A positive flywheel of 'cost optimization - price reduction - business growth - further cost reduction.'


Author |Guantao
Editor |Novice
On March 30, J&T Express (01519.HK) officially announced its full-year 2025 financial results: total annual revenue reached $12.158 billion, an increase of 18.5% year-on-year, with adjusted net profit at $430 million (approximately 3 billion RMB), surging 112.3% year-on-year. This profit growth not only far exceeds that of domestic peers but also stands out globally in the express delivery industry!
In 2025, J&T’s global parcel volume surpassed 30 billion for the first time, reaching 30.13 billion parcels, marking a year-on-year growth of 22.2%. The average daily parcel volume hit 82.5 million, increasing by 22.6% year-on-year, signifying the emergence of a global logistics operator capable of handling over 80 million parcels per day.
So, in 2025, as the industry collectively moves away from price wars to value competition, how did J&T manage to achieve dual growth in both volume and profitability? Where does 'J&T Speed' come from?

From Southeast Asia Leader to Global Player: J&T's Growth Logic in 2025
Let’s start by finding answers in the data.
Currently, J&T's express delivery business covers 13 countries, including China, and is reported under three major regions: China, Southeast Asia, and new markets.

The domestic market contributes the largest volume of business for J&T currently. In 2025, it handled 22.07 billion parcels, a year-on-year increase of 11.4%, with revenue growing by 5% year-on-year, consistent with the overall performance reported by the National Postal Service.

(Source: Choice data, Chart by Market Value Storm APP)
Objectively speaking, after nearly two decades of rapid development, China's express delivery market has entered a high-quality development phase and is expected to grow in tandem with consumer spending in the future.
In 2025, J&T Express's domestic business volume ranking rose to fifth place. In terms of competition, the company still positions itself as a 'follower,' while defining the domestic market as a 'talent and model export base' to support its global expansion. Through learning, exchanges, and healthy competition with domestic peers, the company aims to transform the domestic market into a technological high ground.
The Southeast Asian market, as J&T Express’s stronghold, became the most crucial driver of the company’s revenue growth in 2025.
In 2025, J&T Express achieved revenue of $4.502 billion in Southeast Asia, representing a year-on-year increase of 40.0%. Adjusted EBIT reached $538 million, up 77.5% year-on-year, with an adjusted EBIT margin of 11.9%, improving by 2.5 percentage points from the previous year.
In terms of market share, J&T Express's share in Southeast Asia increased from 28.6% in 2024 to 34.4% in 2025, maintaining its position as the top player in the region’s express delivery industry for six consecutive years. The total annual parcel volume in Southeast Asia also reached 7.66 billion pieces, growing by 67.8% year-on-year.Achieving a comprehensive improvement in volume, quality, and efficiency.
New markets represented by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Mexico, Brazil, and Egypt are the most noteworthy part of J&T Express’s 2025 financial report.
In 2025, J&T Express generated revenue of $870 million in new markets, marking a year-on-year increase of 51.1%. Adjusted EBIT turned profitable for the first time, reaching $37.77 million.This indicates that J&T Express’s new market operations have officially entered the 'profit inflection point phase,' which is expected to become the company’s third growth curve in the future.
Steady growth and high-quality development in the domestic market, incremental gains, expanding market share, and increasing profits in Southeast Asia are all advancing in tandem, while new markets have reached a turning point towards profitability — this is the logic behind J&T's 2025 performance. Overseas markets have become a new engine of growth for J&T.

High margins and high growth: The blue ocean opportunity in emerging markets
Unlike the saturated competition stage in the domestic express delivery market, both the Southeast Asian market and new markets hold much stronger growth potential.
Let’s start with Southeast Asia. In 2025, the nominal GDP of Southeast Asia will reach 4.1 trillion US dollars, growing by 4.9% year-on-year, maintaining a high level of economic activity. It is projected that from 2026 to 2030, the compound annual growth rate of Southeast Asia's nominal GDP will reach 6.7%.
With a population of 700 million, a median age of 30.9 years, an urbanization rate of 52.8%, and a continuous release of labor dividends, the region is currently at an optimal demographic structure, holding the strongest consumption potential and undergoing the fastest urbanization process in its history.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the total retail sales in Southeast Asia in 2025 will reach 1.2 trillion US dollars, growing by 14% year-on-year. Moreover, 23.3% of the population in Southeast Asia is under 15 years old, and the younger demographic naturally aligns with consumer habits like online shopping and social commerce.
As the two largest markets in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico's e-commerce retail transaction volumes will reach 60.93 billion and 58.63 billion US dollars respectively in 2025, growing by 15.2% and 25.9% year-on-year.
More importantly, the e-commerce penetration rates in these markets are still relatively low. Brazil and Mexico's e-commerce penetration rates are 22.5% and 19.1%, respectively, far below China’s 46.8%.
Benefiting from economic development and diversified strategies, the e-commerce and express delivery industries in the Middle East are also accelerating in tandem.
In 2025, the combined e-commerce retail sales of three Middle Eastern countries (the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt) will reach 42.37 billion US dollars, growing by 28.7% year-on-year (compared to 25.3% in 2024); the volume of express parcels will reach 990 million pieces, growing by 20.8% year-on-year (compared to 17.9% in 2024); and the per capita parcel volume will increase from 5.4 to 6.3 pieces, showing strong growth momentum.
Moreover, the high economic levels of the UAE and Saudi Arabia have laid a solid foundation for the rapid development of the e-commerce express industry.
By the end of 2025, J&T Express will operate 44 transfer centers, 300 mainline vehicles, and numerous branch line vehicles in new markets, with approximately 2,000 outlets.
Another important financial insight worth noting is that the gross margin in both the Southeast Asian and emerging markets is significantly higher than domestically. For instance, in the Southeast Asian market, the gross margin reached 19.66% in 2025, nearly three times that of the domestic market.

