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SF Express distributes 55% of its profits to shareholders—how dare they? | 0406
Ask AI · How does SF’s business transformation support high shareholder returns?
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Market Analysis
Market Observations
Over the past week (from March 30 to April 3), the A-share market continued to trend downward amid disturbances from multiple factors. All three major indices fell across the board: the Shanghai Composite Index fell by 0.86% cumulatively, the Shenzhen Component fell by 2.96%, and the ChiNext Index saw a decline of 4.44%. Trading value contracted day by day, dropping from 1.92 trillion yuan on Monday to 1.67 trillion yuan on Friday, hitting the lowest level in nearly half a year. The ongoing contraction in volume and liquidity reflects investors’ cautious trading sentiment, with a risk-avoidance mood taking the lead.
Rotation rules of themes among consecutive daily limit-up stocks
Trend stocks: Two main lines and core driving forces
Pharmaceutical distribution + innovative drugs (the strongest trend track)
AI computing power / CPO (event-driven overlay plus fundamental catalysts)
The new rules taking effect on April 7 refer to the “Several Provisions on the Regulation of Short-term Trading” issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (hereinafter referred to as the “Provisions”). The core of this new rule is to further clarify the regulatory standards for “short-term trading” by shareholders holding more than 5% of a listed company’s shares (major shareholders), as well as directors, supervisors, and senior management (directors, supervisors, and senior management).
1) Iran shot down multiple aircraft
As of April 5 local time, according to reports from Iran, the Iranian military has shot down 12 U.S.-made aircraft since April 3, including: the F-15E “Strike Eagle” twin-seat fighter, 2 C-130 transport aircraft, 1 A-10 “Warthog” attack aircraft, 4 “Black Hawk” helicopters, 2 “Little Bird” helicopters, and 2 MQ-9 “Reaper” unmanned drones.
2) U.S. pilots were rescued by the U.S.
As of April 4 local time, U.S. President Trump announced on a social platform that the U.S. has rescued the second pilot from the F-15E fighter aircraft that had been shot down over Iran. Previously, this U.S. twin-seat fighter was shot down by Iran, with two U.S. pilots on board. One was quickly rescued by the U.S. military, while the other, with a handgun and communications equipment, hid in the Zagros Mountains for as long as 36 hours amid the Iranian military’s manhunt and U.S. drone airstrikes.
3) Iran says the U.S. rescue operation may be for stealing enriched uranium
As of April 6 local time, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Baghaei, during a press conference held that day, responded to questions by stating that the U.S.’s operation to rescue its pilot on the 5th local time constitutes an infringement of Iran’s airspace and has many points of doubt. The area where the U.S. pilot is reportedly located is in Kohgiluyeh–Boyer-Ahmad Province, while the area where the U.S. carried out the rescue operation is in central Iran—far apart from each other.
Baghaei emphasized that the U.S.’s action this time could be a “cover operation,” with the purpose of stealing enriched uranium, and that this possibility should not be ignored.
Recently, Citrini Research dispatched an analyst to northern Oman to get close to the Strait of Hormuz and observe it firsthand. The conclusions he brought back overturned the outside world’s “binary imagination” about Hormuz.
The first layer of truth: The conflict is escalating, but shipping is also resuming
The most counterintuitive point is that more drone attacks and more ships passing through the strait are happening at the same time.
Along the Omani coastline, fishermen told him that tankers quietly pass through every day by turning off AIS systems; the number is clearly higher than public data. Meanwhile, the frequency with which civilian vessels and fishing boats are attacked is also higher than what the media reports.
This means that, at present, Hormuz is not in a “shutdown due to war” situation—it has entered a more complex state: risk is rising, but commerce has not stopped; instead, it is rapidly adapting.
The analyst saw firsthand at sea that a Greek tanker crossed quickly through the center of the strait, while other ships tried to stay as close as possible to the edges. This is not a coincidence—it looks more like a signal: some ships have already obtained “clearance,” so they dare to go straight; those that haven’t received clearance can only probe quietly, or even line up in place.
In other words, the strait isn’t out of control—it’s being reorganized.
The second layer of truth: Iran is turning Hormuz into a “toll booth”
This on-site observation points to a more crucial judgment: Iran does not want to keep Hormuz sealed for the long term; what it wants is to take over the passage order of Hormuz.
