Driven by domestic demand pressures, shifting external demand, policy support, and tariff influences, overseas expansion has evolved from an optional strategy to a strategic imperative for Chinese companies. This shift represents not an isolated change but a systemic transformation across industries, business models, and regions, marking a critical inflection point where Chinese firms' global expansion is transitioning from scale growth to quality enhancement. As this new phase unfolds, demand for overseas marketing services is surging. Miduo Duodu Group Co., Ltd., a marketing service provider for companies going global that is now targeting the capital markets, is one beneficiary of this industry trend. It is understood that on June 12, Miduo Duodu submitted its listing application to the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with CCB International as its exclusive sponsor. Notably, the company had previously filed an application on December 9, 2025. Following this second submission, the company's latest financial performance has been revealed. According to the prospectus, Miduo Duodu's revenue for 2025 was $138 million, a year-on-year increase of 94.21%. Its adjusted net profit for the period turned profitable, recording $2.378 million, compared to a loss of $87,000 in 2024. On the surface of the financial data, Miduo Duodu indeed entered a rapid growth trajectory in 2025, with its fundamentals showing significant recovery. However, beneath this growth facade, deep-seated operational concerns persist, and core challenges remain formidable.

Revenue Surge Driven by TikTok and Google, Marketing Business Exceeds 90% of Total

Miduo Duodu, whose history dates back to May 2014, has been deeply involved in cross-border trade. After over a decade of accumulation, the company has established three main business segments: overseas marketing services, overseas e-commerce operations, digital exhibition services, and others. Overseas marketing services involve helping advertisers promote their brands, services, and products on international digital media platforms. Digital exhibition services refer to co-organizing the China Cross-Border E-commerce Fair with Huiyuan International Exhibitions and providing booths to exhibitors. Overseas e-commerce operations involve Miduo Duodu ordering and purchasing goods from brand partners and selling them directly to overseas individual consumers via international digital media platforms. The 'other' business refers to wholesale. In 2025, the revenue contribution from overseas marketing services, overseas e-commerce operations, digital exhibition services, and other businesses was 93.1%, 3.1%, 0.6%, and 3.2%, respectively. This reveals an extremely concentrated revenue structure, with income nearly entirely reliant on a single business line, testing the balance of the business portfolio. Within this structure, the high revenue growth in 2025 is directly linked to the overseas marketing business. During the reporting period, revenue from overseas marketing services was approximately $129 million, a year-on-year increase of 82.22%, serving as the core driver of total revenue growth. The strong performance of the overseas marketing business is attributed to two main factors. First, after becoming an official TikTok agent in July 2024, the company achieved growth in both client numbers and average spending per client: the number of active mid-year clients increased from 706 to 1,209, and average revenue per client rose from $13,800 to $32,200, driving revenue from TikTok business to surge from $9.7 million to $38.9 million. Second, Miduo Duodu optimized its Google business operations in mid-2025, which increased average revenue per client from $100,000 to $300,000. Driven by factors including incremental revenue from new clients and providing customized services for large clients, revenue from the Google business jumped from $46.9 million to $82.4 million. Clearly, becoming an official TikTok agent injected strong incremental growth for Miduo Duodu, and coupled with operational optimization of the Google channel, these formed a dual-engine drive for the company's overseas marketing business. It is worth noting that the overseas e-commerce operations business, launched in May 2025, recorded revenue of $4.209 million, contributing somewhat to overall revenue growth, though its proportion remains small. The 'other' business, with a scale similar to the e-commerce operations, was an incidental occurrence during the reporting period and is not a primary development direction. While overseas marketing revenue surged, the improvement in the company's overall gross margin also played a key role in profit realization. According to the prospectus, Miduo Duodu's gross margin was 4.1%, 4.4%, and 8.6% for 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively, with the 2025 figure nearly doubling. However, a breakdown shows that overseas marketing services, accounting for 93.1% of revenue, contributed only about half of the gross profit, as its gross margin was merely 4.7%. In stark contrast, overseas e-commerce operations, representing only 3.1% of revenue, contributed nearly half the profit of the marketing services business, thanks to its remarkably high gross margin of 72.1%. Additionally, while the 'other' business contributed about 20% of gross profit, its incidental nature lacks a logic for sustained growth. It is important to note that Miduo Duodu's marketing and administrative expense ratio surged sharply, from 3.8% in 2024 to 25.6% in 2025. However, this included a significant equity-settled share-based payment, a non-cash expense. Excluding this factor, the actual expense ratio for 2025 was only 8.1%, which aligns with the high revenue growth. Nevertheless, genuine expense control capability, excluding share-based payments, will remain key to determining the company's future profit realization.

