Everyone assumes the express delivery industry is still mired in cutthroat price wars, but in fact, the industry giants have already sneaked in under the radar.
The real signal that the express delivery industry has entered a new competitive stage is not the continued growth of parcels, but the fact that some companies have started to simultaneously secure more parcels, higher market share and better profits. Scale still matters, but relying solely on low prices to drive order volume can no longer explain the new competitive gaps.
In the first half of 2026, STO Express completed 142.99 billion express business parcels, a year-on-year increase of 15.81%; its market share rose to 14.24%, up 1.33 percentage points year on year; operating revenue reached 32.491 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.83%; net profit attributable to shareholders was 1.035 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 128.31%, and non-recurring profit and loss adjusted net profit attributable to shareholders was 1.04 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 138.38% (Source: 2026 Interim Report of STO Express, August 28, 2026).
In the same period, the national express business volume reached 100.38 billion parcels, a year-on-year increase of 5.0%. STO's parcel volume growth rate is significantly faster than the industry average; its per-parcel revenue from express services rose to 2.24 yuan, an increase of 0.24 yuan year on year, and the gross profit margin of express services was 6.97%, up 2.08 percentage points year on year. The company explained that the rise in per-parcel revenue is related to factors such as the rational price rebound from the industry's "anti-involution" trend and the acquisition of Danniao Logistics (Source: 2026 Interim Report of STO Express, August 28, 2026).
Thus the question arises: when express delivery competition shifts from "who is cheaper" to "who can improve efficiency while growing in scale", where is the next increment that can expand coverage and market share? Will the "express delivery to villages" initiative, which has been repeatedly highlighted in policies in 2026, become a new breakthrough point?
Competition begins to focus on "scale plus efficiency"
The significance of STO's interim report lies in the more obvious positive correlation between "volume" and "efficiency". 142.99 billion parcels prove that the scale is still growing, the 14.24% market share shows that the share is increasing, and the improvement of per-parcel revenue and gross profit margin indicates that the growth does not only come from lower prices. For the express delivery industry, the next round of competition will increasingly resemble a comprehensive report card: parcel volume, market share, timeliness, network stability and per-parcel cost need to be considered together.
Key Data: STO's business volume in the first half of 2026 was 142.99 billion parcels, a year-on-year increase of 15.81%; market share was 14.24%, up 1.33 percentage points year on year; per-parcel revenue from express services was 2.24 yuan, an increase of 0.24 yuan year on year; gross profit margin of express services was 6.97%, up 2.08 percentage points year on year (Source: 2026 Interim Report of STO Express, August 28, 2026).
As the networks in urban areas and mainstream e-commerce regions become increasingly mature, the marginal investment required to continue competing for the same batch of high-density parcels will keep rising. The rural market, which used to have high service costs and low network density, thus begins to gain new competitive significance.
How Much Room for Growth Is There in Rural Areas
The State Post Bureau of China disclosed at its regular press conference for the first quarter of 2026 that by the end of 2025, the proportion of administrative villages with integrated village-level delivery and logistics service stations had reached 80%; the proportion of administrative villages covered by directly-operated express enterprises represented by SF Express and JD Express exceeded 90%, and the village access rate of franchise-based express enterprises rose to about one third (Source: State Post Bureau of China, January 2026).
This set of data shows that rural areas are not blank zones for express delivery, but there are still obvious gaps between different network operation models. STO operates a franchise-based express network and is simultaneously promoting the integration of the Danniao quality network; it needs to be emphasized that the publicly announced "one third" is the overall caliber of all franchise-based enterprises, not the data of STO alone. For franchise-based enterprises, the real growth space comes down to one question: can they continue to sink services at lower costs?
Policies Are Reducing the Cost of the Last Mile
The 2026 No. 1 Central Document proposes to support the co-construction and sharing of rural delivery and logistics facilities, promote the integrated development of rural passenger, cargo and postal services, implement joint distribution, and further expand express delivery services to villages (Source: 2026 No. 1 Central Document, February 3, 2026). On July 3, 2026, six government departments further proposed that by the end of 2027, the number of county-township-village level integrated passenger, cargo and postal service stations across the country should reach more than 220,000, and the number of rural passenger-cargo-postal cooperation lines should exceed 20,000, while encouraging rural passenger transport to deliver mails and parcels, unified warehousing and joint distribution, and information sharing (Source: Ministry of Transport, July 3, 2026).
The significance of this policy for express delivery enterprises is not to "open a few more village-level outlets", but to split the end-point costs that were previously borne by a single brand among passenger transport, postal services, express delivery providers and village-level stations for shared allocation. If there is a favorable industry trend, the primary reason is not that the rural market is vast, but that the cost structure of low-density markets is changing.