At present, a system similar to a “toll booth” is forming.
Vessels granted clearance will be guided through a passage between Qeshm Island and Larak Island; shipowners or their countries will need to submit vessel information through intermediaries, including the equity structure, types of cargo, crew composition, and destinations. Payment is then completed via cash, cryptocurrencies, or even more discreet diplomatic methods—for example, unfreezing Iranian overseas assets. After approval, the vessel will receive some kind of confirmation code and pass by under the default “escort.”
Ships that do not accept these rules can only wait—or take the risk of being attacked.
That explains why the strait has not been completely closed: what Iran wants is not to blow up the world’s energy lifeline, but to make the world acknowledge that it has the right to decide who can pass and who cannot.
The third layer of truth: America’s allies are privately trading with Iran
The most shocking part of this isn’t at sea—it’s at the level of international politics.
On-the-ground information shows that relevant ships from countries such as France, Japan, Greece, India, and Malaysia are all passing through the strait. Some vessels have obviously already secured an arrangement with Iran through some channel.
This means that while the U.S. is confronting Iran, the U.S.’s allies are negotiating with Iran in private for energy security.
This is the most real picture of the current world order: alliances are no longer a solid block; they’re starting to “operate by the ledger.”
For most European and Asian countries, the most practical question isn’t “to stand with the U.S. or with Iran,” but “how to ensure oil and gas keep flowing, freight stays controllable, and supply chains don’t stop.” If negotiating a passage agreement with Iran is the lowest-cost option, then someone will go to negotiate.
Hormuz is proving one thing: so-called multipolarity isn’t just a diplomatic slogan—it even the most sensitive war corridors are starting to be traded, tiered, and made more gray.
On March 31, SF Holding launched a rarely seen combination of capital moves: the A-share buyback cap was raised from 3 billion yuan directly to 6 billion yuan, and the purpose of the buyback changed from “employee shareholding / equity incentives” to “cancellation.” At the same time, SF also initiated a 500 million HKD H-share buyback plan.
If you also add 4.46 billion yuan in cash dividends and 1.64 billion yuan in annual share buybacks, the total scale of this round of returns to shareholders by SF is already close to 55% of its 2025 attributable net profit of 11.12 billion yuan.
In the express delivery industry, this is not a typical move.
Because over the past few years, the industry’s main theme has not been “handing out money,” but “enduring the competitive pressure”—players have repeatedly pulled at each other in parcel delivery fees, franchise networks, and price wars. Many companies first have to solve the profit-protection battle, rather than how to carry out such large buybacks.
So what’s truly worth asking isn’t “why SF is so generous,” but another more crucial question:
When the industry is still stuck in low-price in-fighting, why does SF already have the ability to enter a “high-quality monetization” stage?
The answer isn’t in the buyback itself, but in the three-layer capability restructuring behind it:
The domestic business no longer relies solely on high-priced time-sensitive parcels to make money;
The international business is entering a phase of harvesting heavy assets;
Meanwhile, the supply chain business is transforming SF from a “delivery provider” into one that helps enterprises coordinate the entire supply chain.
In other words, today’s SF is no longer just “the king of express delivery”—it is evolving into a heavier, deeper, and more difficult-to-replicate logistics infrastructure company.
Looking at the financial report, in 2025 SF achieved revenue of 308.23 billion yuan, up 8.4%, and for the first time broke through 300 billion yuan; attributable net profit was 11.12 billion yuan, up 9.3%; and free cash flow was 17.9 billion yuan, also at a high level.
These numbers are certainly impressive, but what deserves more attention is a structural change:
SF didn’t make this money purely from a rebound in the good times of a single business. Instead, “revenue growth, profit improvement, and cash flow release” are all occurring at the same time.
This means it is stepping out of the old traditional logic of “heavy investment—low returns—wait for the cycle.”
For logistics companies, the most dangerous kind of growth is never slow growth—it’s “having revenue but no profits; having profits but no cash flow.” Once a business is built on high capital expenditures and low-efficiency turnover, the bigger the scale, the heavier the financial burden can become.
This round of SF is different. The reason it dares to raise the buyback cap and return more profits to shareholders is fundamentally not that there’s money on the books—but that it has started to prove: this business model has entered a stage where it can stably generate cash.