Marketing Business Profitability Under Dual Pressure; Can Operations Be the Key to a Breakthrough?

Although becoming an official TikTok agent and optimizing Google operations led to a significant recovery in Miduo Duodu's 2025 performance, this does not change the potential operational challenges arising from heavy reliance on the overseas marketing business. The mere 4.7% gross margin in 2025 is sufficient to indicate that the essence of the overseas marketing business is a "low-margin intermediary." The key reason for this situation is that Miduo Duodu's bargaining power in the industrial chain for its overseas marketing business is squeezed from both upstream and downstream. Upstream, the company heavily depends on media resources. In 2025, purchases from its top five suppliers accounted for 95.4% of total cost of sales, with purchases from Alphabet (Google) and TikTok accounting for 63.3% and 25.9%, respectively, totaling 89.2%. This high dependence on media resources means that platform policy changes, algorithms, payment cycles, and other factors are controlled by the media platforms, leaving Miduo Duodu to accept them passively. The company earns a "spread on purchase rebates"; any change in the platform's rebate rate would significantly impact the company's gross margin. Downstream, although the concentration of Miduo Duodu's top five clients decreased from 66.8% in 2023 to 27.2% in 2025, and revenue from the largest client dropped from 23.7% to 6.8% over the same period, indicating reduced client concentration, the company's client base consists mainly of small and medium-sized cross-border sellers who are price-sensitive and have low switching costs. Miduo Duodu dares not easily pass on the cost of "platform rebate reductions" to its clients, leading to a squeeze on its intermediary spread from both sides when platform rebates fall. Furthermore, in the long term, the disintermediation trend from upstream media channels hangs over Miduo Duodu like a sword of Damocles. In the current industry environment, Google has begun promoting official self-service advertising, Amazon is further strengthening its own advertising, and TikTok Shop is accelerating the construction of a closed-loop ecosystem; upstream players are systematically bypassing agents. Once platforms' demand for intermediaries diminishes, the potential value of Miduo Duodu's marketing business could be further weakened. To break free from the operational困境 posed by the marketing business and build new growth curves to enhance intrinsic value, Miduo Duodu launched its overseas e-commerce operations business in May 2025, aiming to grow this segment by leveraging synergies with the marketing business. However, based on current results, the overseas e-commerce operations business is still in a孵化 stage, contributing only 3.1% to revenue in 2025. Additionally, a severe lack of R&D investment is another point of criticism from the market. According to the prospectus, Miduo Duodu's R&D expenses as a percentage of total revenue were 0.7%, 0.5%, and 0.3% for 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively, with R&D spending in 2025 being only $463,000. With such a level of R&D investment, building a technological moat is nearly impossible, which is not conducive to the company's long-term stable development in the fiercely competitive and highly fragmented marketing and operations market. Overall, while the significant recovery in the overseas marketing business alleviates short-term生存 pressure, it does not fundamentally address the company's current operational challenges at their root. The key to reshaping the company's future valuation logic and enhancing its intrinsic value still lies in whether the e-commerce operations business can take over as the new growth engine. Undoubtedly, the recovery of the marketing business has won a valuable strategic缓冲期 for accelerating the development of the operations business. However, whether this strategic move ultimately succeeds will still face rigorous market testing.