China's 'First Bakery Stock' Christine Delists, All Stores Closed

This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on December 16, 2024.

Source note: the original is a reprint of a Yicai (第一财经, by Jie Shuyi) report carried in the FoodBud archive. Per the project's copyright rule, third-party text is not reproduced; this is a brief factual restatement with attribution — see the original for full detail.

Christine (克莉丝汀), once dubbed China's "first bakery stock," confirmed its delisting, with all its stores already closed — a marker of how a once-dominant legacy bakery can unwind.

Per the Yicai report: on December 12, 2024 Christine received a Hong Kong exchange letter; the listing review committee upheld the decision to cancel its listing, effective December 27, 2024. Founded in 1992, Christine grew quickly on fast new-product development and prime sites — notably "corner stores" at intersections, which were ~35% of its locations for their higher foot traffic and signage visibility — and listed in Hong Kong in February 2012. At its peak it had 300+ stores in Shanghai and ~1,000 nationwide, but all stores have been suspended since December 2022.

The decline was long: per its filings, Christine posted losses for nine straight years (2013–2021), with attributable net losses of about RMB −224M (2019), −110M (2020) and −170M (2021); it then delayed results reporting. Store closures ran 117 (2019), 99 (2020) and 55 (2021). An industry analyst quoted in the report tied legacy-brand exits to the pandemic plus a lack of innovation, rigid mechanisms and aging teams — even as the overall bakery market keeps expanding (iiMedia: China's bakery retail market ~RMB 561.4 billion in 2023, +9.2%, projected to ~RMB 859.6 billion by 2029).

The operator takeaway: prime-site real-estate advantage and an early listing did not offset a decade of stalled product innovation. Figures are as reported (Dec 2024) and historical.