And this capability first comes from restructuring the domestic core fundamentals.
Over the past two years, the entire express delivery industry has been engaged in price wars. The more low-priced parcels are competed, the more fiercely they are fought; franchise-based networks face pressure; and profit margins are continuously compressed. Against this backdrop, the biggest question outsiders have about SF is: Can its high-quality, high-cost direct-operated model still run effectively?
The result is that SF not only kept running—it delivered resilience stronger than market expectations.
In 2025, SF’s business volume grew year over year by 25.4% to 16.7 billion parcels. The incremental volume mainly came from three types of business: time-sensitive, economic, and express freight. This indicates one thing: SF is not “living off old highs in premium time-sensitive parcels.” Instead, it is extending the capabilities of its direct-operated network to more price bands and more product categories.
1) First, look at the most stable base—time-sensitive parcels
This segment’s revenue for the full year was 131.05 billion yuan, up 7.2%. This is still the core “cushion” for SF’s profits. What’s behind it is not simply “delivering quickly,” but an entire set of service capabilities built around determinism. For example, “send with confidence, compensate for late delivery.” In essence, it’s not a marketing slogan—it turns service commitments directly into compensation terms. Being willing to write “compensate if late” into the product shows that SF has enough confidence in the stability of its own network.
The value of this kind of business is not about how big the volume is; it’s about how it can continue to win high-net-worth customers and high time-sensitivity scenarios. Concert ticketing, intercity luggage, precision instruments, and urgent spare parts are all typical examples. They point to one fact: SF doesn’t sell “a bit faster”—it sells “can’t make mistakes.”
In the express delivery industry, this is the most expensive kind of capability.
2) Next, look at economic parcels
In 2025, SF’s economic parcel revenue was 32.05 billion yuan, up 17.6%. This segment was easy for outsiders to underestimate in the past because people assumed that once SF moves down into the mid-market, it would easily get dragged into the low-profit quagmire of price wars.
But SF’s approach is not to chase the lowest price. Using its existing network capabilities and time-efficiency standards, it delivers “mid-to-high-quality value-for-money” parcels. Put simply, it doesn’t want to compete on price with the cheapest players in the industry; it wants to win customers who are sensitive to price but are unwilling to sacrifice too much service experience.
This is a large “middle tier” market.
Even more worth paying attention to is express freight (SF Kuaiyun). In 2025, SF Kuaiyun’s freight volume growth rate exceeded 27%. Among them, direct-operated large items above 100 kilograms grew by more than 60% year over year. This means SF is replicating its highly deterministic fulfillment capability—from small parcel express delivery to industrial logistics and large-item scenarios.
This is a very key signal.
Because when small-parcel express delivery gets fought down to the end, what matters is unit per-parcel cost;
3) Large items and industrial items
Overall freight volume grew by more than 27%, and direct-operated large items above 100 kilograms surged by more than 60% year over year. By speeding up more than 2,300 routes, SF has effectively given large-item logistics the treatment usually enjoyed by small-parcel express—carving out a high-end playbook in a red-ocean market.
In supply-chain logistics, in the end, what matters is comprehensive dispatching capability, trunk-and-branch line coordination capability, time-efficiency commitment capability, and exception-handling capability. Whoever can standardize high-complexity scenarios has a better chance to capture high-quality profits.
SF is moving in this direction.
So SF’s real domestic-business change isn’t that “some line of business grew well,” but that it upgraded the direct-operated system from a “high-end express network” into a reuse-enabled fulfillment network capable of serving multiple tiers of products, multiple weight ranges, and multiple industry scenarios.
That is why it can maintain profit improvement amid the industry’s price wars.
Because others compete on price; SF competes on unit network output.
If domestic business determines whether SF can “stand firm,” then international business and its global network determine whether it “deserves a higher valuation.”
There’s a consensus in the logistics industry: heavy-asset projects often look ugly at the beginning.
Airports, freighters, transshipment hubs, international routes, and self-built networks—all of these drag profits, squeeze cash flow, and reduce market patience during the investment period. The capital market often won’t applaud your spending; it only asks one question: When will these assets start producing actual returns?
For SF, 2025 may be an important turning point.
