On June 10, SF Holding and Jitu Express simultaneously issued announcements, and the mutual share subscription transaction between the two parties was successfully completed. SF Express issued 226 million new H shares to Jitu at HK$36.74 per share, raising net funds of approximately HK$8.289 billion. After the transaction was completed, it held 9.98% of Jitu's shares; Jitu held 4.29% of SF's shares.
One announcement thrust both companies into the spotlight at the same time. In fact, in the past year, China Logistics, as the leading M&A holding company, has not had an easy life for the absolute leader SF Express. In the first quarter of this year, revenue growth fell to 6.1%, a new low since 2024. For three consecutive quarters from Q2 to Q4 last year, single-ticket revenue hovered at a relatively low level of less than 14 yuan. (The flow of the financial report is shown in the figure below, unit: 100 million yuan, the same below)
The logistics industry is an explicit representation of the economy: the inventory turnover of the manufacturing industry, the purchasing power of consumers, and the activity of cross-border trade will eventually be deposited in the business volume and income structure of logistics companies. As the company with the largest revenue in the domestic logistics industry, SF Express is essentially a mirror of how the entire economy operates.
Observing the logistics industry is essentially observing the underlying operating logic of the Chinese economy. In the past ten years, SF Express has told a beautiful "Eastern Narrative": it is the fourth largest express delivery company in the world and the largest logistics company in Asia. The capital market has also given it a valuation that meets its positioning.
But now, the marginal space of Oriental Narrative is rapidly narrowing, and the ceiling seems to be constant here. The stock price has also dropped from 124 yuan to around 32 yuan now. So let's go back to the fundamentals themselves and look at some of the more subtle changes.
Looking at the financial report, our core point of view is:
1. From the perspective of revenue and profit, SF Express’s business is very stable and has not been affected by internal competition: it can maintain mid-single-digit growth and maintain basic profit levels.
2. From the perspective of business structure, SF Express has taken the initiative to lower prices and increase volume in the past year. The economic package and express business have grown rapidly. Of course, the increase in business volume has also appropriately leveled off some of the initial capital investment.
3. In addition to the express delivery business, the two lines of instant delivery and overseas supply chain have their own highlights. Instant delivery reaped the dividends of the takeout war, with a growth rate of nearly 50%; overseas business reaped the dividends of cross-border e-commerce, turning losses for the first time, but they have not yet reached the point of affecting the core fundamentals.
4. Overall, SF Express has always been a surfer and needs to rely on the dividends of economic development. When the dividend period of the extension industry has passed, the logistics industry itself will not be able to say much new things. Therefore, the current valuation is relatively fair, and there is not much room for premium.
01
Against the background of intensifying internal convolution, SF Express remains relatively stable
In the first quarter of 2026, SF Holding recorded operating income of 74.14 billion yuan, an increase of 6.1% over the same period last year, and the growth rate dropped to the lowest level since 2024. Judging from the volume, it can maintain mid-single-digit growth on a high base, and its performance is actually considered passable.
However, from a horizontal comparison, SF Express's compound growth rate in the past three years is lower than that of ZTO and STO. However, SF Express also has a relatively obvious advantage, which is that it maintains relatively stable profit margins. Judging from the gross profit trend, under the pressure of anti-involution in the logistics industry, SF Express's gross profit margin has been recovering since Q2 last year. In the first quarter of this year, it increased by about 40bp compared with the same period last year.
At the same time, the net interest rate level has also remained within a relatively stable range. Since the second quarter of 2024, the net interest rate attributable to the parent company has not fallen below the 3% baseline. The premium impact of early capital expenditures has been gradually digested.
You know, in the past two years, most players in the express logistics industry have been relatively under pressure on the profit side, especially after Jitu entered the market as a disruptor. In order to maintain market share, most logistics companies have chosen to maintain volume and lower prices. The average sales gross profit margin of Wind Logistics' secondary industry has dropped from 13.28% in the first quarter of 2024 to 11.26% in last year's annual reporting period, a cumulative decrease of nearly 200bp.