Real Increment Depends on Two-Way Traffic Flow
Simply delivering urban parcels to villages is not enough to form a profitable business. In April 2026, the State Post Bureau of China and three other departments announced 100 demonstration zones for the coordinated development of rural e-commerce and express delivery, and 219 demonstration projects for express delivery services supporting modern agriculture (Source: State Post Bureau of China, April 30, 2026). Policies are integrating the "consumer goods going to rural areas" and "agricultural products going to urban areas" into the same network.
Anxi, Fujian Province has opened 103 integrated passenger-cargo-postal lines through models such as "transport-postal cooperation", "postal-express cooperation" and "inter-express cooperation", and officially disclosed that the distribution cost has been reduced by about 30%; in 2025, the volume of express delivery services for tea in Quanzhou reached 105.59 million parcels (Source: Quanzhou Postal Administration, May 18, 2026). One local sample cannot represent the whole country, but it proves that once the rural network undertakes both downward consumer parcels and upward industrial parcels, the parcel density and transportation efficiency can be improved at the same time.
By the end of July 2026, 17 pilot counties in central and western China had added 2,244 new administrative villages to the "express delivery to villages" coverage relying on the universal postal service network, completing 94% of the bottom-line target, and the cooperative business volume increased by 217% compared with that before the pilot (Source: State Post Bureau of China, August 20, 2026). The value of this pilot does not lie in the postal service alone, but in the collaboration between the postal network and express delivery enterprises, connecting regions that previously had excessively high coverage costs to the shared network.
What Does This Have to Do With STO Express
STO's interim report does not list "express delivery to villages" as the core reason for its performance growth in the first half of 2026, so the 142.99 billion parcels cannot be directly attributed to the rural market. What the original data can prove is that STO has simultaneously improved in scale, market share, per-parcel revenue and profit; what the rural delivery data can prove is that franchise-based networks still have coverage space, and joint distribution is lowering the threshold for service sinking.
The following are inferences for readers' reference. Putting the two sets of facts together, express delivery to villages is more like an "optional increment" for the next round of competition, rather than a performance trend that has already been realized. For STO and other franchise-based express enterprises, if the shared end-point network can reduce the cost of delivering to villages, and the upward flow of agricultural products and the sinking of e-commerce can drive the two-way parcel volume, rural areas may become a new entry point for continued market share growth; if there is only downward parcel delivery, without stable parcel volume and joint distribution mechanisms, the deeper the enterprises sink into villages, the more likely the end-point costs will increase instead.
Three Calculations to Judge Whether It Is a Real Industry Trend
Portable Framework · Three Calculations for Rural Express Delivery: The first is the increment calculation, which measures how many downward parcels and upward parcels the new coverage can bring; the second is the cost calculation, which measures how much the end-point cost per parcel can be reduced through joint distribution, passenger-cargo-postal integration and station reuse; the third is the retention calculation, which measures whether village-level outlets, franchisees and lines can operate stably in the long term. Only when all three calculations are satisfied can rural areas become a real industry trend; if only the first calculation is satisfied, rural areas are more like a high-cost coverage task.
This Matters to You
For rural consumers, if competition continues to sink from "covering towns and townships" to "stably reaching villages", the difference is not just a few kilometers less travel, but also whether services such as medicine, home appliances, and e-commerce after-sales can reach their doorsteps more stably.
For express delivery franchisees, county-level merchants and e-commerce sellers, rural areas are a more realistic business account. Whether joint distribution can reduce costs, and whether agricultural products and county-level commodities can be continuously delivered out, determines whether this network is a new growth entry point or a new cost burden.
Therefore, beyond the 142.99 billion parcels, a more noteworthy question is: express delivery competition has shifted from pure scale expansion to "scale plus efficiency", and the 2026 rural delivery policies are filling in the part of the network that was previously the hardest to calculate costs for. Whether "express delivery to villages" will become a breakthrough trend does not depend on the word "village", but on whether the shared network can reduce costs and whether two-way traffic can drive sufficient parcel volume.
What do you think about this? Feel free to share your opinions in the comment section.
This article is for information sharing and industry analysis only, and does not constitute any investment advice, investment analysis opinion or transaction invitation. The data in the article comes from public sources such as the 2026 Interim Report of STO Express, State Post Bureau of China, Ministry of Transport, 2026 No. 1 Central Document, and Quanzhou Postal Administration, with specific dates marked in the text. The data shall be subject to the original source. The content marked as "inference" in the text is logical deduction based on public information and does not represent the official position.
This article is from the WeChat official account "BT Finance" (ID: btcjv1), written by BT Finance, and authorized for release by 36Kr.