Is ZTO Express Still Attractive After Recent Share Price Recovery and Parcel Market Headlines?

Simply Wall St

Wed, December 17, 2025 at 9:13 PM EST 5 min read

Wondering if ZTO Express (Cayman) at around $21 still offers good value, or if you have already missed the delivery on the biggest gains? This breakdown will help you decide whether it deserves a spot on your watchlist.
Over the last month the stock is up 12.2%, lifting its 7 day return to 1.4% and putting its year to date gain at 11.2%. Longer term returns over 3 and 5 years are still negative, which hints at a shifting market view rather than a straight line growth story.
Recent headlines have focused on ZTO’s position in China’s parcel delivery market, including ongoing commentary about competition, regulation and the health of domestic e commerce, which all feed into sentiment around the stock. At the same time, investors have been paying closer attention to how efficiently major logistics players like ZTO can scale their networks while maintaining margins. This helps explain some of the recent share price recovery.
On our numbers ZTO scores a solid 5/6 valuation checks, suggesting it looks undervalued on most fronts. Next we will unpack what that means across different valuation approaches, before finishing with a more practical way to think about what the shares are really worth.

ZTO Express (Cayman) delivered 11.3% returns over the last year. See how this stacks up to the rest of the Logistics industry.

A Discounted Cash Flow model estimates what a business is worth by projecting the cash it can generate in the future and then discounting those cash flows back to what they are worth today. For ZTO Express (Cayman), this is done using a 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity approach, which models a faster growth phase followed by a more mature period.

ZTO currently generates roughly CN¥3.1 billion in free cash flow, and analysts expect this to climb sharply, with internal projections pointing to around CN¥18.1 billion in annual free cash flow ten years from now. The nearer term forecasts to 2027 are based on analyst estimates, while later years are extrapolated using Simply Wall St growth assumptions.

When all these future cash flows are discounted back, the model suggests an intrinsic value of about $44.66 per share, compared to a current price near $21. That implies the shares trade at roughly a 52.6% discount to their estimated fair value, based on the model’s assumptions.

Result: UNDERVALUED (model-based)

Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests ZTO Express (Cayman) is undervalued by 52.6%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 911 more undervalued stocks based on cash flows.