Introduction to toshi: Today, hyaluronic acid used in the beauty industry in Japan and South Korea, at least six of the ten are from China. More than 30 years ago, China's hyaluronic acid could only rely on imports, and in China, where the per capita wage was less than 100 yuan, a kilogram of hyaluronic acid was sold for 200,000 yuan. Behind the earth-shaking changes is the rapid development of China's hyaluronic acid enterprises for more than two decades, especially the hyaluronic acid enterprises led by two female leaders.
Wang Jian | author
A writer in the former Soviet Union once said: "War, let women go away."
War represents a battlefield filled with smoke and flesh and blood, and it is difficult for weak women to withstand the cruel test of war.
However, if there had been no war, perhaps there would not have been the "medical beauty" industry favored by all beauty-loving women today.
1
History of hyaluronic acid
During World War I, a field hospital in Britain received a 27-year-old wounded man, Walter.
He was a gunner on a British navy battleship and was wounded by enemy shells. Fortunately, he passed by the grim reaper; unfortunately, his handsome face was cut in half by the shell, and his face was unrecognizable, and his life was still in danger.
A military medic named Harold Gillis came to check it out and decided to perform an unprecedented surgery to treat Walter.
He did this by cutting a healthy piece of skin inside the wounded man's arm, then disinfecting and folding it and stitching it onto the damaged face.
In fact, this shocking practice was learned by Harold when he went to France to investigate, from the French oral surgeon Ipri Morestine. He saw Morestine remove a tumor on a patient's face and cover the incision with the skin of the patient's chin.
Even so, Dr. Harold was not entirely sure of his surgery. But the situation was urgent, and with the idea of saving people, he could only try his best.
Unexpectedly, the operation was successful. After a long recovery period, Walter's face is as good as before, but after all, he survived, and at least looks like a "human".
With this technique of "tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall," Dr. Harold performed more than 10,000 repair operations on more than 5,000 wounded soldiers throughout the war.
In 1930, for his outstanding performance, Dr. Harold was knighted by King George VI of the United Kingdom, and he was also revered by the medical community as the "Father of Plastic Surgery of the World".
Dr. Harold must not have imagined that his own set of life-saving techniques for emergency rescue had evolved into the perfect channel for ordinary people to "turn sparrows into phoenixes" after the war - medical plastic surgery.
But throughout the 20th century, cosmetic surgery, while making women beautiful, also had to make them suffer from flesh and skin. More and more women are craving a kind of "art" with less pain and more rapidity.
With the advancement of science and technology and the improvement of medical aesthetic technology, women who love beauty have finally come to the gospel, that is, through minimally invasive injection technology, they can obtain a effect that is not inferior to surgical plastic surgery. Among them, botulinum toxin needles and hyaluronic acid are the most famous, known as the "double males" in the injection beauty industry.
However, if the most sought after artifact for beauty-loving women, it is undoubtedly hyaluronic acid.
Hyaluronic acid can not only help the skin lock in moisture, make the skin smooth and elastic, but also has the miracle effect of wrinkle removal and anti-aging. More critically, compared with other beauty materials, hyaluronic acid immunogenicity is better, users are not prone to allergies, and safety is higher, so it is more widely used and is popular with women of all ages.
Speaking of which, this technique was not related to medical aesthetics earlier, but was only applied to eye surgery.
In 1934, Karl M. Meyer, a professor of ophthalmology at Columbia University in the United States, was killed in the field. Meyer first extracted a polymer polysaccharide substance containing glucuronic acid and amino sugar from the vitreous body of bull's eye, named Hyaluronic Acid.
This tissue fluid is also widely found in tissues such as our human skin, joints, and umbilical cords. Its appearance is crystal clear, can lock a lot of water, the reason why human beings are over 25 years old, the skin is easy to lose luster and elasticity, a large factor is because of the joint loss of hyaluronic acid and collagen.
However, the discovery found that people felt the wonder of hyaluronic acid in the 1970s.
Because hyaluronic acid has good biocompatibility and absorption, it has application value in the biomedical field. At that time, the medical community mainly used it as a viscoelastic agent for eye surgery and subsequent injections for the treatment of osteoarthritis.