At the same time, SF Express's cost control performance is also quite stable. The two core expenditure items, sales rate and administrative expenses, have fluctuated by no more than 30bp in the past two years, and there has been no obvious expansion or contraction at all.
The business stability is terrible, but it does not mean that SF Express has completely given up the competition for the incremental market. From the perspective of revenue structure, SF Express has actually seen some subtle changes.
02
Shunfeng, who has thick eyebrows and big eyes, also has a tendency to join the involution
Breaking down the specific businesses, among SF Express's three businesses, the express business is still the core business line contributing to revenue and profit. In the second half of 2025, the growth rate of express delivery and large-sized items business reached 9.1%, which is a relatively outstanding performance. However, in the second half of last year, the profit contribution of the express delivery business fell by 15.7%, and the overall profit margin was only 4.6%, which is far lower than the profit level since 2024.
The biggest reason for this is that the proportion of economic mail business that is strongly related to e-commerce has increased. In the second half of 2025, the growth rate of SF Express's economic mail business reached 20.7%, far exceeding the core timeliness business. The express business also performed well, with a growth rate of approximately 12.3%.
The value of economic business is relatively low, and the price of a single ticket must have declined. In the second half of last year, SF Express's single-ticket business revenue fell to less than 13.5 yuan, and horizontally compared with the same period, the single-ticket business revenue fell by about 1-2 yuan. Although SF Express has made relatively many structural efforts on the profit side, on the business side, SF Express has not escaped this round of price war competition in the logistics industry.
Of course, SF Express will choose an appropriate price and quantity guarantee during this time window. There are two core reasons:
·In the trend of anti-involution, the price war in the express delivery industry actually showed signs of stabilization in the second half of last year. The single-ticket income of Three Links and One Express + Jitu has basically stabilized. At this time, SF Express has appropriately raised prices, and the increment that can be exchanged is relatively large, which is a good policy window period.
·A closer look at SF Express's capital expenditure trend in the past few years shows that in fact, the largest proportion of investment is in sorting centers. To improve the utilization efficiency of this part of assets, there must be more business volume and appropriate pricing, which may be able to dilute the initial capital investment.
Therefore, SF Express is not passively beaten in this round of price war, but has consciously chosen the strategy of “exchanging price for volume”. Including the cooperation with Jitu, it represents SF Express’s conscious entry into the sinking market.
Whether SF Express can find the balance point between "impulse" and "guaranteed price", and whether it can continue to expand the share of economic parcels and express shipments while maintaining the bottom line of profits, is the most worthy of observation in the next few quarters.
03
The clams in the river are fighting, the fisherman is benefiting, and the instant delivery business is performing well
In addition to the express business line, the performance of other business lines of SF Express is also remarkable. Among them, in the past year, the best performance and the most unexpected one must be the instant delivery business.
Among SF Express's three main business lines, in the second half of 2025, the growth rate of supply chain and international business dropped slightly by 1%, the express business mentioned earlier increased by 9%, and the intra-city instant delivery business increased significantly by 46.1%, which indeed proves that the market for intra-city instant delivery is gradually getting bigger.
In the financial report of SF Express, we can find the answer to the rapid growth: the expansion of the instant food delivery market and SF Express’ unique independent third-party positioning.
In other words, part of the immediate retail increase brought about by the food delivery war, especially mid-to-long-distance catering and supermarket distribution, is actually borne by third parties. As a transportation capacity provider independent of the three players, SF Express has reaped the dividends of the industry's larger pie.
Therefore, SF Express is one of the few “outsider winners” in this food delivery war.
However, incremental stories are incremental stories, and the volume is still too small. The profit contribution of instant delivery last year was 280 million, which was far from enough to change the growth curve of the entire company.
