Investors, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to ANTA Sports 2025 interim results presentation. Let me introduce to you our management. They are Board Chairman and Executive Director Mr. Ding Shizhong, Executive Director and Co-CEO Mr. Lai Shixian, Executive Director and Co-CEO Mr. Wu Yonghua, Executive Director Mr. James Zheng, Executive Director and CFO Mr. Bi Mingwei, and Vice President Mr. Lin Wei. In this event, it will be conducted in a purely online format so that global investors and analysts can take part more easily, and we can also reduce carbon emission in this way so that we can discharge our sustainability promise. For convenience's sake, on the Zoom platform, please state your real name for the Q&A session. We have just announced the 2025 interim results. Our revenue and profits achieved record high, and the leading advantage continues to expand.
Even though there are a lot of uncertainties in the external environment, through multiple brand advantages and strong operating capability, we continued to achieve high-quality growth. Today, Mr. Lai will review our business performance, and then Mr. Bi will present our financial performance. Then Mr. Lai will talk about our outlook. Finally, in the Q&A session, the Chairman and the management team will take your questions. Let's invite Mr. Lai to present our company's results.
Investors, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Let me report to you our first-half business and operation results. In the first half of the year, despite significant market challenges, the group demonstrated its strategic and operational strengths, with all brands continuing to outperform the market. In the first half, group revenue was up 14.3% year-on-year to RMB 38.54 billion, expanding its leading position in the Chinese market.
Our operating profit margin was 26.3%, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year, maintaining high operational efficiency. Excluding the one-time gain from last year's Amer Sports listing, profit attributable to shareholders was up 14.5% year-on-year to RMB 7.03 billion . The group maintained stable operations and consistent cash flow generation, with net free cash flow reaching RMB 7.55 billion . So we will pay interim dividend of 1.37, representing a 16.1% increase year-on-year while maintaining dividend payout ratio above 50%. In the first half of 2025, the Chinese economy achieved growth amid stability. GDP rose 5.3% year-on-year. Total retail sales of consumer goods was up 5%. June consumer confidence index was 87.9, showing a slight recovery from the same period last year, but still, it was at a relatively low level.
We believe that China's sports market will retain substantial long-term growth potential, with short-term growth rates continuing to outperform the broader consumer sector, especially within the outdoor segment, which remains in the early stages of the growth cycle. So it will continue to show good growth. We also observed the following characteristics in the consumer market in the first half of the year. First, consumers have elevated their expectations for quality. In the high-end market, consumers have shifted from merely paying for logos to prioritizing functionality, technology, and expertise, benefiting niche brands like DESCENTE and KOLON SPORT. In the mass market, consumers now demand high quality even from affordably priced markets or products, favoring high-quality domestic brands such as ANTA. Second, consumers are willing to pay a premium for emotional value, novel experiences, and lifestyle offerings.
This benefits mid-to-high-end fashion and niche brands focusing on niche sports like golf, tennis, and outdoor activities such as FILA, DESCENTE, and KOLON SPORT. Besides, there are the following characteristics in the industry. First, offline retail has entered a saturated competitive landscape with slowing foot traffic, declining conversion rates, and more revenue falling short of previous levels. In this environment, integrated or general brands face greater pressure, while outdoor and niche brands with sustained demand growth have room to accelerate store expansion. Second, in the online market, live streaming platforms continue to expand their user base by attracting younger users, accelerating their capture of incremental growth opportunities. While traditional platforms experience stagnant traffic growth, they deepen their focus on high-end customers, where mid-to-high-end brands and niche categories demonstrate competitive advantages. Next is a business review for various brands.
ANTA brand continues to advance its core strategy of mass market positioning, breakthroughs in performance sports, brand transformation, and upgrades. We use technology empowerment to create good products across all categories from mass sports to specialized vertical sports. We strengthened our leadership position in the Chinese market while actively expanded into international markets. ANTA brand's new business formats and store models maintained strong growth, with contributions to high-tier markets steadily increasing. The ANTA brand's IP portfolio also yielded results in the first half of the year. Running shoes like PG7, C Family, and Mach series, and then for basketball shoes, there is Owen and also apparel lines reaching very good sales results. For PG7, in only half a year's time, sales volume reached 2 million pairs. This was outstanding performance. For ANTA kits, in the first half, online business maintained double-digit growth, outperforming the industry.
