Under the trend of reduced public offering fees, how to identify the key to profit and loss "winning move" becomes the crucial factor for performance differentiation among fund companies.

Interface News reporter | Du Meng

As publicly offered fund companies’ shareholder reports for 2025 are gradually disclosed, the industry’s full-year operating picture is becoming clearer. On the evening of March 30, several fund companies—including E Fund, GF Fund, Huatai-PineBridge, Yinvesco, Southern Fund, among others—released profitability data in a concentrated manner. With the scale advantages of leading firms remaining solid, the industry is simultaneously facing both growth and profitability pressure.

At present, 38 publicly offered funds have disclosed their 2025 revenue and net profit data. From the revenue figures, 29 publicly offered funds saw year-on-year revenue growth, while 9 publicly offered funds saw revenue decline. In terms of net profit, after excluding Nanhua Fund and Pioneer Fund, which are still in a loss-making stage, 13 publicly offered funds experienced a year-on-year decline in net profit.

Table: As of March 31, a total of 38 publicly offered funds have disclosed their 2025 revenue and net profit data Compiled by Interface News

E Fund’s 2025 operating revenue reached 129.96 billion yuan, making it the only leading publicly offered fund company in the industry with revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan. Compared with 2024, the increase was 7.33%. However, net profit decreased slightly by 2.42% compared with 2024.

The revenue gap between Huaxia Fund and E Fund is narrowing. In 2024, E Fund’s operating revenue was 121.09 billion yuan, while Huaxia Fund’s was 80.31 billion yuan. In 2025, Huaxia Fund’s operating revenue surged 19.86% to 96.26 billion yuan, narrowing the gap with E Fund to 33.7 billion yuan.

GF Fund’s 2025 revenue and net profit also showed double-digit growth. In 2025, operating revenue was 85.41 billion yuan, up 17.64% year on year; net profit was 27.53 billion yuan, up 37.65%. Yinvesco Galaxy Fund’s 2025 operating revenue was 30.44 billion yuan, up 6.55% year on year; net profit was 6.04 billion yuan, up 8.24% year on year. Wanji Fund’s operating revenue was 20.75 billion yuan, up 16.63%. Net profit was 3.75 billion yuan, up 14.68%.

As one of the industry’s leading ETF powerhouses, Huatai-PineBridge Fund saw declines in both its 2025 revenue and net profit. In 2025, operating revenue was 21.52 billion yuan, down 6.97% year on year; net profit was 4.55 billion yuan, down 37.69% year on year.

Interface News reporters found that, among four publicly offered funds—E Fund, China Merchants, Harvest, and Founder—2025 saw “higher revenue but not higher profit.”

Meanwhile, among leading publicly offered funds, the year-on-year growth rates of net profit for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Credit Suisse and GF Fund reached 42.51% and 37.65%, respectively.

“Publicly offered fund development has now entered a new stage that emphasizes efficiency and quality.” A person from a publicly offered fund told Interface News reporters that the efficiency of company operations, the quality of scale growth, and the efficiency of the layout of self-operated capital and diversified business lines have all become the key “winners and losers” determining profitability for publicly offered funds.

Judging by the asset-management scale of different publicly offered fund companies, as of the end of 2025, the total assets under management managed by 150 domestic publicly offered fund companies amounted to 35.67 trillion yuan. Among asset managers with assets under management exceeding 1 trillion yuan, the number expanded from 8 at the end of 2025 to 10.

E Fund and Huaxia Fund’s “dual-strong” pattern continues, and both have crossed the 2 trillion yuan mark as well. Their total scale reached 2.41 trillion yuan and 2.16 trillion yuan, respectively. Their non-money-market fund scale was 1.66 trillion yuan and 1.45 trillion yuan, respectively, firmly ranking them as the top two in the industry. GF Fund and Southern Fund firmly occupy the third and fourth positions. The rankings of Fullgoal Fund, Harvest Fund, and China Universal Asset Management have all risen to some extent, while the rankings of Tianhong Fund, Bosera Fund, and Penghua Fund have declined.

Interface News reporters learned that besides scale growth, returns from self-operated businesses have also become a key factor behind the surge in net profits of some publicly offered funds. In the 2025 slow bull market, benefiting from the rebound in the equity market, active equity funds and stock index funds performed particularly well, and the returns from products that fund companies purchased with their own funds have been substantial.

“Although 2025 is a bull market, under the broader environment of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, diversified business deployment is necessary to achieve ‘the east isn’t bright, but the west is,’ so that both the company’s fund shareholders and holders can make money.” A person in charge of marketing at a publicly offered fund said, “In addition to publicly offered fund businesses, non-publicly offered businesses such as private accounts, social security, annuities, and pension funds are also key tests of a company’s diversified business deployment.”

Wind data shows that as of the end of 2025, 16 fund companies are qualified to handle social security fund business, 14 fund companies are qualified for pension business, and 63 fund companies are qualified for private account business.

Compared with publicly offered fund business, these non-publicly offered businesses have relatively less data and publicly disclosed information, so the market understands them relatively little. On the other hand, because non-publicly offered businesses mainly originate from large institutional capital and have characteristics such as large scale and long cycles, they feature stable management revenue and better sustainability, and have long been the foundation for the development of steady and risk-conscious publicly offered fund companies.