At that time, the extraction of hyaluronic acid could only be extracted from animal tissues such as cockscombs, bull's eyes, and umbilical cords through biotechnology. 1 kg of hyaluronic acid requires at least 200 kg of chicken crown, not only the raw materials are expensive, the extraction and separation process is also very complicated, and the purity is also low, only about 50%.
Taiwanese scientists who were exposed to hyaluronic acid in the early days found that its main substance, Uronic acid, was very similar to uric acid, and associated with its transparent form, so it was translated as "hyaluronic acid". Since then, the name hyaluronic acid has spread all the way.
Domestic hyaluronic acid could only be imported earlier, and the price was comparable to gold. The price of hyaluronic acid on the market is about 200,000 yuan per kilogram, which can be described as a sky-high price, and it should be known that it was still an era when the per capita wage was less than 100 yuan.
Even so, there is still a priceless market.
The development of China's hyaluronic acid industry must first thank a university professor.
2
Development of hyaluronic acid industry in China
In 1980, Zhang Tianmin, a professor of pharmacy at Shandong University, took the lead in successfully extracting hyaluronic acid from the human umbilical cord and chicken crown.
Subsequently, under his guidance, Shandong Pharmaceutical Research Institute established the first HA (hyaluronic acid) research and development team in China. In the future, The leaders of China's hyaluronic acid industry, Ling Peixue and Guo Xueping, are all from Professor Zhang's disciples.
In this regard, Professor Zhang Tianmin was later known as the "father of China's hyaluronic acid industry", which is well-deserved.
However, China's hyaluronic acid can be industrialized, and it still depends on Ling Peixue and Guo Xueping, who are "blue out of blue and better than blue".
Ling Peixue
Both are graduate students of Professor Zhang Tianmin, and they also entered the Shandong Pharmaceutical Research Institute after graduation to continue to engage in the research and development of hyaluronic acid.
At this time, international hyaluronic acid research has begun to turn commercial. South Korea's LG Group took the lead in introducing hyaluronic acid products that were originally only used in the medical field to the medical aesthetic industry, and developed a special hyaluronic acid filler.
Sweden's Q-Med also began to further simplify the hyaluronic acid extraction process through a key "biphasic crosslinking technology" at the end of the 1980s, and has since stepped into the hyaluronic acid industry and become an industrial giant.
In fact, the Q-Med technology has epoch-making significance for the application of hyaluronic acid.
The original form of hyaluronic acid that was extracted early was liquid, which was quickly degraded and metabolized by the internal hyaluronidase and stored for a short time. Q-Med's "biphasic cross-linking technology" can change hyaluronic acid from liquid to gelatinous, which can be maintained in the skin for a long time.
To this day, the stability of the crosslinker inside hyaluronic acid is still a key factor in determining the price point of different brands.
When the international research and development of the hyaluronic acid industry is in full swing, the domestic industry has not fallen behind and has been working hard. However, the extraction of hyaluronic acid at that time was still very complicated, and it was difficult to meet the needs of the market by relying only on a small amount of hyaluronic acid extracted from animals.
The turning point came from an experiment by Guo Xueping: microbial fermentation.
Guo Xueping
In the early 1990s, inspired by a Japanese biological fermentation method, Guo Xueping's team developed a microbial fermentation method that can extract high concentrations of hyaluronic acid by screening strains, and successfully reduced the cost of hyaluronic acid extraction from tens of thousands of yuan per kilogram to several thousand yuan per kilogram, breaking the situation that China can only import hyaluronic acid in one fell swoop.
This technology has not only been included in the national "Eighth Five-Year Plan" and "Ninth Five-Year Plan" scientific and technological research plans, but also won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in the name of the collective.
In 1992, the business-minded Ling Peixue established Shandong Freda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. based on this technology, and began to provide hyaluronic acid raw materials for Japanese shiseido, Estée Lauder, Lancome and other cosmetic brands.
It is also due to the demonstration of Shandong Freda that Shandong Province has gradually become an important base for China's hyaluronic acid industry, and a large number of hyaluronic acid-related enterprises such as Focus Biology, Fufeng Biology, and Dongchen Biology have emerged.