For products, we introduced the running shoes, Arch Pro running shoes designed for children's foot structure and featuring pioneering dynamic footbridge technology, making it the top choice for student physical fitness tests. In overseas markets, Southeast Asia nearly doubled our sales, with most growth driven by same-store increase. New contributions from the U.S. offline business and Middle East business during the period propelled overseas revenue to grow over 150% year-on-year in the first half. FILA focused on professional sports and also athleisure, fashionable sports, and also kids. These are the four categories. And for different segments and niches, we have introduced high-quality products. In the first half, we continue to reshape our image and also upgrade our management culture and our other core capabilities. We refined our retail operation capability to enhance our ability to face up to economic volatility.
As a result, we achieved stable growth, outperforming the industry in growth rates. FILA strives to create an image of One FILA. So high-end athleisure is our positioning. So for the original customer segments, we focus more on medium or middle-tier consumers. Then we would like to have innovations and go deep in our operation. So we focus on product development, innovation to achieve technology and design combination. So for FILA core brands in running shoes and other categories, we have created best-selling products. In this period, so these are the two main contributors for FILA FUSION. We emphasized on product design, and then there are outdoor styles as well, which have attracted young consumers. So we have upgraded the fashion elements of the brands. For FILA Kids, so we continued our brand DNA. It is positioned towards the mid-to-high-end kids markets.
So we reinforced our product matrix and also product line structure. And then our tennis line also performed well in terms of channel building. FILA focused on different stores to reshape its retail standard. So we went for upgrades and also new format store introduction. At the same time, we focused a lot on stores for vertical customer segments. We enhanced differentiation and characteristics. Resources are focused on high productivity stores to enhance single-store productivity. For DESCENTE, it is a premium professional sportswear brand. So by continuous product innovation and establishment of high-efficiency store model, we have achieved satisfactory growth. In the first half, DESCENTE's store productivity rose from nearly RMB 2.3 million to around RMB 2.7 million this year. A number of stores achieving annual productivity of RMB 50 million increased from 16 last year to 33.
DESCENTE's online revenue grew by over 50% in the first half of the year, with regular priced sales accounting for over 80%, and average discount rate was 10%, achieving high-quality, high-growth online performance. During the period, DESCENTE's core products, including polo shirts, jackets, running shoes, and golf apparel, exceeded sales targets and achieved high sell-out rates. Premium running shoes sales exceeded 100,000 pairs, gaining recognition among high-end consumers, and then for outdoor lifestyle brand KOLON SPORT, it capitalized on the consumption upgrade trend in China's outdoor market, focusing on hiking and camping as the two primary outdoor scenarios. The brand demonstrated robust growth momentum, emerging as the fastest-growing brand within the group during the first half of the year. KOLON achieved store productivity exceeding 2 million in the first half, with offline revenue growth surpassing 80%, mostly driven by same-store sales growth.
Online growth also neared 80%, maintaining high-quality expansion with discounts above 15% off. So originally, KOLON SPORT operated well in Northern and Northeast China, but this year, KOLON SPORT achieved breakthrough in other regions, with store productivity growing over 50% year-on-year. In the first half, KOLON SPORT rapidly elevated brand awareness, doubling its presence on RedNote year-over-year, and strengthened its positioning in the minds of target customers, especially female users. So there is big enhancement in that mindset. In terms of retail network, the group continued to optimize our channel network, focusing on store upgrades and efficiency improvement. As of the end of June, ANTA Adult stores total 7,187 for ANTA Kids, 2,722 FILA core brand, 1,266 FILA Kids, 590 FILA FUSION, 198 DESCENTE, 226 KOLON SPORT, 199 MAIA ACTIVE, 50 stores. For online business, e-commerce contributed 34.8% of total revenue in the first half of the year, up 17.6% year-on-year.
Our online business maintains a leading position within the industry. During the 618 Shopping Festival in the first half, FILA achieved the highest transaction volume on Tmall and Douyin. Among the top 10 brands in the sports, footwear, and apparel category, our group's FILA, ANTA, and DESCENTE secured the top three positions. In terms of digitalization, the group is steadily embedding AI technology applications into our systems. This includes establishing an AI technology platform, integrating mature AI models, and providing intelligent tools to support all departments. These efforts enhance management decision-making, production efficiency, and end-consumer experiences. For example, while serving China's national teams, we utilized digital motion capture systems and multidimensional sensors to collect athletic data, enabling us to customize personalized training and competition gear for athletes.
