CaratLaopu Gold's profit rose 88.18%, and the interim dividend took 74.6% of it
The Hong Kong-listed jeweller reported 19.81 billion yuan of revenue for the first half, up 60.3%, and 4.267 billion yuan of profit, up 88.18%. It will pay out 18.02 yuan a share.
§1The company reports two revenue lines, and the trade is quoting the wrong one.
Laopu Gold, listed in Hong Kong under 06181, published interim results for the six months to 30 June on 25 August, and the first thing to establish is which number is the revenue. The company reports two. Sales performance, the figure covering total product sales, was 22.779 billion yuan, up 60.6%. Recognised revenue was 19.808 billion yuan, up 60.3%. The gap between them is 2.971 billion yuan, or 13.04% of the sales figure, on this desk's arithmetic. Several summaries circulating since Tuesday carry 22.78 billion as the company's revenue. It is not; it is the larger of the two lines, and this paper prints the smaller one as revenue because that is what the company calls revenue.
§2Profit grew faster than sales, and the adjustment made it slower.
Profit for the period attributable to owners was 4.267 billion yuan, up 88.18%. Adjusted net profit on the company's non-IFRS measure was 4.317 billion yuan, up 83.6%. The two growth rates differ by 4.58 percentage points and the adjusted figure is the slower one, which is the less flattering direction for a company to adjust in and worth noting for that reason. Working back from the stated growth rates, prior-period profit was about 2.268 billion yuan and prior-period revenue about 12.357 billion yuan, this desk's back-calculation from the company's own percentages rather than figures the company published in this release.
Thirteen percent of the sales figure never reaches the revenue line.
§3Margin did more work than volume.
The margins moved further than the volumes. Gross margin went from 38.1% to 41.3%, a gain of 3.2 percentage points, and net margin from 18.4% to 21.5%, a gain of 3.1.
A jeweller expanding gross margin by more than three points in a half while gold input costs are at the levels this paper has been marking every morning is either raising prices faster than metal, selling a richer mix, or both. The company raised prices on multiple products by 20% to 30% in its first pricing round of 2026, which accounts for the direction if not the precise size.
Basic earnings were 24.16 yuan a share and the interim dividend is 18.02 yuan a share. That is a payout of 74.59% of first-half earnings, this desk's division, which is an unusual amount of a record half to hand back rather than reinvest.
Channel mix moved too: offline stores were 77.8% of revenue and online platforms 22.2%, with the online line up 171.9% year on year, and revenue outside mainland China up 107.8%. One piece of context this paper will date precisely rather than blur. On 28 July, when the company issued its profit alert rather than these results, its shares fell 23.76% to close at HK$302.20. That was a month before the numbers above were published and this desk does not attach it to them.
The reporting risk in this company is not the growth rate, it is the two revenue lines, and a trade that reads 22.78 billion as revenue will overstate this business by 15% against its own accounts.
The number that matters more than either is the payout. A company growing profit 88% and returning three-quarters of it is not being run as a compounding growth asset, whatever the growth rate says, and the 171.9% online line is the part of this release that will be worth re-reading in six months.
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