The Zhitong Finance App learned that on October 26, Xinhuo Group (01611) first announced the disclosure of operating data for September 2026 and the third quarter — this is the first complete “report card” handed over by the company since announcing its strategic transformation at the end of August 2025.
From US$85 million a year ago to US$221 million, the capacity of the Xinhuo Asset Management Pool has doubled 1.6 times in two quarters and increased 7 times in one year; the amount of escrow jumped from US$9.47 million to US$52.68 million, 5.6 times in half a year; the quarterly transaction volume was US$342 million, a compound increase of 66.0%; according to statistics, the number of Group customers has moved from 156 to 2,082, 12.3 times a year — on average, every day, the company writes 5 more names in the roster.
In addition to the steep growth curve of 141.8% in the 2026 semi-annual report — net profit growth curve — Q3 may still maintain a strong growth trend. In the Asian digital asset finance landscape, Xinhuo Group is using a set of impressive operating data to send a clear signal to the secondary market: the strategic transformation from low-margin OTC traders to digital asset wealth management has entered the harvest period.
When AUM becomes the main axis: transactions and trusts are accelerating
Looking at it separately, the growth of Xinhuo is not a one-man show of a single business, but rather the resonance of multiple lines such as asset management, transactions, and trusts.
The asset management business is the brightest line: asset management AUM increased from US$85 million to US$221 million, AUM had a compound growth of 60.8% in half a year, and the number of asset management clients increased from 41 to 71. In the product matrix, Alpha BTC, the first compliant BTC-based asset management service in Hong Kong, focuses on steady value addition. The neutral quantitative arbitrage strategy has an actual record of 15.66% annualized, 7.22 sharp ratio, and maximum retracement of only 0.82%, making it a scarce variety in a volatile market — this set of data is decoupled from the rise and fall of currency prices, and is the “ballast stone” that high-net-worth customers need most during the fluctuation cycle.
The crypto asset trading business also accelerated: the volume of transactions in the third quarter was US$342 million, with a compound quarterly increase of 66.0%. The steepest increase was in the trust and escrow business — the amount of escrow jumped from 9.47 million US dollars to 52.68 million US dollars, with a compound growth rate of 135.9%, and the number of escrow customers nearly doubled to 756 in half a year. Custody is the front stop of asset management. Customers trust the assets to the company before they can discuss entrusting management — this indicator is ahead of AUM.
From a chain perspective, this is not a victory for each business line, but rather a positive cycle of “transaction drainage — trust building trust — asset management and undertaking assets” begins to revolve.
The succession of the three flywheels stemmed from Xinhuo Group's strategic transformation in August 2025. At that time, Xinhuo announced its transformation into a “private-level digital asset manager”, and then completed the milestone layout in 2026: officially changing the name and launching of the international brand “Bitfire” in March; acquiring Avenir's investment and trading operation system in April; launching Hong Kong's first compliant BTC-based asset management product “Alpha BTC” in May; and entering RWA's integrated operation business in August.
It is worth mentioning that in October, Euromoney awarded the “Best Digital Master Broker in Asia Pacific” to Xinhuo Group in 2026. The institutions that won the same list were all established financial giants such as HSBC, UBS, and DBS, and Xinhuo became the only Hong Kong Web3 native financial institution selected.
This series of actions is not a piecemeal experiment, but a complete set of strategic puzzles — based on the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission's Class 1, 4, and 9 licenses and TCSP trust licenses, plus US and Canadian licenses — to provide compliance guarantees for global digital asset liquidity and establish a full-chain compliance service system covering transactions, asset management, trusteeship, and trust.
Doubling gross profit: The revenue structure is actively changing blood, and a financial inflection point may have already appeared
The scale is moving forward at a rapid pace, but profit realization is lagging behind. At this stage, the Group's financial inflection point may not yet be reached. However, as can be seen from the latest business and financial data, the Group's revenue structure has begun to undergo profound changes, and the transformation is still in the process of continuing to advance.