In design of products, we introduced AI-assisted design systems to rapidly generate multiple design proposals, completing exterior design and order placement in as short as four days. This significantly boosts efficiency compared to traditional design, which requires three to six rounds of physical prototyping and takes at least one month. For operations management, we launched the industry's first automated retail solution, Axin Wuyou system, enabling AI-driven automated store operations and then for marketing, we integrated member data with store merchandise characteristics through AI analytics to establish an end-to-end customer monitoring system, enhancing consumer experience and conversion rates. Next, I would like to share our latest progress in sustainability for the first half of the year. In order to strengthen consumer awareness of sustainability, our brands have launched various sustainable products.
These include items featuring carbon capture technology fabrics, fluorine-free, waterproof, and breathable materials, recycled PET bottle materials, and FSC-certified eco-friendly packaging. Sales of these products alone have exceeded one million units. This is a truly remarkable achievement. We have also extended sustainability principles to retail operations. ANTA Zero Carbon Mission Store celebrated its first anniversary, achieving emissions reductions across design, fixtures, building materials, equipment, and energy consumption. FILA stores are rolling out comprehensive smart energy management systems to optimize resource usage through technology, driving green and low-carbon practices.
We have established a clear roadmap for replacing high-risk chemicals, becoming China's first sports brand to proactively commit to phasing out PFAS in alignment with international market standards. Furthermore, our inclusion in the Hang Seng ESG 50 Index last Friday confirms our position among Hong Kong's top 50 listed companies for ESG performance, underscoring our outstanding achievements and leadership in ESG practices. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Lai. The groups have single-focus, multiple brand and internationalization strategies. We are able to give full play to our advantages to achieve high-quality growth. Now let's turn to Mr. Bi.
Good afternoon, everyone. Now let me present our financial performance. First, overall group revenue, RMB 38.54 billion, up 14.3% year-on-year, with all brands achieving steady growth in revenue. ANTA brand, in the first half, revenue was RMB 16.95 billion, up 5.4% year-on-year. D2C strategy continued to deepen, with online sales growing 10% for ANTA brand. For FILA brand, in the first half, revenue was RMB 14.18 billion, up 8.6% year-on-year. Online sales of FILA also achieved double-digit growth. Then other brands, including DESCENTE and KOLON SPORT, generated revenue of RMB 7.41 billion for the first half year.
Through premium quality and differentiated brand positioning, they enhanced consumer experience and maintained robust growth, achieving a growth rate of 61.1%. Gross profit margin. The group's overall gross profit margin was 63.4%, down 0.7 percentage points year-on-year. Gross profit margin of ANTA brand was down 1.7 percentage points year-on-year, primarily due to increased investment in certain specialized product categories and mind-share product categories and the continued rise in the proportion of online business, where discounts are lower, so leading to a structural decline in GP margin. GP margin of FILA brand was down 2.2 percentage points year-on-year, mainly due to slightly lower online discounts year-on-year, coupled with increased online sales share, while offline full-price stores maintained comparable discount levels, and we took the initiative to increase proportion of footwear products, which carried a slightly lower GP margin.
Other brands, gross profit margin increased 1.2 percentage points due to favorable discount performance. Operating expenses. Staff cost ratio. This year, it's 15.7%, up 0.2 percentage points year-on-year. The group, in the first half of the year, intentionally increased the budget for compensation and benefits of retail staff. So that's why there was an increase. ANP expense ratio, 6.6%, down 0.9 percentage points year-on-year. Last year, it was a major sports year, so ANP expenses were high. This year, ANP expenses were stable and normal, as in normal years. Overall revenue also increased, so that's why ANP expense ratio came down. R&D ratio, 2.6%, more or less the same as last year. In the first half, we invested RMB 1 billion in product R&D and innovation, advancing forward-looking scientific research in new materials, technologies, and processes. This yielded multiple proprietary technological achievements and also our competitive advantage.
Operating profit margin, overall speaking, 26.3% for the group, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year. For ANTA brand, OP margin, 23.3%, up 1.5 percentage points year-on-year, primarily achieved through refined operations and optimized resource allocation to reduce costs and enhance efficiency. FILA brand, OP margin was 27.7%, down 0.9 percentage points year-on-year. This was primarily due to a decline in GP margin for FILA brand, partially offset by improved operational efficiency and reduced expense ratio. FILA operating profit margin was down 0.9 percentage points. Other brands' operating profit margin was 3.3%, up 3.3 percentage points, primarily driven by rapid growth of DESCENTE and KOLON SPORT, which boosted gross profit margins. There are economies of scale. Net profit margin attributable to shareholders, including Amer Sports profit sharing, was 18.2%, maintaining more or less the same level as last year.
