Duan Yongping bought the dip.

A miraculous scene appeared.

According to information from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Duan Yongping, through H&H International Investment, LLC, which he controls, suddenly increased his shareholding in Pop Mart to 5.69%, with a market value of the holdings exceeding HK$11 billion, becoming the company's second-largest shareholder.

Old Duan has changed.

Remember at the end of last year, Duan Yongping once said bluntly that "he couldn't understand Pop Mart and wouldn't invest in it", but his attitude took a huge turn this year - he sold his Shenhua assets that he had held for more than a decade and replaced them all with Pop Mart stocks. He even changed his profile picture to a table full of Pop Mart products.

No one expected that with this purchase, he became the company's second-largest shareholder. Some people joked that Uncle Duan has completely "fallen into the pit".

Buying Against the Trend, Pop Mart's Market Value Soars by HK$13 Billion

This was not a whim.

The story starts in August 2025. At that time, the entire consumer sector was boiling. Pop Mart's stock price was about to reach its all-time high of HK$339. Some investors even compared it to Moutai in the new consumer field and eagerly asked for Duan Yongping's opinion.

However, Duan Yongping gave an unexpected answer on his personal social account "The Great Way Is Formless and I Have a Shape": Pop Mart's products are really interesting, and its founder is also very interesting. It's amazing that the company has achieved what it has today, but he couldn't see how the company would be in ten years.

His concerns were simple and straightforward: Could trendy toys be just a passing fad, like the once-popular electronic pets, hula hoops, and Rubik's Cubes? "Don't touch what you don't understand" is an unshakable investment rule for Duan Yongping.

In the following months, his attitude remained unchanged. When talking about Pop Mart again in December 2025, he still said bluntly: "I don't understand it, so I won't invest" and "Maybe I'm too old to understand this product." In January 2026, he once again admitted that he had roughly looked at Pop Mart but still couldn't understand "why people need this thing. What if no one wants it in a couple of years?"

The change came faster than expected.

In March 2026, Pop Mart released its full-year financial report for 2025: The annual revenue was 37.12 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 184.7%; the adjusted net profit was 13.08 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 284.5%; the revenue of the core IP LABUBU family exceeded 10 billion yuan. This was a report card that was enough to catch investors' attention.

However, the market gave the opposite response. After the release of the financial report, Pop Mart's stock price plummeted. It dropped by more than 34% within seven trading days. Looking at a longer period, in the past few months, the company's market value evaporated by nearly HK$250 billion from its peak of HK$450 billion, almost halving.

While the selling spree was still fresh in people's memory, Duan Yongping went against the crowd and calmly studied this trendy toy company.

"I spent some time looking at Pop Mart again these days and decided to take back my previous statement about not investing." On March 30, he officially changed his tune in public.

After that, he read Wang Ning's interview record "Because of Uniqueness" and went to a shopping mall in the United States in person. He squatted at the entrance of the Pop Mart store to count the number of customers. The result surprised him: The small store had excellent business. Most of the customers entering the store were local adults, and the proportion of Chinese was only about 10%.

By then, Pop Mart had been summarized by him as a "three-good company" - right business, right people, right price. "I think Pop Mart is actually a pioneer in the internationalization of Chinese products. Other companies don't seem to have reached this level yet." He also announced that he was officially starting to invest in Pop Mart and didn't forget to suggest: "Dads with daughters can take their daughters to Pop Mart to buy a few things on weekends. It's a rare bonding opportunity."

His attitude took a 180-degree turn. Duan Yongping turned his investment logic into a subtle metaphor: "The 'velocity' in economics is actually the 'acceleration' in physics. When investing, what you're buying is the future total, which is the 'total length' obtained by multiplying the 'velocity' in physics by 'time'."

It sounds a bit obscure at first. But looking at his past investments, from Apple, Moutai, NetEase to Tencent and Pinduoduo, his investment logic is actually very simple: Invest in future cash flows, invest in business models, and invest in people.

As we can see, on May 7, he sold his Shenhua assets that he had held for more than a decade and switched to Pop Mart, using real money to become the company's second-largest shareholder. Duan Yongping's rare shareholding disclosure caused Pop Mart's stock price to rise by nearly 6% during intraday trading today, and its market value soared by more than HK$13 billion.

Heavy Investment in Wang Ning

It's worth mentioning that Duan Yongping's appreciation for Wang Ning has remained unchanged all along.

Remember the winter of 2020 - Wang Ning, then 33 years old, led Pop Mart to ring the bell at its IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the early years, Wang Ning founded Pop Mart with his college classmates. In 2016, they launched the first Molly Zodiac blind boxes, which became an instant hit and started a trend among Generation Z to buy blind boxes.

Once regarded as an "unintelligible business", Pop Mart went through a difficult period of being ignored. Finally, in December 2020, it was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with an opening market value of more than HK$100 billion. In the past two years, its market value soared to HK$450 billion. This was an unforgettable scene in the Hong Kong stock market's consumer sector.

Wang Ning is 39 years old this year. This was also the age when Duan Yongping stepped back and focused on value investment. At that time, Wang Ning was still a college student, but the generation gap didn't stop Duan Yongping from appreciating this young man.

"Wang Ning's understanding and pursuit of his products are on the same level as Steve Jobs', at least in the future." Not long ago, he evaluated Wang Ning on the social platform. Then he added: "Wang Ning seems to have a slightly better understanding of business than Steve Jobs."

The next day, he further explained: "Many people may misunderstand this statement because Steve Jobs is a god. In fact, Steve Jobs' understanding of business is not that top-notch."

This can be said to be a very high evaluation, but it's not surprising if you think about it. After all, Duan Yongping himself comes from the real business world. He founded BBK, OPPO, and vivo. He knows how difficult it is for a founder to combine products and business. Perhaps, Duan Yongping also saw his younger self in Wang Ning.

Someone asked him if seeing Wang Ning and Pop Mart reminded him of the days when he and his friends struggled. Duan Yongping replied: "Yes, and I'm very touched and understand it very well."

This is exactly the aspect of "investing in people" in his value investment approach.

Duan Yongping has changed, but in a way, he hasn't. He is still the old Duan who "doesn't touch what he doesn't understand and concentrates his investment when he does understand". As for whether this investment will become another "legendary work"? I believe time will tell.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute any investment advice. The market is risky, and investment requires caution. Please make independent judgments and decisions.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment World" (ID: pedaily2012), written by Zhou Jiali and published by 36Kr with authorization.