Behind a set of seemingly contradictory data in the 2026 semi-annual report, the Group's active business structure changed blood: the 2026 interim results showed revenue of HK$1,966 billion, down 43.1% year on year — shrinking low gross profit transaction revenue; gross profit of HK$27 million, up 141.8% year on year — increasing new high-margin businesses such as asset management and escrow. The income structure is based on active blood exchange.
A loss of HK$245 million before tax, of which HK$154 million was a book loss due to changes in the fair value of crypto assets and did not generate a cash outflow; what really reflected the intention to invest was a 139.8% year-on-year increase in R&D expenditure and a 210.3% increase in administrative expenses — licenses, systems, and teams were all upfront investments.
The Zhitong Finance App reminds that there is a clear time gap between operating data and financial data: AUM, hosting scale, and number of customers are all leading indicators, while revenue recognition from management fees and performance fees lags behind scale growth. In other words, scale is already ahead, and reported profit is a backward cashing variable. The doubling of gross profit is a watershed signal for the transition from the investment period to the harvest period.
Sustainability of growth: the four barriers
What the market then wants to ask is whether growth can continue and how deep the support is.
The first barrier is licensing and product platformization. Xinhuo is the only listed company in Hong Kong that also holds the Securities Regulatory Commission's Class 1, 4, and 9 licenses and TCSP trust licenses. It is also the first licensed institution authorized to provide discretionary virtual asset account management, and superimposes the US, Canadian MSB and Japan licenses to form a closed loop of compliance covering the entire chain of transactions, asset management, trusteeship, and trust. In the Hong Kong market where a “license is a barrier”, these four certificates combined are a ceiling of trust for customers and a compliance moat for scale expansion.
The second one is an all-star management team. In August 2025, the core executives of Huobi and Hashkey, Weng Xiaoqi, Xing Yue, Guo Wenbin, and others, officially announced their entry into Xinhuo, and completed a series of major actions such as the acquisition and merger of the Japanese exchange BitTrade, the release of new strategies, and brand upgrades in the same year; in April 2026, Xinhuo imported a 20-person investment, trading, risk control team and a complete AvenirX system from the Avenir system of the Li Lin family's office for a long time — this team has been making large amounts of OTC, capital rate arbitrage, base margin arbitrage, dynamic hedging, and option enhancements over a long period of time Go beyond the extreme in multiple rounds The market. In June, Fu Peng, a well-known economist, joined as chief economist to establish a macroeconomic research and institutional strategy system. The former provides practical alpha, while the latter complements the macro-research framework, making the product move from “profitable” to “explainable, replicable, and institutionalized.”
The third is the deepening of the dual market. Hong Kong provides a high level of asset management and institutional capital, and Japan's BitTrade provides retail traffic and compliant fiat currency channels — 306,000 users and US$113 million in trusteeship assets. It is not only a safety cushion for cash flow, but also a replicable model for the Hong Kong model.
The fourth step is the platform-based revenue ladder. The first layer is exchange transaction revenue (BitTrade) to provide stable cash flow; the second layer is asset management and escrow fee income (Bitfire Premium) to open up high margin space; and the third layer is revenue from RWA, main brokers, and platform-based operations. Once the three-level transition is successful, Xinhuo's revenue will be cut from “trading commissions that watch the sky” to a “continuous charge according to AUM” financial service model.
epilogue
Looking at it from a higher level, Xinhuo Group's strategic narrative reflects a major trend in the digital asset industry's evolution from “barbaric growth” to a “compliant structure.” As global financial infrastructure accelerates to tokenization, compliance is no longer an option but a ticket. With Hong Kong as its fulcrum and license as leverage, Xinhuo is building not only a digital asset wealth management company, but also an institutional-level service infrastructure connecting traditional finance with the Web3 world.
For institutional investors in the secondary market, focusing on Xinhuo Group is essentially betting on a larger proposition — in the process of digital assets moving from edge innovation to mainstream financial architecture, whoever can take the lead in completing compliance infrastructure cards will take the lead in the next round of value revaluation.