Since 2021 to 2025, in this five-year period, this is that level. In 2024, Amer Sports returned RMB 200 million positive profit to shareholders in the first half of 2025. This number rose to RMB 430 million , with expectation of even more robust profit return for the full year. Interim dividend, HKD 1.37 , representing a 16% year-on-year increase with payout ratio of 50.2%, delivering sustained and stable long-term returns for shareholders. Working capital management. Inventory turnover days in the first half was 136 days. In this period, there was acquisition and consolidation of Wolf Claw , leading to a year-on-year increase in the inventory. Excluding this impact, inventory turnover days rose by 18 days, and for all-channel inventory, it's up 22 days. Inventory to sales ratio remains at a healthy level of about five. The group maintains real-time visibility into all-channel inventory across all brands.
We track monthly inventory reduction progress and utilize OTB purchasing model to guide new merchandise orders. So overall inventory is still at a healthy, reasonable level. Receivable turnover days, 52 days. Payable turnover, 19 days, more or less the same as same period last year. Cash flow. Our net cash inflow from operating activities in the first half, RMB 10.9 billion, an increase of RMB 2.4 billion year-on-year. Operating cash inflow up 29%. Sell-out rate, or cash collection rate, 99%, reflecting exceptionally robust working capital management capabilities. Free cash flow, RMB 7.548 billion, more or less the same as last year. As of 30th June, for cash and deposits, the total amount was RMB 55.5 billion. Interest-bearing liabilities, RMB 24 billion. Net cash, RMB 31.5 billion, maintaining a highly sound financial position. Every year, the group continuously refines our multi-brand differentiation dynamic management model to drive overall high-quality growth for the group.
We test our operating efficiency and we invest into the future. And also, we make sure robust profitability. And this year, our revenue and operating profit achieved double-digit growth. For ANTA and FILA, two main brands, cost and also online business share increased, so GP margins decreased. However, by doing strong budget management, refined operation, and also improvement of operating efficiency, cost reduction, we achieved a continuously stable operating capability. In terms of operational health, in the first half of the year, net operating cash flow was up 29% year-on-year, demonstrating robust cash generation. Inventory turnover days increased this year. However, we very quickly adjusted our procurement model. So overall speaking, all-channel inventory was at a five-time level, which is quite healthy. And then for investments, in the first half, R&D investment exceeded RMB 1 billion in the first half, dedicated to creating consumer-favorite products.
We intensified channel investments in premium venues, so in 300 core malls in China, based on our data, same store sales of our multiple brands and also store productivity are at leading level in the industry, and we continue to implement our globalization strategy. In Southeast Asia, in the first half, completed the budget targets. And in the Middle East and the U.S., we have started to make our plan and deployment, so through our multi-brand differentiation dynamic management model, we seamlessly execute our strategies to drive high-quality growth. That's all for financial performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bi. In the first half, various indicators have exceeded expectations. Looking into the future for ANTA and Amer Sports under the leadership of these two listed companies, we will continue to work on our very unique pathway, so now we will ask Mr. Lai to talk about future prospects.
Looking into the second half of the year, we'll continue to uphold our single-focus, multi-brand, and also globalization strategies, steps as we drive sustainable development through a long-term perspective as we advance steadily in a market environment full of both opportunities and challenges. In the second half, our two major brands, ANTA and FILA, will continue their winning campaigns. For ANTA, we have to achieve breakthrough in the new retail format, and FILA will continue its high-quality growth. The group will invest in product innovation, striving to build technological barriers and enhance product competitiveness. For ANTA brand, we will deepen innovation transformation, incubate diverse innovative formats and vertical specialty stores, and create differentiated shopping experience. FILA will further deepen its presence in tennis, fully leverage premium brand resources to consolidate core competitiveness, and vigorously build and strengthen core categories and best-seller portfolio.
At the same time, it will strategically deploy new store formats to more precisely respond to consumer demand. DESCENTE, KOLON SPORT, and MAIA ACTIVE will continue to maintain high growth rates, incubate promising premium products, and continue to expand across channels to provide robust support for the group's multi-brand strategy and diversified development. For the newly acquired business, we have already built a team, a joint management team, and will formulate a three- to five-year revitalization plan within this year, focusing on reshaping its product and brand systems around its core values. For organizational and talent development, our group will empower our brands to strengthen autonomous decision-making capabilities, fostering innovation and maintaining operational agility while building a diversified specialized talent pipeline. For digitalization, the group continues to strengthen the integration of the three core elements, people, goods, and venues, to drive high-performance material R&D and disruptive process innovation.
We have initiated an AI strategic layout and will increase investment in AI technology to promote its application across all levels of the group in the coming five years. Thank you.