POP MART's stock price has surged 200% this year, prompting multiple institutions to urgently raise their target prices

When a stock skyrockets by 200% within the year, Wall Street analysts are not warning of a bubble but are instead crazily raising their target prices, which is exactly the market frenzy triggered by China's blind box giant Pop Mart. A fang-toothed monster doll, Labubu, is redefining investors' perception of the "toy economy."

This week, at least five brokerages have raised their target prices for Pop Mart, including Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, with Citigroup being the most aggressive, significantly raising its target price by 90% to a maximum of HKD 308, citing the company's intellectual property increasingly gaining global influence.

The core driving force behind Pop Mart's soaring stock price comes from its star product—the fang-toothed monster doll Labubu. This seemingly strange character from THE MONSTERS blind box series generated over 3 billion RMB in sales revenue for Pop Mart last year, accounting for nearly a quarter of the company's total revenue.

Pop Mart's stock price rose 2.17% on Friday, with a year-to-date increase of nearly 200%. Earlier this week, the stock hit an all-time high.

However, the valuation controversy behind the frenzy cannot be ignored. Pop Mart currently has an expected price-to-earnings ratio as high as 45 times, surpassing peers like Sanrio and Disney. Nevertheless, some analysts remain optimistic about the stock price continuing to rise, which is particularly striking given that the stock price has already tripled this year.

Pop Mart has become the best-performing stock in the MSCI China Index this year and is also one of the stocks with the largest increase in the index for 2024