Over the past few years, Chinese companies going global is no longer a new story. But most logistics players have only benefited from opportunities relatively shallow in the cross-border chain, such as freight forwarding agents, dedicated lines, and partial warehouse-and-distribution. What SF truly wants to do is not earn a few extra shipping fees by riding on “Made in China going global,” but to become a key infrastructure in overseas supply chains.
Its confidence really is different from peers:
First, it has its own freighter aircraft fleet;
Second, the core cargo hub of Ezhou Huahu Airport;
Third, an axis-and-radial network capability built around air cargo time efficiency and global node coverage.
Only when these three elements are combined do you get the toughest-to-replicate threshold for SF’s internationalization.
Especially Ezhou Huahu Airport: in recent years, the market’s biggest concerns about it were that it required too much investment, ramped up too slowly, and the returns were too far away.
But by 2025, an important change has begun to appear—this hub is starting to shift from a “capital expenditure story” to a “capacity release story.”
Once international routes are gradually increased in frequency and the scale of cargo consolidation continues to rise, the most core flywheel of the air network will start turning:
Higher route density brings better transshipment efficiency;
Improved transshipment efficiency upgrades the customer structure;
Upgraded customer structure leads to higher cargo volumes and stronger pricing power;
Then higher volumes can be used to reverse dilute per-parcel costs.
Once this logic holds, SF will no longer just “own a lot of heavy assets”—it will begin to own a truly scalable global logistics network.
The difference matters greatly to the capital market.
The former is a financial burden; the latter is a valued asset.
That’s also why the meaning of 17.9 billion yuan in free cash flow is so significant. It doesn’t just mean SF “has money”—it suggests that, to some extent, it has already crossed the most painful investment stage of heavy assets. Only when a company proves it can convert huge investments into stable cash generation does it make sense for actions like buybacks, dividends, and cancellations. Otherwise, it’s just financial engineering.
SF now looks more like it’s telling the market: the toughest spending phase from the past few years is beginning to come due.
If you only understand SF as an express delivery company, then the shape of its business today is already somewhat misread.
Because the ceiling of express delivery means it can be at most a high-efficiency fulfillment company. But the ceiling of supply chains can become part of a customer management system.
This is why SF is even more worthy of attention.
In 2025, SF’s supply chain and international business revenue was 72.94 billion yuan; on the surface, growth was only 3.5%, which doesn’t look impressive. But if you strip out the freight forwarding business that is heavily affected by the global ocean shipping cycle, the core cross-border supply chain business’s year-over-year growth is as high as 32.3%.
This indicates that truly quality growth isn’t in the freight forwarding segment with low margins and strong cycles, but in supply chain solution businesses that bind customers’ processes more deeply.
In last year’s fourth quarter, SF established a group-level supply chain BG and built an “iron triangle” organization of sales/marketing, solutions, and operations, focusing on seven key industries such as high-tech and automotive. On the surface, this looks like an organizational adjustment; in reality, it is pushing SF’s commercial role from “logistics carrier” toward “supply chain collaborator.”
The difference is huge.
In the former role, what it sells is lanes and fulfillment;
In the latter role, what it sells is inventory efficiency, node layout, delivery certainty, and anti-risk capability.
Put more directly:
Previously, customers found SF to have their goods delivered;
Going forward, customers find SF to tell them—how to place warehouses, how to keep inventory, how to run lines, and how to control risk.
This isn’t a “moving goods” business—it’s a “decision-making” business.
Once SF goes deep into a customer’s front-warehousing layout, inventory forecasting, factory inbound logistics, and cross-border node dispatching, it is no longer just a logistics supplier that can be replaced anytime; it will gradually become a part of the customer’s operating system.
There are two benefits of this kind of business:
First, customer stickiness increases significantly.
Because what gets replaced isn’t just a carrier, but an entire set of coordination mechanisms.
Second, the profit logic is healthier.
Because it no longer prices purely by parcel counts, pieces, or freight rates; instead, it can share value arising from efficiency improvements and supply chain optimization.
This is what SF is truly worth revaluing.
The common ceiling for express companies is whether they can escape price competition after scaling up. But if SF can genuinely embed itself into the supply chain systems of manufacturing, retail, and overseas-going enterprises, then what it faces won’t be a valuation framework limited to a single express delivery industry, but something closer to an infrastructure platform plus an industry solution service provider framework.
That’s far more valuable than “sending packages.”
