Sunner expects first-quarter 2026 net profit attributable to shareholders of 250–290 million (USD 34.82–40.39 million), up 69.43%–96.54% year-on-year, which would mark another record first-quarter result. The company attributed the strong performance to better cost control, improved breeder performance, stronger production efficiency, and a more optimized sales mix. Its 2025 annual report also showed sharp profit growth, higher chicken meat and processed product sales, and continued gains in retail, exports, and digitalisation.
Sunner said late on April 12 that it expects net profit attributable to shareholders for the first quarter of 2026 to reach 250–290 million (USD 34.82–40.39 million) (USD 34.82–40.39 million), up 69.43%–96.54% year-on-year.
That would mark the company’s best first-quarter profit on record for a second straight year, excluding the atypical 2019–2020 period shaped by unusual market conditions.
Sunner said the result was driven first by tighter cost control. Breeder performance continued to improve, lean production management delivered clear gains, and a number of farming indicators reached their best levels for the same period on record, further strengthening the company’s overall cost advantage in meat production.
On the sales side, the company said all channels contributed, while its sales mix kept improving and product price resilience continued to build. That supported steady growth in both sales scale and operating efficiency. In the retail segment in particular, Sunner said it responded more precisely to changing consumption scenarios and shifts in consumer demand, with brand strength continuing to improve. Revenue from the C-end retail business rose by more than 20% year-on-year, according to the announcement.
2025 results underline the momentum
Sunner’s 2025 annual report, released at the same time, showed revenue of CNY 20.09 billion (USD 2.80 billion), up 8.12% year-on-year. Net profit attributable to shareholders reached CNY 1.38 billion (USD 192.20 million), an increase of 90.55%.
Last year, sales of raw chicken meat reached 1.5768 million tonnes, while sales of further-processed meat products totalled 447,600 tonnes, up 12.40% and 41.25%, respectively, from 2024.
Sunner’s production bases are mainly located in Fujian, Jiangxi, Gansu, and Anhui. It also operates a product R&D centre in Shanghai and an innovation marketing centre in Hangzhou. The company has built white-broiler production capacity of nearly 800 million birds, while built and under-construction food deep-processing capacity exceeds 500,000 tonnes, ranking first nationwide.
Cost leadership, channels, and digitalisation
Like its first-quarter guidance, Sunner attributed its 2025 performance mainly to a cost-leadership strategy, coordinated development across all channels, and continued progress in digital and smart upgrades.
That cost advantage, the company said, again came largely from improvements in breeding stock performance. In 2025, Sunner continued investing in R&D, disease purification, production management, and better performance in original and grandparent breeding stock. Core breeder indicators improved further, helping reduce overall farming costs on a sustained basis. The company said that cost leadership has become a core competitive barrier protecting profitability.
Sunner said it sold more than 5 million breeder sets externally in 2025, covering more than 10 provinces across China, and maintained the largest market share among domestically developed breeding lines. At the same time, it expanded into overseas markets, exporting multiple batches to countries including Tanzania and Tajikistan, giving further momentum to the rollout of its new domestically developed white-broiler breed in both domestic and international markets.
At the downstream end, Sunner said it deepened cooperation with high-quality core B-end customers, including Western restaurant chains, while also pursuing targeted customer development. New customers contributed steadily more, and performance in the Chinese restaurant segment was particularly strong. Exports also grew significantly last year, with new overseas markets opened in Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, by expanding its distributor network, building out terminal sales points, and creating product combinations tailored to specific consumption scenarios, Sunner’s C-end business generated revenue of about CNY 3.55 billion (USD 494.43 million) in 2025, up more than 60% year-on-year.
In digitalisation, the company said it is working to put artificial intelligence (AI) and business intelligence (BI) on a dual track, using intelligent analysis to raise efficiency, make data visible in real time, and improve management response speed so that data can better support the business.
The annual report also showed that raw chicken meat and meat products contributed CNY 10.44 billion (USD 1.45 billion) and CNY 8.55 billion (USD 1.19 billion) in revenue, respectively, further narrowing the gap between the two. Gross margin for raw chicken meat edged down 0.14 percentage points to 5.56%, while gross margin for meat products rose 0.50 percentage points to 20.11%.
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