Recently, the medical beauty company Aimeike released its semi-annual report for 2024.

During the reporting period, the company achieved a revenue of 1.657 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.53%; net profit reached 1.121 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.35%.

Although the performance continues to grow, it cannot hide the trend of gradually shrinking revenue and net profit growth rates.

Compared with the mid-year reports from 2021 to 2023, Aimeike's revenue growth rates were 161.87%, 39.7%, and 64.93% respectively, while the net profit growth rates were 188.86%, 38.9%, and 64.66%.

Breaking it down, Aimeike's performance growth rate in the second quarter of 2024 has dropped to a single-digit 2.35%.

It can be seen that the semi-annual report data is also the lowest growth rate for Aimeike since 2021.

It is clear that the market has higher expectations for Aimeike, which once had a "high growth rate".

The day after the semi-annual report was released, Aimeike's stock price fell by more than 12%.

From the previous wild ride to the current market value of more than 140 billion yuan, is Aimeike's medical beauty moat still good?

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In exchange for quantity at a lower price, or it may encounter saturation of demand.

Aimeike's product line is mainly divided into gel-type and solution-type injection products.

Among the solution types, "Haiti" is its representative product, while the gel type relies on "Rubaitianshi" to carry the sales volume.

In the first half of 2024, the sales revenue of Aimeike's solution-type and gel-type injection products accounted for more than 98% of the total revenue.

Among them, the solution-type injection products achieved a revenue of 976 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.65%; the gel-type injection products achieved a revenue of 649 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.57%.

However, looking at the revenue growth rate of the products in the past three years, the growth rate of both products is slowing down.

As early as 2021, Aimeike's solution-type injection product revenue was 1.046 billion yuan, a significant increase of 133.84% year-on-year, accounting for more than 70% of the total revenue.

In 2022, the growth rate of solution-type injection products was 23.57%, accounting for 66.7% of the total revenue.

The growth rate of gel-type injection products was 65.61%, accounting for 32.9% of the total revenue.

By 2023, the revenue growth rates of these two businesses were 29.22% and 81.43% respectively.

Overall, gel-type products are gradually replacing solution-type products in the dominant position, but the growth rates of the two major products have passed the high-speed growth period.

For the former main product "Haiti", changes in market demand are one of the main reasons for the sluggish growth.

Such medical beauty products generally need to rely on consumer repurchase to achieve continuous sales, and the dependence on cycles is the focus of sales.

In the early stage of market development, with the market scale not yet formed, medical beauty companies occupied the main market position through consumer education and technology monopoly, and achieved performance growth in the incremental market by cultivating long-term users.

Previously, Haiti, with the status of the only registered injection product specifically used to improve neck lines in China, formed a monopoly effect in the domestic market, bringing good performance to Aimeike.

However, with the decline in consumption in recent years, "Haiti", which used to be injected once a month, is no longer a necessity for medical beauty consumers.

The reduction in consumption frequency and the reduction in consumption willingness have further affected the market feedback.

Therefore, "Haiti" is also continuously reducing its share in Aimeike's revenue, with the revenue of solution-type products accounting for 72.25%, 66.68%, and 58.24% of the total revenue from 2021 to 2023, and the decline continues.

The gel type with higher gross profit margin has also contributed nearly half of the revenue in recent years.

For Aimeike, the main products have also entered the stage of "exchanging price for quantity".

In recent years, although the sales volume of Aimeike's solution-type products led by Haiti series is still increasing year by year, the average unit price is declining.

Data shows that the average unit cost of Aimeike's solution-type injection products has dropped from 24.13 yuan per unit in 2020 to 18.74 yuan per unit in 2023.

The unit cost of gel-type injection products also dropped from 32.91 yuan per unit in 2020 to 25.08 yuan per unit in 2023.

However, the effect of reducing costs is not significant, and the latest semi-annual report shows that the gross profit margin of solution-type injection products still decreased by 1.12%.

On July 30 this year, Huaxibiol's "injected hyaluronic acid compound solution" (trade name "Runzhi·Gege") was successfully approved by the National Medical Products Administration for listing, becoming the second compound solution mechanical three batch certificate in China, which means that the monopoly of Aimeike's Haiti in the market is about to end.

Faced with the close pursuit of peers, Aimeike still needs more strategies.

Actively laying out new tracks, what Aimeike is facing is not only the fierce competition in the industry, but also the uncertainty of future development.

The monopoly of "Haiti" is about to be broken, and another core product Rubaitianshi also faces competition in the market.

It is understood that at the beginning of the approval of "Rubaitianshi", there were already two major competitors, Shengbo Ma's Aivilan Tongyan needle and Huadong Pharmaceutical's Yiyanshi girl needle.

In January this year, Jiangsu Wuzhong's AestheFill Aishufei polylactic acid facial filler was approved for listing, becoming the fourth approved medical beauty regenerative injection agent, and many companies are also developing similar products, which will be approved for listing in the next few years, and the market competition will further intensify.

Faced with the ever-changing product competition in the medical beauty market, Aimeike also accelerated the launch of its botulinum toxin product.

On July 3, it announced that the injected type A botulinum toxin jointly applied with Huons BioPharm has been accepted by the National Medical Products Administration for drug registration and listing, and has entered the review stage, with clinical use for moderate to severe frown lines.

This time, Aimeike mainly introduced the Korean botulinum toxin product in the form of agency, with an agency period of 10 years.

At present, there are five botulinum toxin products on the Chinese market, among which the domestic Hengli and the imported Botox have been on the market for a long time, and their market share in the field of botulinum toxin facial injection has reached 60% and 30% respectively.

Aimeike's agency products still need to compete with other products in the future, so the performance growth of this business still needs to be observed.

In November last year, Aimeike also announced that it had signed a distribution agreement with South Korea's Jeisys Medical Inc., obtaining the promotion, distribution, sales and related services of some medical and beauty treatment equipment and supporting consumables of the latter in mainland China, entering the photoelectric equipment track.

However, since April 1, 2024, the new medical beauty regulations were issued, and radio frequency beauty instruments were included in the management of Class III medical devices, and the photoelectric business was greatly affected.

The same industry, Haohai Shengke, saw a 11.54% decrease in photoelectric business revenue due to the new regulations.

Aimeike's layout in this track still needs to further adjust its strategy to adapt to the new regulations.

Aimeike's pipeline under research and development is even more extensive.

In the past two years, Aimeike has also entered the fiercely competitive weight loss drug track.

In November 2023, Aimeike participated in the B+ round investment of Beijing Zhipei Biology, and Zhipei Biology is promoting the research and development pipeline of GLP-1.

In April this year, Aimeike invested 50 million yuan to hold 4.89% of Zhipei Biology's shares.

However, Zhipei Biology's GLP-1 research and development has not yet entered the third phase of clinical trials, and the research and development progress is not fast compared with most domestic GLP-1 research and development manufacturers.

Faced with large pharmaceutical companies such as Hengrui Pharmaceutical and Huadong Pharmaceutical, whether Zhipei Biology's GLP-1 can stand firm in the domestic market is still unknown.

In the context of the slowdown in the growth rate of the medical beauty track, the so-called "three giants of medical beauty", Aimeike, how effective is the development of new growth points, and it will continue to be observed.