At that time, China's later "Hyaluronic Acid Three Musketeers", Bloomage Biology, Aimike and Hao Haisheng were not yet established, and even their respective founders did not know what hyaluronic acid was.
In 1998, Ling Peixue led more than 30 scientific researchers, including Guo Xueping, to establish Shandong Freda Biochemical (the predecessor of Bloomage Biology).
The initial equity of this company was extremely complicated, and it was established by Shandong Biochemical Pharmaceutical Company (later Shandong Freda Group), Shandong Chia Tai Freda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Shandong Zhengda Technology Co., Ltd. and The United States Freda Company, each with a capital of 750,000 yuan, and the company each accounted for 25% of the shares.
The company has more equity, naturally there are more "mother-in-law" and more things.
But the most important thing is that a bunch of Shandong hans don't know how to do the market methods and routines, and after the company was established, they lost money, and Ling Peixue didn't know how to be good.
It has to be said that women's money still depends on women to earn. China's hyaluronic acid industry also quickly ushered in two important female leaders.
3
Two female entrepreneurs in China's hyaluronic acid industry
In 2000, Ling Peixue was studying for an EMBA at Peking University, and there was a female classmate named Zhao Yan in the class.
Zhao Yan, 34, is a native of Yunnan and has a legendary life experience. After graduating from the Department of Biology of China Normal University and staying on to teach, after obtaining the "first bucket of gold" from Hainan in the 1990s, he began to get involved in the real estate industry, and successively built a number of landmarks in Beijing such as Huaxia Bank, SK Building, Wukesong Huaxi Live and so on.
Knowing that this female classmate is not bad at money and is also thinking of investing in other industries, Ling Peixue hurriedly invited her to her company to investigate hyaluronic acid projects.
After Zhao Yan came to Shandong Freda, she was a little disappointed.
Because the whole factory is less than 500 square meters, the office is also very simple. Guo Xueping, who was in charge of the introduction, told Zhao Yan about the history and molecular structure of a lot of hyaluronic acid, and she was drowsy.
Zhao Yan finally remembered a sentence, "One hyaluronic acid molecule can lock 1,000 water molecules."
Zhao Yan, who was originally a biology major, was bright-eyed, and she knew that the key to skin problems was uneven water and oil. Out of a woman's intuition, she realized that if hyaluronic acid was introduced directly into the field of women's cosmetics, it would be a huge business opportunity.
Therefore, Zhao Yan, who was fierce and vigorous, immediately expressed his willingness to invest.
Zhao Yan
In 2001, Zhao Yan took 50% of the equity of Shandong Freda Biochemical for 1.5 times the net assets and renamed it Bloomage Freda Biotechnology Co., Ltd.
Subsequently, Zhao Yan hired professional medical management personnel with high salaries, spent a year to obtain ISO9000 certification, and established a special research and development institution for hyaluronic acid. Ling Peixue and Guo Xueping were sent by her to Freda Group and Freda Chemical to engage in management and research, respectively, in order to build China's first industrial chain integrating hyaluronic acid research and development, production and operation.
Zhao Yan is very business-minded, and after knowing the importance of the microbial fermentation method, she decisively bought out the patent at a one-time price of 450,000 yuan from the Shandong Pharmaceutical Research Institute, to which the patent belongs.
In 2004, Bloomage Freda was already the largest hyaluronic acid production and research and development enterprise in China, but most women in China still know nothing about hyaluronic acid.
Of course, there are also those who have heard of it, but have not witnessed the "magic" of hyaluronic acid, such as 41-year-old Jian Jun.
This year, Jian Jun, who was working abroad, found herself a female client in her 70s, who was significantly younger than before. Curious, she inquired and learned that the other party had been injected with hyaluronic acid.
Jian Jun later recalled, "That was the first time I saw hyaluronic acid injection up close. At that time, I thought there must be a market for this. ”
Jian Jun and Zhao Yan had a similar experience, after graduating from Tsinghua University, she entered the well-paid COFCO corporation and later gave up the iron rice bowl in the late 1980s.
