‘Red or Green Chile Month' proposal advances
What's your preference – red, green or Christmas?
You may soon have the whole month of August to decide as another legislative proposal dedicated to the beloved chile pepper moves forward in the Roundhouse.
Rep. Rebecca Dow (R-Truth or Consequences) presented House Bill 172 to lawmakers in the House Rural Development, Land Grants and Cultural Affairs Committee Tuesday morning and received a unanimous do-pass vote. The bill proposes proclaiming August 'Red and Green Chile Month' annually.
The proclamation is intended to give a nod to the state's status as the 'Chile Capital of the World,' as well as the economic and cultural impacts the peppers bring to the state.
'It'll provide us the opportunity (in) all four corners of the state, all 33 counties, to celebrate chile and New Mexico,' Dow said during the meeting. 'We really want to have an opportunity to elevate awareness and celebrate our producers and what's unique to our state.'
Dow said the plan is to work with New Mexico True, a campaign of the Tourism Department, to create tours across the state.
In 1996 the New Mexico State Legislature passed a House Joint Memorial declaring 'Red or Green?' as the official state question. In 2023, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill into law declaring the smell of roasting green chile the state's official aroma. Chile is also one of the state's official vegetables.
Travis Day, executive director of the New Mexico Chile Association, joined Dow as her expert witness and noted for lawmakers that 8,800 acres of chile were harvested in the state in 2023, equating to about $41.5 million in value.
'I think as a state, we need to take advantage of every opportunity to promote and advocate for our New Mexico chile product, because we are a declining crop, unfortunately, and we want to do anything we can to help build that industry back up,' Day told committee members, noting that labor shortages
Lisa Franzoy, a 'lifelong' resident of Hatch and organizer of the annual Hatch Chile Festival, which is celebrated over Labor Day weekend, said she is proud that her family has long been involved in chile production in the valley and said she supports the bill.
'We've already got our license plates, we already have our billboards,' Franzoy told lawmakers, 'and chile is an important industry to New Mexico, to every New Mexican.'
Joe Wellborn, a member of the New Mexico Chile Association board, also voiced his support for the bill saying a month-long celebration of the crop might attract more people from out of state to take advantage of what New Mexico has to offer.
'We are trying to build an agricultural tourism industry in New Mexico, and this has to be part of it,' Dow said during the meeting.
Committee Chair Rep. Linda Serrato (D-Santa Fe) added that northern New Mexico has an old tradition of producing red chile while southern New Mexico claims green chile. 'I love how we mix it together,' she said.
HB 172 will be heard in the House Government, Elections & Indian Affairs Committee. It has yet to be scheduled for a hearing.
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So what's our view on the industry competition in Q3 and Q4, particularly the competition from foreign premium brands? That's my two questions. Thank you. Donghao Yang: Okay. Thank you very much for your question. Well, we've always been trying to track balance between our growth and profitability. And we don't believe that we have to sacrifice one for the other. And especially now our high-end skincare brands are growing even faster than our color cosmetics brands, which tend to have higher gross margin and bottom line. So we're confident that as we grow our business, both in skincare and color cosmetics going forward and especially skincare is showing a much stronger growth momentum. We believe that we can achieve both growth and profitability. And competition and I think you're right, competition is going to be becoming more and more intense going forward, especially as our high-end skincare brand is growing faster, we do expect to have more competition from the international brands. But in order to drive our growth and strengthen our competing position, we are adopting an R&D-driven growth strategy. So for the last four, five years, we've been one of the most aggressive players in the cosmetics industry to invest heavily in R&D. So now we've built a very, I would say, best-in-class R&D team and R&D infrastructure. If you look at our lab, our R&D center in Shanghai is one of the world-class facilities. So that's how we view where to drive our future growth and especially to win the competition against the players in the industry. Maggie Huang: Well, it's very clear. I have no more questions. Thank you very much. Jinfeng Huang: Thank you. Operator: Our next question today will come from Lin Zhang of CITIC Securities. Please go ahead. Lin Zhang: Thank you for taking my questions. I'm Lin Zhang from CITIC Securities and congratulations on the performance in the second quarter. My first question is for the skincare brands. So I want to ask what are the key drivers behind the rapid growth of skincare brands, for the Calanique and Doctor Wu in the first half of the year? And what is the outlook for the skincare business in the second half year and the next year? And my second question is, in which assets will the company make efforts to continuously improve the profitability? Thank you. Donghao Yang: Thank you for the question. So for the growth of skincare brand, so we think there are a number of reasons. Primarily it's because of our continued investment in R&D and our gradual systematic upgrade of our R&D capabilities. As a result, we have a very strong pipeline of new product innovations. So just to give you some examples, for example, for Calanique, for the past couple of quarters, we have introduced a series of new products, including on top of very successful VC, we produced the VA serum and also the MicroMask series has been very successful. And we also widened the offering of the MicroMask in terms of different efficacy and we also operated the micro mask recently. And for Doctor Wu, the new essence toner has been very successful. So we think mainly from the R&D upgrade and also the new product pipeline. And then in terms of outlook, we have provided the guidance for Q3 of 15% to 30%, which will I would think reflect our future outlook in terms of continued trend of our skincare brands in terms of the development. And then on your second question is our efforts to how to improve the profitability. We are continuing to optimize our channel and product mix and at the same time streamline our operating expenses. But we think most of our brands, some of them given the high growth, we think there's still significant growth potential. And those brands are right now remain well below their respective ceilings. That's why we continue to plan to invest in the brand awareness and brand equity. So especially when there are few product launch. So as a result, we think the profitability improvement will be gradual. Jinfeng Huang: Okay. As well, just to add on to Irene's point, we do see clear opportunities to further improve profitability across several dimensions. First, we will continue to optimize our product mix by driving premiumization and hero products with stronger margins. Second, we're improving marketing efficiency through data-driven CRM and better ROI discipline, shifting spending towards higher return channels. Thirdly, we are enhancing supply chain and operational efficiency to reduce costs and improve scale leverage. And lastly, as top-line growth continues, we expect to gain operating leverage across fixed expenses. So altogether these initiatives give us confidence in steadily expanding profitability while maintaining growth. Lin Zhang: Thank you. That's very clear. Thank you very much. Operator: This will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks. Irene Lyu: Thank you again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at Yatsen Holding Limited directly. Our contact information for IR in both China and the U.S. can be found in today's press release. Thank you and have a great day. Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines. Don't miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you'll want to hear this. On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a 'Double Down' stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you're worried you've already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it's too late. And the numbers speak for themselves: Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you'd have $454,888!* Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you'd have $42,954!* Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you'd have $654,624!* Right now, we're issuing 'Double Down' alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join , and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025 This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Yatsen (YSG) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


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