Chinese billionaire investor Duan Yongping touted Pop Mart International Group as a long-term investment and hinted that he may have already started building bullish bets, further validating his confidence in companies that are grappling with growth concerns.

Duan, dubbed China’s Warren Buffett by some investors, recently said on social media that the toymaker had great growth potential to achieve its globalisation goal and that the barriers built by the company were enough to fend off competitors. He also said that he had opened an “insurance company” for Pop Mart, a metaphor he had used before when selling put options on stocks including Tencent Holdings and Apple.

Selling a put option means a bet against declines in share prices where sellers make profit if stock prices rise.

“When I took a look at it [Pop Mart] a couple of years ago, I thought this was an interesting company with a young founder and good corporate culture,” Duan said in the post. “Now I don’t have to think whether its business model can work and I have also figured out the issue of sustainability.”

Duan’s call pits the seasoned investor against some fund managers, who have trimmed holdings of Pop Mart amid unease that the company is too reliant on its hit toy Labubu for growth. Pop Mart’s shares have shed more than half of their value since reaching a record high in August, including a 23 per cent slump – even after reporting a near fourfold jump in full-year profit for 2025.

Duan, 65, who hails from southern China’s Jiangxi province, is known for his investment prowess. After earning a master’s degree in economics in the 1980s from the People’s University of China, he turned around a loss-making factory in southern Guangdong province that manufactured game machines. In 1995, Duan set up an electronics company, which has now evolved and been split into mobile-phone makers Vivo and Oppo.