However, Jian Jun did not stay at home, but chose to go abroad to engage in trade work.
Jian Jun
It is the nature of women to love beauty, and no one understands women's minds better than women.
In fact, as early as two years ago, under the recommendation of her husband Yao Jing, Jian Jun got a patent agent developed by a French laboratory - a "beauty needle" for facial wrinkles and depression injections, and introduced it to China.
Unfortunately, this product did not catch fire in China, and Jian Jun had to give up.
However, seeing the changes after the injection of hyaluronic acid by her customers, she is even more convinced of the great potential of the beauty industry.
Jian Jun, who said that he was done, heard that a kind of "lunch beauty" prevailed abroad, that is, he could undergo a plastic surgery at lunchtime, and he could not see any plastic surgery marks.
After learning that this beauty model is not only suitable for all women, but also has a low cost and no complicated technology, she can't help but be overjoyed.
In the autumn of 2004, Jian Jun returned to China and founded Beijing Yingzhihuang Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (the predecessor of Aimeike). The company was founded by Jian Jun and her husband, with a registered capital of 1.5 million yuan, and the couple each paid up the registered amount of 350,000 yuan.
Soon after returning to China, Jian Jun organized a team to start the research and development of domestic hyaluronic acid beauty needles.
At this time, how to let the majority of Chinese women understand the benefits of hyaluronic acid has become the same problem faced by Zhao Yan and Jian Jun.
4
China's hyaluronic acid industry has opened up a situation of competition for deer
No one expected that the appearance of a female artist in Taiwan had helped a lot.
In 2005, Taiwanese artist Big S introduced himself to use hyaluronic acid injection to remove wrinkles and beauty in his own "Beauty King", and even bluntly said in a TV interview that "many female stars will not live without hyaluronic acid."
The influence of big S has played a popular role in hyaluronic acid in China. The popular Korean drama has completely swept the country with a beauty economy, and plastic surgery in Korea has begun to become a trend, and more and more women have experienced the benefits of hyaluronic acid.
Smoothing wrinkles, filling depressions, the magic hyaluronic acid makes countless women feel the magic of medical aesthetic technology, and because of the convenient and efficient characteristics, it has become the most favored technical means in minimally invasive medical beauty.
During this period, Bloomage Freda was still struggling to expand the production capacity of hyaluronic acid, and internally it was inseparable from Shandong Freda due to equity relations.
Among them, there is not only the equity entanglement of each other's "cutting and chaos", but also the competition between Zhao Yan and Ling Peixue for the authoritative position of hyaluronic acid business.
In 2008, due to the dilution of equity, Ling Peixue announced its withdrawal from Bloomage Freda and resumed its own Shandong Freda to continue the production and research and development of hyaluronic acid. The complex equity relationship between Bloomage Freda and Shandong Freda has also begun to toss for nearly a decade.
Guo Xueping, who remained behind, became the chief scientist of Bloomage Freda and continued to engage in research and development.
This year, Bloomage Freda was listed on the Hong Kong stock market with a market value of HK$400 million.
But at this time, Ying zhihuang, who created the concept of "light medical beauty", is still waiting for approval.
Because the injectable hyaluronic acid products developed by it are Class III devices, they have not yet obtained qualifications and can only wait for approval before they can be put into the market.
Almost at the same time, overseas hyaluronic acid brands have joined the medical beauty track. For example, Qiao Yadeng in the United States and Fasli in Taiwan took the lead through various channels and became the first choice for beauty lovers at that time.
Various medical and aesthetic institutions, such as Kindley, Huahan Plastic Surgery, Yihua Health, etc., introduced hyaluronic acid beauty business during this period.
As an entry-level medical aesthetic project, hyaluronic acid has quickly occupied more than 65% of the business share in the medical aesthetic field with its fast and convenient, coupled with high-frequency consumption attributes.
In the context of the competition between the heroes and the deer, Zhao Yan's Huaxi Freda and Jian Jun's Yingzhihuang gathered strength while launching a counterattack road.
