in Northeast China, the revenue decline there had a greater impact on overall performance.
**Going out of the Northeast and expanding nationwide has been Toly Bread's strategic plan for years.**
After listing, the company needed to expand southward to become a national company, covering all regions except Tibet, Xinjiang, Hainan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan—this was Toly Bread's 'dream.'
In 2024, Toly Bread stopped its large-scale capacity expansion plans nationwide. On February 16, it decided to reduce capital in Shijiazhuang Toly, Harbin Toly, Inner Mongolia Toly, and Dandong Toly; on March 20, it decided to reduce capital in Sichuan Toly, Tianjin Toly, and Chongqing Toly; on August 12, it decided to reduce capital in Chengdu Toly.
These measures suggest there may be issues with the company's earlier capacity expansion plans. Typically, if capacity expansion continues to bring positive benefits, companies are likely to keep pushing forward.
**Moreover, the wholesale model it relies on is facing dealer exits.**
Online information shows: In 2024, the company added 118 new dealers, but 144 dealers exited. Especially in East China, 56 dealers bid farewell to Toly Bread, while only 22 new ones were added.
Of the company's 959 dealers, North China, Northeast, and East China together account for 669. In contrast, Central China and South China have fewer than 90 dealers combined.
Management issues are equally alarming. Family-style governance has led to rigid decision-making, and strategic wavering after the second generation took over in 2020.
On one hand, capacity utilization at new East China and South China factories is below 70%; on the other hand, 75% of net profit is used for dividends each year, with cumulative cash-outs exceeding 4.8 billion yuan.
Despite declining performance, Toly Bread maintains high dividends, with only 2.08 billion yuan in dividends paid in 2024, and cumulative dividends exceeding 4.1 billion yuan over the past five years, of which the controlling family received over 3 billion yuan.
This has been criticized as 'interest transfer,' exacerbating minority shareholders' concerns about insufficient long-term investment. The current stock price (6.04 yuan/share) has shrunk 78% from its historical high, and the P/E ratio of 18 times is below the industry average, reflecting market doubts about its transformation capability.
**At the same time, insufficient product innovation and reliance on old products are the main reasons Toly Bread has fallen behind in the snack food sector in recent years.**
**The financial report shows that the company's R&D investment plummeted 31.84% year-on-year to 22.9684 million yuan in 2024, with an R&D expense ratio of only 0.38%, highlighting weak innovation.**
Some consumers complain: 'The Toly Bread on supermarket shelves is always the same few items; I've been eating red bean buns and Shure toast for ten years, and I'm tired of them.'
More fatally, in the face of the impact of freshly made baking, Toly Bread's R&D investment instead plummeted 31.84%, with an R&D expense ratio of only 0.38%.
Despite launching trendy items like bagels and lye knots, compared to the 'freshly baked' offerings of artisan bakeries, Toly's 'assembly line products' seem unattractive.
Facing ever-changing consumer demands, the '28-year-old' Toly still faces challenges.
Toly Bread's dilemma: Toly Bread once used 'fresh short-shelf-life' as its selling point, but has this advantage now become a constraint?
**The 2023 food safety complaint was like a heavy punch, shattering Toly Bread's 'fresh short-shelf-life' marketing myth.** A video of a consumer finding a live insect in raisin toast went viral on hot searches, and more people realized that those breads labeled '7-day shelf life' actually contained preservatives like sodium dehydroacetate in their ingredient lists.
Although the company urgently announced it would stop using the controversial ingredient in October 2024, the damage was already done.
In a comparison experiment by a new consumer review blogger, the taste difference between Toly Bread and handmade freshly baked products after reheating was magnified, and comments like 'industrial feel' and 'chemical taste' floating across the screen became a collective vote of no confidence from young consumers.
Currently, Toly Bread faces many challenges. The new generation of consumers pursues 'zero sugar, zero fat' and 'whole wheat, whole grain,' but Toly's product line still focuses on high-sugar, high-oil sliced bread and hand-torn bread, which is criticized as 'old-fashioned and rustic.' At the same time, artisan bakeries and freshly made bread shops are seizing market share with creative shapes and fresh taste, while Toly's industrial products are labeled 'cold, hard, and unpalatable.' These factors are affecting Toly Bread's market performance to some extent.
Toly Bread: A Generation's Memory
Once upon a time, Toly Bread carried the childhood sweet memories of a generation of northerners.
In 1995, Wu Zhigang, a 60-year-old retired teacher, founded Toly Bread in Dandong, Liaoning. At that time, the domestic bread market either had long-shelf-life bread lasting months or high-priced freshly made bakery products.
Wu Zhigang targeted the gap in between, launching 'short-shelf-life bread' with a shelf life of less than 15 days, and through the 'central factory + wholesale' production and sales model, quickly carved out a differentiated path in the baking track, once ranking first in national sales of short-shelf-life bread.
In 2015, Toly Bread listed on the A-share market, with a peak market value exceeding 45 billion yuan, becoming a 'capital darling' heavily held by many funds. Wu Zhigang also became the oldest chairman of an A-share company at the age of 80, with family wealth once exceeding 10 billion yuan.
However, Toly Bread is a typical family business. Before listing, Wu Zhigang and his wife and three sons held the vast majority of shares, totaling over 86%. Even after multiple rounds of share reductions after listing, the Wu family still holds over 56% of shares, maintaining absolute control.
A clear signal is that in dividend distribution, Toly Bread has indeed been quite generous in recent years, even with net profit declining for four consecutive years, the company's dividend intensity remains high.
In 2024, Toly Bread's net profit attributable to the parent company was 522 million yuan, while total cash dividends were as high as 400 million yuan, accounting for 76.6% of that year's net profit.
According to Wind data, since its listing in 2015, Toly Bread has accumulated net profit of 6.004 billion yuan and cumulative cash dividends of 4.36 billion yuan, with an average dividend payout ratio of nearly 73%.
The Wu family, with absolute controlling stake, is undoubtedly the biggest beneficiary of dividend distribution.
Moreover, since founder Wu Zhigang handed over the reins in 2019, the Wu family has cashed out over 4 billion yuan through share reductions.
In stark contrast to the large dividends and share reduction cash-outs, in 2024, Toly Bread's R&D investment was 22.97 million yuan, down nearly 32% year-on-year, accounting for only 0.38% of revenue.
However, regarding the sharp decline in R&D investment, Toly Bread explained that it was 'mainly due to a decrease in labor costs, material costs, and depreciation expenses.'
As the founder of Toly Bread, Wu Zhigang's entrepreneurial story once inspired many—a 60-year-old retired teacher who built a 'bread empire' with a market value of 10 billion yuan in his sixties.
Today, Toly Bread's total market value is less than 9.5 billion yuan, far from its peak, but it still occupies a place in a generation's memory.


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