04
Cross-border e-commerce is enjoying a dividend period, and overseas operations have sharply reversed losses.
Finally, let’s take a look at SF Express’ overseas business line, which is also the only business line with negative growth in the second half of 2025. In terms of growth trends, SF Express's overseas business revenue scale is relatively unstable. SF Holding stated in the performance exchange meeting that last year's decline in shipping prices led to a shrinkage in the second half of the year.
But for the overseas business, the best news is the performance on the profit side. It finally got rid of the long-term losses caused by capital investment and achieved profitability in the second half of last year. Moreover, if the fluctuations in Kerry Logistics' international freight forwarding business are excluded, SF Holding's core cross-border supply chain business grew by as much as 32.3% year-on-year, which is still a good performance.
In the past two years, the rise of cross-border e-commerce has been very profitable. According to customs statistics, my country's cross-border e-commerce import and export scale will reach 2.84 trillion yuan in 2025, an increase of 4.8% over the previous year, accounting for 6.2% of the total import and export value of goods trade during the same period. The high growth trend continued in the first quarter of 2026, with import and export volume of 618.46 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%. Looking at the longer cycle, cross-border e-commerce will grow at an average annual rate of 11.2% from 2021 to 2025, and the growth rate is 4.1 percentage points higher than that of overall import and export.
However, SF Express has not gained much. Cainiao, JD Logistics, and Jitu are all increasing their cross-border business. They are heading in the right direction to go overseas. However, the current mainstream cross-border e-commerce markets are still centered on the United States and Europe, while SF Express's core overseas business is basically concentrated in Southeast Asia. In the short term, it does not have the potential to increase volume rapidly.
05
SF Express is a surfer, not a wave maker
Looking back at SF Express's growth trajectory, we will find a clear pattern: SF Express is a surfer, not a wave maker.
SF Express benefited from demographic dividends and urbanization dividends in its early days, and e-commerce dividends during its development period. Now, the increase in instant delivery within the same city has benefited from the dividends from the takeout war; and the increase in cross-border e-commerce has benefited from the dividends from China's manufacturing going overseas.
SF Express is not the protagonist in either of these two wars. Meituan, Alibaba, and JD.com are fighting in the take-out market, and TEMU, SHEIN, and TikTok are fighting in the cross-border market. However, as a transportation capacity provider, SF Express can always get a share of the pie.
SF Express’s advantage lies in “acceptability”. The stability of the direct operation network, the controllability of air transport capacity, and the certainty of brand recognition make it better than any competitor to handle the spillover of high-end logistics demand.
But the difference between a surfer and a wave maker is this: the wave maker can decide the direction and height of the wave, while the surfer can only wait. The story SF Express is telling now is either a story of efficiency: reducing costs and increasing efficiency, optimizing rates, and stabilizing profits; or it is a story of involution, using economic parcels to grab share and using express delivery slots to enter the supply chain.
The competitive landscape of China's logistics industry is already quite stable. CR6 will reach 80.5% in 2025. If you want to capture a solid market share, the cost will be too high.
SF Express itself is aware of this. Judging from the intensity of capital expenditures (capital expenditures/depreciation and amortization), since the second half of 2023, maintenance capital expenditures have been at a low level for a long time. At the same time, the dividend payout ratio has increased significantly to an all-time high.
From this perspective, SF Express is a company that resonates with the Chinese economy. There are not many independent narratives that transcend the economic cycle. Business is essentially a "porter of economic activities." The business of porters is very stable, but it is difficult to tell new stories about porters, so there is not much room for a valuation premium.
The valuations of UPS, FedEx, and DHL, the top three global logistics giants, are very consistent, at about 17 times. SF Express is currently 15 times, and there is not much difference. After telling the Eastern narrative, the market understood it and gave a price. Taking it lightly may be the fairest attitude toward SF Express. There is no need to be overly enthusiastic, nor should it be overly bearish.