(Source: Choice data, Chart by Market Value Storm APP)
This means that as the potential of the Southeast Asian and new markets continues to be unleashed, J&T Express's future performance growth will be even more substantial.
Supporting this growth is not only the structural dividends of regional markets but also the profound restructuring of logistics demand driven by the global e-commerce ecosystem, particularly the wave of social commerce.

Capitalizing on the social commerce dividend and seizing new increments in global express delivery
As a new business model integrating content creation, social interaction, and instant transactions, social commerce is reshaping the global retail landscape at an unprecedented pace.
Statistics from Frost & Sullivan show that in 2025, the retail transaction volume of social commerce reached $151.73 billion, a year-on-year increase of 39.1%, following a 33.2% growth rate in 2024, marking two consecutive years of rapid expansion.
With the rapid rise of social commerce on a global scale, the express logistics industry is also encountering new structural growth opportunities.
The unique operational model of social commerce—driven by short videos and live-streamed product sales, emphasizing instant gratification and impulse buying—has placed unprecedented demands on logistics services.
Another core characteristic of social commerce logistics is its high sensitivity to costs. The free shipping model transfers fulfillment cost pressures to the platform, offering structural opportunities to courier service providers with economies of scale and cost advantages.
In 2025, Southeast Asia's social commerce transaction volume reached $151.73 billion, a year-on-year increase of 39.1%, accounting for 49.9% of total e-commerce transactions, nearly half the market. Through its deep strategic partnership with TikTok Shop, J&T Express became its most important logistics partner in Southeast Asia.
Research from Singapore-based venture capital and tech consultancy Momentum Works shows that in Q4 2025, J&T Express achieved an average daily parcel delivery volume of 26.5 million, marking a year-on-year growth of 73.6%. This increase was primarily driven by delivery activities related to TikTok Shop.

J&T Express has established deep collaborative partnerships with leading e-commerce platforms such as Shopee, Lazada, PDD Holdings, Taobao Tmall, SHEIN, Mercado Libre, and Temu, as well as social commerce and live-streaming platforms like TikTok, Kwai, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu.
Among these, close cooperation with global cross-border e-commerce platforms including SHEIN, Temu, TikTok, and AliExpress has become a key driver behind J&T Express’s strong performance in Southeast Asia and emerging markets.
In 2025, J&T Express partnered with Mercado Libre, Latin America’s largest e-commerce platform, and won the “Transporter of the Year” award, reflecting recognition of its service capabilities.
As an independent third-party logistics provider, J&T Express faces no conflicts of interest with platform operators and can offer equally high-quality logistics services to all e-commerce platforms.This means that under the premise of ensuring service quality, cost control becomes its most critical competitive advantage.
Within China, J&T Express has built a strong cost moat by reducing its per-parcel cost to a historic low of $0.28.
In Southeast Asia, economies of scale have driven the single-ticket cost down to $0.48, providing customers with more competitive pricing while boosting the adjusted EBIT margin to 11.9%, a win-win situation.
As J&T Express stated in its earnings announcement, leveraging its cost advantage, the company has built a positive flywheel of 'cost optimization—price reduction—business growth—further cost reduction,' mutually benefiting e-commerce platforms and achieving dual leadership in cost and market share.


In the past few years, Chinese courier companies' overseas expansion was often seen as a capital story; however, J&T Express's 2025 financial report has made this story a reality.
The China market is J&T Express's 'training ground,' where extreme operational efficiency and cost control capabilities were developed and systematically exported to Southeast Asia, then replicated in emerging markets.
In 2025, J&T Express demonstrated with real results: the competitiveness of China's courier industry has evolved from domestic 'price wars' to become an irreplicable moat within the global supply chain.
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