Haaland shines at the World Cup, Baiyunshan revived with Wanglaoji?

As the 2026 World Cup heats up, Norwegian striker Erling Haaland (known as Haaland in mainland China) has become the talk of the town on the pitch; off the pitch, his “brainwashing” advertisement shot for the mainland Chinese herbal tea brand Wong Lo Kat (Wanglaoji) has also swept across social media. Haaland’s international version of the Wong Lo Kat ad, “WALOVI,” has brought the product more than 290,000 Instagram likes, but after the excitement, a more realistic question follows: With Haaland’s international fame, can Wong Lo Kat’s parent company, Guangzhou Pharmaceuticals (00874), truly turn things around?

Baiyunshan’s performance and share price have remained under pressure in recent years

Baiyunshan’s recent performance has been lackluster. For full-year 2025, the group recorded revenue of RMB 776.56 billion, up 3.55% year-on-year; attributable net profit to shareholders was RMB 29.83 billion, up 5.21%. However, in the first quarter of 2026, although revenue increased by 3.6% to RMB 232.78 billion, profit attributable to shareholders fell by 2.1% to RMB 17.84 billion.

More noteworthy is the “natural beverages” business centered on Wong Lo Kat herbal tea. For full-year 2025, revenue from this business was RMB 96.72 billion, down slightly by 0.34% year-on-year, and since 2024 it has already fallen below the RMB 9 billion mark. Overall, Baiyunshan’s H-share stock price has dropped by more than 30% over the past five years; as of July 6, 2026, the share price was HKD 15.26, with a 52-week high of 20.4 and a low of 14, down more than 17% year-to-date.

Domestic market bottlenecks push it away from international growth

Wong Lo Kat faces severe challenges in the domestic market. The growth rate of the mainland herbal tea industry fell from 15% in 2015 to 3% in 2025. Young consumers favor low-sugar, healthier drinks, and intense competition from new-style tea brands has gradually saturated the traditional herbal tea market.

At the same time, Wong Lo Kat is also dealing with trademark headaches overseas. Competitor JDB Bao claims to have registered trademarks such as “WANG LAO JI” in 60 countries worldwide, forcing Guangzhou Pharmaceuticals to create a brand-new international name, “WALOVI,” to differentiate. Against this backdrop, bringing in Haaland as a global spokesperson is precisely an effort to ride the momentum of the World Cup and open up the international market.

The internationalization plan is beginning to show signs of daylight

In fact, Wong Lo Kat kicked off its internationalization plan as early as August 2025: its international cans were formally released globally, and in October they entered the markets of Germany and Saudi Arabia in sequence. Data shows that over the past decade, the size of Wong Lo Kat’s overseas market has grown by 6.5 times, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 25%.

Haaland Wong Lo Kat advertisement screenshot:

Haaland’s signing as a spokesperson is the “final step” in WALOVI’s push for internationalization. The ad adapts the fan anthem “Haaland Song” into a catchy “brainwashing” lyric: “Ha… Haaland… it’s so hot, we drink (ha, a homophone of drink) Wang Lo Kat!”—successfully taking the “cooling down” concept to the international stage. As of July 7, on the WALOVI IG account, one of Haaland’s posts had recorded 317,000 Likes, the most popular post since the account was created 1.5 years ago.

The road to a turnaround is still long

However, expanding herbal tea in international markets still faces structural challenges. Data shows that in 2022, herbal tea’s overall share in the global soft drinks market was less than 0.5%, with the consumer base highly concentrated in Chinese communities. Whether relying solely on a single football star spokesperson can truly open up the market among non-Chinese consumers remains to be seen.

Haaland’s infectious advertisement has brought Wong Lo Kat unprecedented international attention, but to convert this hype into sustained overseas sales, Baiyunshan will still need to put in more effort in areas such as adapting product flavors, building distribution channels, and improving brand recognition. Whether Baiyunshan can truly turn things around likely won’t be as simple as just one “ha.”