The Zhitong Finance App learned that Northeast Securities released a research report saying that the downstream medical and aesthetic institutions sector has benefited from upstream supply expansion combined with industry regulation and standardization. The core growth driver of the upstream medical and aesthetic sector comes from the iteration of new product pipelines, and the performance of companies with differentiated pipeline reserves or products in the release cycle is more certain. With the rise of the national trend, national brand brands with the advantage of quality and price ratio are gradually favored by consumers.
The main views of Northeast Securities are as follows:
The beauty care index gradually stabilized after fluctuating and falling, and the overall performance was weaker than the market
The beauty care index showed a volatile trend in 2026Q1. 2026Q2 was affected by capital preferences, and the decline was significant; the fluctuation gradually stabilized in Q3.
Medicine and aesthetics: “volume increase and price reduction”, increase in penetration rate is the main driving force, and the value of the industrial chain is transferred to downstream institutions
(1) Supply side: Competition has intensified due to product expansion, and increased regulation has promoted the clearance of non-compliant production capacity. There are 21 domestic recycled materials products, and 10 recombinant collagen injection products have been approved. A total of 8 botulinum toxin products have been approved. The number of approved products has accelerated markedly, and the supply side of the industry has ushered in expansion. Furthermore, in 2026, Lepu Medical's PDRN injections are expected to be approved as Class III medical devices. The product side of the medical and aesthetic industry continues to expand, and supply is becoming more and more abundant. (2) Demand side: Increased penetration rate is the main driving force, and increasing institutional linkage rate reshapes bargaining power in the industrial chain. China's medical and aesthetic market is still in its early stages of growth. The penetration rate is lower than that of countries such as Japan. Compared with Japan's penetration rate, there is still room to double the number of people providing medical and aesthetic services in China. It has benefited from strict supervision, the clean-up of the industry, the increase in the chain chain rate of medical and aesthetic institutions, large centralized procurement volume of chain agencies, and increased bargaining power in the industrial chain.
Cosmetics: Channel dividends weaken, category growth rates diverge
(1) Popular domestic products are on the rise, middle and high-end domestic products are weak, and the cosmeceutical category is growing best. (2) The leading market share in the skincare market is stable, and domestic products need to be upgraded to high-end. The growth rate of the cosmetics category is superior to that of the beauty care market, and the competitive pattern of domestic products is stabilizing. Mao Geping, Kazilan, and Huaxizi are among the top three domestic brands. (3) The infant care market is still expanding. In 2025, the market size has reached 35 billion yuan/ +7.5%. Domestic brands rely on localization advantages, perfect supply chains and production systems to break through with the ultimate cost performance ratio. (4) Cosmetics online traffic dividends continued to peak, sales expenses increased, and gross sales margins continued to narrow.
Risk warning: Consumption recovery falls short of expectations; the pace of new products falls short of expectations; industry regulations are becoming stricter; performance forecasts and valuation judgments fall short of expectations.