A guest carries two Labubus during the Paris Fashion week Women’s Fall/Winter 2025-2026 in March in Paris.
Edward Berthelot/Getty Images
Wang Ning, chairman and CEO of Chinese toy maker Pop Mart International Group, became $1.6 billion richer in a single day as the company’s surging popularity in the U.S. led its app to top download charts.
The 38-year-old mogul now has a fortune of $16.1 billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List. Wang, who derives his net worth from a company stake, saw Pop Mart’s Hong Kong-listed shares surge as much as 13.2% on Monday. So far this year, the stock has more than doubled as Pop Mart’s collectible toys took the world by storm, after first winning over the younger generation in China.
Despite soaring trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies, American consumers are queuing overnight at Pop Mart stores to buy limited numbers of collectible dolls from the company.
One of the best-selling series is Labubu, a rabbit-like doll with a mischievous grin that has been spotted atop pop star Rihanna’s Louis Vuitton bag. Although the toys carry price tags that can be 60% more expensive in the U.S. than in China—even before President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect—American consumers are willing to pay.
The scramble to get the dolls led the Pop Mart shopping app to become the most downloaded free shopping app in Apple’s app store in the U.S. last Friday, according to Sensor Tower, a San Francisco-based analytics and market intelligence platform. Celebrities known to collect Labubu also include Lisa of South Korean girl group Blackpink, who posts pictures of her dolls on social media.
“Pop Mart’s shares got a short-term boost due to the app’s ranking in the U.S. and the rush to acquire its dolls,” Kenny Ng, a Hong Kong-based securities strategist at Everbright Securities International, says by WeChat.
Ng says the share price is still at reasonable levels even after surging. Pop Mart trades at about 40 times its estimated earnings per share for 2025, which Ng doesn’t consider expensive given the company’s growth potential.
Chairman Wang projected in March that Pop Mart’s total sales could grow 50% year-on-year to over 20 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) in 2025. Wang, who made the remarks while announcing last year’s annual results, is particularly bullish on the company’s overseas sales, as its collectible toys are already known to sell out quickly in Southeast Asia.
In 2024, sales outside mainland China accounted for almost 40% of the companies total revenue of 13 billion yuan. Profit for the full year was 3.1 billion yuan, up almost 200% from 2023.
