On the morning of September 28, well-known investor Duan Yongping posted on the Xueqiu platform that he had "bought a little Kweichow Moutai." The trading screenshot he shared showed a purchase of 30,000 shares of Kweichow Moutai Co.,Ltd. (600519) at an average price of 1,230.85 yuan per share, for a total outlay of approximately 36.9254 million yuan. After the news spread, Kweichow Moutai's share price surged sharply in the afternoon session to turn positive, eking out a slight gain against the backdrop of a broad market decline.

This was not Duan Yongping's first addition to his Moutai position in 2026. On May 7, when a netizen asked whether he should shift part of his Moutai holdings into Pop Mart, he clearly responded that he had bought more Kweichow Moutai that very day. On May 27, he replied to a netizen saying "I don't understand why people keep talking about 'how much the market cap is' — do you have so little confidence?" and added that "10 or 20 years from now, the current market cap will most likely be negligible." Even earlier, in January, when Moutai's share price hit a new low since October 2024, Duan Yongping stated bluntly that looking at an extended time horizon, the current share price was "really not expensive."

Duan Yongping began building his position in Kweichow Moutai in 2003, and his holdings are currently worth more than 20 billion yuan. He has publicly stated on multiple occasions that he holds only three heavily weighted stocks: Apple, Moutai, and Tencent. In an interview in November 2025, he further elaborated on his core logic for investing in Moutai, proposing that "investing in Moutai does not require looking at the macroeconomic environment," because "investing is inherently about looking at ten or twenty years." In his view, Moutai's unique value lies in its "irreplaceability" — even at valuation peaks, one cannot find a comparable substitute anywhere in the market. He admitted that when Moutai's share price hit its high of 2,600 yuan he "really thought about selling," but ultimately chose to keep holding because there was "nowhere else to go," and continued to add to his position after the pullback. When Moutai's share price fell from its 2,600 yuan peak to around 1,200 yuan, Duan Yongping not only did not panic but viewed it as an opportunity to add to his position, saying "we actually bought quite a bit afterward — as long as we have spare cash, we'll keep buying."

Understanding Duan Yongping's move this time requires examining it within the industry cycle that Moutai currently finds itself in. In the first half of 2026, Kweichow Moutai achieved revenue of 90.703 billion yuan, up 1.47% year-on-year, but net profit attributable to shareholders declined 1.95% year-on-year. The baijiu industry as a whole is in a "clearing and bottoming" phase. At its earnings briefing, Moutai explicitly stated that the industry is undergoing simultaneous cyclical and structural adjustments, and for the first time did not set specific annual economic targets, instead placing greater emphasis on "adhering to a consumer-centric approach and comprehensively advancing market-oriented transformation."

From a valuation perspective, Moutai's forward price-to-earnings ratio has fallen to around 17 times, placing it in a historically low range. However, the fundamental underpinnings of Moutai are changing. It distributed a total of 65.033 billion yuan in dividends for the full year of 2025, with a payout ratio of 79%, and its dividend yield over the past 12 months has held steady at around 4%. In a low-interest-rate environment where the ten-year government bond yield hovers below 2%, this 4% certain dividend is increasingly giving Moutai the attributes of a "bond-like asset." At the same time, Moutai has invested nearly 9 billion yuan across two rounds of buybacks, with all repurchased shares cancelled, and has built a multi-layered value management toolbox of "dividends as the foundation + buybacks as support + shareholding increases as escort." Moutai's valuation anchor is quietly shifting from "growth rate" to "dividends."

Duan Yongping.

The signal sent by Duan Yongping's purchase this time can be understood on two levels. From the perspective of his personal investment logic, this is a classic "opportunity cost" decision — in a low-interest-rate environment, measured on a ten-year scale, he believes that Moutai's roughly 4% dividend yield combined with its brand moat is more attractive than holding cash or other assets. He once said: "For a company like Moutai, just sitting there, the dividends alone could give you 3% to 4% on your current investment — certainly better than putting money in the bank."

From the market signal level, Duan Yongping's move to add to his position stands in sharp contrast to public mutual funds' allocation to the baijiu sector. As of the end of 2025, baijiu fund holdings had dropped from a 2020 peak of 16% to 3.93%, at the 23.4th percentile of historical levels, already below the public fund positions seen at the start of previous baijiu cycles. This pattern of "institutions retreating, individuals holding firm" reflects just how deep the current market disagreement over the baijiu industry runs. Duan Yongping's purchase is essentially using real money to express a judgment: when the market prices Moutai conservatively due to short-term performance slowdown, the value of long-term certainty may be being underestimated.

Of course, this does not mean Moutai's short-term share price trend will reverse as a result. Duan Yongping himself admits that "Moutai may not 'rebound' for a while." What he has repeatedly emphasized is never short-term gains, but a simple question — if you don't buy Moutai, where should the money go? There is no better answer to this question; buying itself is the answer.