Luckin Coffee is taking a fresh look at the Persian Gulf after new backing from Abu Dhabi's Mubadala. "There are other markets we are currently looking at [and] potentially entering into regions like Gulf countries," Chairman David Li said in a Monday interview CNBC billed as exclusive. The idea is not new: Luckin floated a Middle East and India rollout back in 2019, but those plans never materialized.
CEO Jinyi Guo told CNBC that the region is attractive for two reasons: steady, repeat coffee consumption and a rising taste for lower sugar, health focused beverages. That consumer mix lines up with what Luckin has been selling at scale in China.
Li is also co-founder and CEO of Centurium Capital, Luckin's controlling shareholder. Centurium teamed up with Mubadala in early September on a $1 billion investment that made the Abu Dhabi investor a direct shareholder in Luckin. Mubadala, a $385 billion sovereign wealth fund, has put more than $20 billion to work in China, including backing Shein and Dalian Wanda's mall business.
With Centurium's backing, Luckin has rebounded strongly and surpassed Starbucks to become China's largest coffee chain by sales. Centurium has been leaning further into coffee too, purchasing Blue Bottle Coffee from Nestlé in April for reportedly under $400 million.
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The company's recovery follows a scandal over its books six years earlier, when former executives pumped up reported sales by hundreds of millions of dollars. That episode led to a U.S. bankruptcy filing, removal from Nasdaq, and added fuel to widening U.S. scrutiny of Chinese listings. Today its shares trade over the counter on a less regulated venue, giving it an implied market value around $9.6 billion. By contrast, in a deal last November, Starbucks placed a value of more than $13 billion on its China arm when it agreed to transfer control to Boyu Capital, a Beijing based private equity firm.
Luckin is still mostly a China story. It runs more than 36,000 stores across mainland China and Hong Kong combined. Beyond China, the company runs 150 stores in Malaysia and 100 in Singapore, and roughly a year after its U.S. debut it counts 23 locations across New York City.
The investor list keeps growing too: Temasek disclosed a 6.4% stake in May and voiced confidence in the leadership team, while Luckin continues to build out in Singapore and Malaysia. On relisting, Guo said last year at a government hosted event in Xiamen, where the company is based, that Luckin is "actively pushing the process of relisting on a U.S. mainboard." It still needs signoff from Chinese regulators and has since said there is no firm timetable.
Momentum is visible in the latest quarter: revenue climbed 28.5% to 15.9 billion yuan ($2.34 billion), average monthly transacting customers rose 23% to 112.7 million, and the chain added a net 2,714 new stores. If Luckin does greenlight the Gulf, watch how quickly it can replicate China's formula abroad, how its OTC valuation responds, and whether progress on a U.S. relisting becomes more concrete. That combo can shape the narrative around growth, not just in Shanghai or Shenzhen, but in your watchlist.
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