Online attacks hurt Nongfu Spring

Jamie Zhang

Nongfu Spring (9633) said its first-half net profit grew 8 percent to 6.2 billion yuan (HK$6.78 billion) but sales of its drinking water products were affected by online attacks and malicious defamation.

The group saw its net profit at 6.24 billion yuan, an increase of 8 percent year-on-year.

Revenue for the first half of this year was 22.17 billion yuan, an increase of 8.4 percent year-on-year.

Nongfu stated that its sales increased by 19 percent year-on-year in the first two months of this year. However, since the end of February, there have been a large number of online attacks and malicious defamation against the company and its founders on the internet, which have had a serious negative impact on the brand and sales, it said.

In the first half of 2024, revenue from packaged drinking water products fell 18.3 percent to 8.53 billion yuan compared with the same period of last year, accounting for 38.5 percent of the total revenue.

The proportion of revenue from beverage products to total revenue was 61.1 percent. Among them, revenue from tea beverage products increased significantly by 59.5 percent to 8.43 billion yuan.

The revenue of functional beverage products rose by 3.8 percent year-on-year to 2.55 billion yuan, while revenue of fruit juice beverage products rose by 25.4 percent to 2.11 billion yuan.