Are instant noodles selling well again? The performance of the three major giants has collectively rebounded.

With the release of interim performance reports from Uni-President and Master Kong, the recovery of the instant noodle business has drawn widespread attention, and related topics such as "instant noodles are selling well again" have hit the top search trends.

The H1 performance report recently released by Uni-President China (00220.HK) shows that during the reporting period, its total revenue reached 17.32 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.4%; net profit attributable to owners of the parent company stood at 1.4 billion yuan, up 9% year on year. Among that, the revenue of the food business dominated by instant noodles was 5.63 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of 4.7% and accounting for 32.5% of the total revenue; segment profit hit 254 million yuan, rising 34% year on year.

Uni-President's food business mainly covers instant noodle products including bowl noodles, bagged noodles and crispy noodles, with core product lines including Tangdaren, Uni-President Pickled Cabbage Beef Noodles, Qiehuang and Manhan Feast. In its financial report, Uni-President stated that in the first half of 2026, Manhan Feast focused on the "Scallion Braised Beef Noodles" product line, achieving high double-digit growth in brand revenue; "Qiehuang" also recorded sustained double-digit revenue growth.

The interim performance report of another instant noodle giant Master Kong Holdings (00322.HK) shows that in H1 this year, it achieved a revenue of 40.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.1%; profit attributable to shareholders reached 2.433 billion yuan, up 7.1% year on year. Among that, the revenue of the instant noodle business was 13.73 billion yuan, representing a 2% year-on-year growth and accounting for 33.9% of the total revenue; the gross profit margin increased from 27.8% to 30.3%, and profit attributable to shareholders rose 5.5% year on year to 1.003 billion yuan.

Financial report data shows that the main driving force behind Master Kong's instant noodle performance growth comes from mid-priced and high-priced noodles. Specifically, high-priced bagged noodles generated a revenue of 5.259 billion yuan, up 3.3% year on year; mid-priced bagged noodles recorded a revenue of 1.41 billion yuan, representing a 7.8% year-on-year increase.

Sales performance of Master Kong instant noodles. Source: Master Kong's announcement

In addition, Nissin Foods (01475.HK) has not yet released its H1 financial report, but according to its performance forecast, the net external sales of its China business in the second quarter reached 18.99 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 13.8%, with the growth mainly driven by the instant noodle business.

Some analysts believe that this round of performance growth for instant noodle enterprises is mainly driven by price increases, which means "instant noodles are sold at higher prices". The *2025 China Instant Noodle Industry Report* released by Qince Consumption Research shows that the CAGR of mid-to-high end instant noodles from 2020 to 2026 can reach 11.6%, 4.8 times that of low-end products. Although the price range of 2.6-5 yuan remains the mainstream of the market, the proportion of the price range above 5 yuan has approached 48%.

For many years in the past, the instant noodle industry experienced a long period of downturn. With the rise of food delivery platforms, the convenience advantage of instant noodles was weakened. At the same time, public opinion labels such as "high oil content", "high salt", "unhealthy" and "lack of nutrition" also made instant noodles gradually ignored by consumers pursuing healthy diets.

Data from the World Instant Noodles Association shows that the demand for instant noodles in mainland China and Hong Kong dropped from 463.6 billion servings in 2020 to 422.1 billion servings in 2023, with a cumulative decrease of about 40 billion servings in three years. However, in 2024, the demand for instant noodles in mainland China and Hong Kong rebounded to 438 billion servings. According to data from iiMedia Research, the size of China's instant noodle market reached 184.99 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 7.9%. Some analysts believe that as the subsidies for food delivery services fade away, the cost-effectiveness advantage of instant noodles has re-emerged, driving a certain degree of demand recovery.

Since last year, the performance of instant noodle enterprises has shown an upward trend. In 2025, the revenue of Master Kong's instant noodle business increased by 0.02% year on year, marking the first positive growth since 2023; the revenue of Uni-President's food segment exceeded 10.493 billion yuan, returning to the 10-billion-yuan scale after two years, with a year-on-year growth of 4.95%. Nissin Foods' revenue in mainland China reached 2.34 billion Hong Kong dollars, up 3.4% year on year; Samyang Foods' global sales increased by 36.1% year on year, and the annual sales of its Buldak Noodle series in the Chinese market alone exceeded 300 million servings.

To attract more young consumers, instant noodle enterprises have launched a variety of innovative marketing campaigns. For example, Master Kong's Pickled Cabbage Beef Noodles collaborated with the cartoon image of *The Monkey King* to arouse emotional resonance among consumers; its "Tomato and Egg Beef Noodles" co-branded with the cartoon character "Little Worm" to bind the healing scenario of traveling, and carried out marketing campaigns during the school opening season to deeply engage campus consumer groups; its Buldak Noodle series adopted a formula with seven types of chili peppers to create an extremely satisfying differentiated experience, and collaborated with the classic cartoon image of *The King's Avatar* to deeply operate young consumer groups, accelerating the penetration rate and circle influence of the Buldak Noodle category.

Uni-President focuses on the middle class. For example, its "Manhan Feast" product line takes "if you want to eat meat, choose Manhan Feast" as the core proposition, and continues to deeply cultivate the middle-class consumer group. In terms of channels, it cooperated with Sam's Club targeting the new middle class to jointly launch "Shangyao Scallop Silver Thread Noodles", priced at 17.48 yuan per bag; in terms of communication, it focuses on matrix-style food content creation and recommendation on Xiaohongshu.

On Xiaohongshu, "magic ways to cook instant noodles" has become a huge content pool. Public data shows that as of August 14, 2026, with "magic ways to cook instant noodles" as the keyword on Xiaohongshu, the total views of related content have reached 3.16 billion, with more than 5.15 million discussions.

According to data from Ma Shangying, the top 5 groups by market share in the instant noodle market in Q2 2026 are still Master Kong, Uni-President, Baixiang, Jinmailang and Samyang, with a combined market share of 83.77%, indicating a high market concentration. In terms of share changes, only Baixiang recorded a year-on-year decline in market share, while the rest of the groups all saw a year-on-year increase in market share.

This article is from Jiemian News, reported by HOU Ruining, authorized for release by 36Kr.