Under the sluggish consumer market, Chairman and CEO Huang Geron of XuFu Lou (01978.HK) announced on a social media post that a total of 7 branch stores that have been decided to close this year, including two hot pot restaurants that closed in March and April and four that were announced last week. At the same time, 7 branch stores that are definitely going to open this year were just established, including the Shatin City One Horn, which opened early this year, the MOKO Horn which opened last week, the Dabenxing and Hwang Taishan Center MMC hot pot restaurants which will open in the future. In addition, The Matcha Tokyo will open at Hong Kong Airport in September and Warm Vegetable will open at K11 at the end of the year. Several new stores are also in final negotiations and have a chance to open this year.

He indicated that the company is more conservative this year in the unfavorable market, and the number of branch stores will not increase significantly. They will definitely close any underperforming stores, and as the company has no debt but holds a large amount of cash, they will continue to use their funds for branch store layout transformation and invest in the future in a high-interest environment.

Earlier, Tang Wenliang, a real estate industry insider, wrote that Huang Geron only had 12 restaurants left to operate. Huang Geron clarified that they have a total of 12 brands and 58 branch stores.