Looking back at this 6 billion yuan increase in the A-share buyback cap and the H-share buyback plan, the significance is clearer.
This isn’t just about managing market value, nor is it a conventional “keeping the board steady” move. It’s more like SF using real money to send a signal to the market:
The company has entered a new stage—slower heavy reinvestment, capacity beginning to release, ongoing improvement in cash flow, and higher quality of profits.
In this stage, management is more willing to shift capital allocation from “continuing large-scale investment” toward “improving shareholder returns” and “repairing the company’s valuation.”
But the issue also needs to be made clear: the current market controversy around SF is not only whether the stock price is low in the short term—it’s whether the market is willing to recognize that it is no longer a traditional express delivery stock.
If the market still uses only the framework of “express price war—per-parcel profit—industry cycle,” then SF’s valuation ceiling naturally won’t be too high. But if the market starts accepting another narrative—that SF is upgrading from a leading premium express player into a supply chain infrastructure platform with an aviation network, global nodes, and industry solution capabilities—then its valuation logic will change.
That’s also why SF can’t simply be compared horizontally with ordinary express companies.
Previously, the capital market was willing to give SF a higher premium than peers because it had a stronger direct-operated network and higher service barriers. In the future, if the Ezhou hub, international network, and supply chain BG continue to be realized, the source of SF’s premium will further become: it can not only deliver better, but also dispatch better, integrate better, and embed more deeply into the industrial chain.
That is SF’s true second growth curve.
The most important signal in SF’s annual report isn’t that it earned 11.11 billion yuan, nor is it that the buybacks and dividends are generous enough; it’s that it has begun to prove one thing:
At the most crowded and hardest time in the express delivery industry, it has already taken the lead in cutting from “scale competition” to “quality monetization.”
Domestic business provides stable cash cows; international heavy assets enter a release cycle; and the supply chain business raises the upper limit of the business model. Buybacks are just the result, not the cause; shareholder returns are just the surface, not the essence.
The essence is that SF is trying to get the market to answer again a question:
Is it still just an express delivery company, or is it a heavier, deeper, and more scarce logistics infrastructure company?
And the answer to this question determines not how its stock price moves this year, but what valuation it deserves over the coming years.
The “Notice on Carrying Out a Special Action to Empower Inclusive Computing Power for the Development of SMEs” issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on April 2, 2026, is a core deployment within it. All-optical switching is one of the core tasks, aiming to improve SMEs’ interactive experience in computing power applications such as AI by reducing network latency.
The policy hopes to achieve two major goals through all-optical switching technology:
Build a “millisecond-level” computing power circle: Promote the “millisecond-for-computing power in the metro area” special action in depth. The goal is to expand the coverage of the 1-millisecond latency circle in metro areas, providing SMEs with high-speed and stable network services.
Break through the bottleneck of the “last mile”: Move optical network equipment down to enterprise parks, industrial clusters, and other SME concentration areas, directly eliminating access bottlenecks on the user side and reducing computing power access latency.
Robotech is a supplier of high-precision intelligent manufacturing equipment and systems. Currently, it adopts a “clean energy + broad semiconductors” dual-wheel-drive strategy. Its main downstream application areas are the two industries of optoelectronics and semiconductors, and photovoltaics.
Photovoltaics business: Provides high-end automation equipment and intelligent manufacturing execution system software required for photovoltaic cell manufacturing, covering photovoltaic cell wafer automated equipment and end-to-end intelligent factory solutions. This is the company’s traditional main business.
Optoelectronics and semiconductors business: By completing the 100% acquisition of ficonTEC in 2025, it enters the globally leading track of automation micro-assembly, coupling, and testing for optoelectronic devices. ficonTEC holds a global leading position in automated packaging and testing for optical chips and optical modules. Its equipment precision reaches the 5nm-class, filling the domestic gap in sub-micron-scale pick-and-place systems.
In 2025, the revenue contribution of the optoelectronics and semiconductors business has reached 51.11%, exceeding the photovoltaics business (48.41%) for the first time, indicating that the company’s business focus is shifting from photovoltaics toward broad semiconductors.
**Special Statement: **
This article includes an audio interpretation; you can consult Huzi Ge;
The stocks mentioned in the text are only for investment logic and do not constitute any buy or sell recommendations.