5
Windfall profits in the industry
In 2011, with the efforts of Guo Xueping's team, Bloomage Freda successfully developed the "enzyme cutting method", which reduced the degradation cycle of hyaluronic acid to several hours and enabled large-scale production. This technology also enables precise control of the molecular weight of hyaluronic acid, so that hyaluronic acid can be applied to different scenes, giving people unlimited imagination space.
"Enzymatic digestion" not only allows Bloomage Freda to have more than 200 specifications of the product line in one fell swoop, but also becomes the world's largest R & D and production enterprise of hyaluronic acid.
At the same time, Guo Xueping further developed the original microbial fermentation technology, and increased the fermentation rate of hyaluronic acid from less than 3g/L to 12-14g/L.
Although it is only a "gram" level change, this indicator is the result of Guo Xueping's team after nearly 20 years of efforts, and it is also the core competitiveness of Bloomage Freda in the hyaluronic acid industry.
In 2017, the market value of Bloomage Freda's Hong Kong stocks has reached more than HK$6 billion. However, Zhao Yan felt that this market value was inconsistent with the company's leading position in the industry, so she simply borrowed 3.5 billion yuan and privatized Huaxi Freda.
Subsequently, Bloomage Freda cooperated with the Forbidden City to launch the popular "Forbidden City Lipstick" series by taking advantage of the national tide, from a hyaluronic acid supplier to the entire industry of medical and functional skin care products.
In 2018, the global sales volume of hyaluronic acid raw materials was 500 tons, of which Bloomage Freda contributed 180 tons, accounting for 36% of the global market, ranking first in the hyaluronic acid industry. Bloomage Freda achieved operating income of 1.263 billion yuan in that year, an increase of 54.4% year-on-year, and the gross profit margin remained above 75% for three consecutive years.
In March 2019, the years-old equity entanglement between Bloomage Freda and Shandong Freda finally settled, renamed Bloomage Biotech, and began to prepare for the A-share listing. On November 6, Bloomage Biotech officially landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, with a market value of 40.848 billion yuan.
The 54-year-old Zhao Yan was selected into the "2020 Hurun Global Self-made Female Rich List" with a value of 34 billion yuan that year, becoming the world-renowned "Queen of Hyaluronic Acid".
This year, there is one more thing that makes Bloomage Creatures and the Chinese people feel inspired.
Japan's Shiseido, once the world's pharmaceutical grade hyaluronic acid giant, officially announced that it will withdraw from the pharmaceutical grade hyaluronic acid business within the next three years, due to the cost and quality advantages of Bloomage Biologics.
In the years when Bloomage Biology was in the limelight of the domestic hyaluronic acid industry, Aimeike also relied on the ultra-high gross profit margin of several explosive products to come out of the dormant period.
In 2009, Yingzhihuang, which has been renamed Beijing Aimeike Biotechnology Co., Ltd., finally got the approval and has its own first beauty needle - Yimei.
This is the first sodium hyaluronate injection filler in China, and Yimei is also the first hyaluronic acid beauty needle in China.
"Yimei" is the first generation of Aimike products, although the sales volume is average, it still plays a role in market popularization. The reason is very simple, compared to imported hyaluronic acid beauty needles, "Yimei" is much cheaper.
At that time, most of the beauty agencies recommended by the American Qiao Yaden, the price of this product 1ML is about 12,000-14,000 yuan, and the price of the same specifications of "Yimei" is basically 3,000-4,000 yuan, and even more than Taiwan's Fasli is almost 1,000 yuan cheaper.
Since hyaluronic acid beauty injections are given every few months, the high cost makes consumers naturally consider the relatively cheap "Yimei".
Aimec then launched "Yimei One Plus One", "Bao Nida", "Ephraim", "Aimeifei", "Hi Body", these products and "Yimei" formed its six major fist products, the gross profit margin is more than 90%.
In particular, the painless hyaluronic acid injection product "Evely" launched in 2015 has climbed directly from tens of millions to 150 million yuan in only two years after its listing, and its revenue has reached 220 million yuan in 2019.
However, if you talk about the most sought after products of female customers under Aimeike, it is undoubtedly the "Hi Body" (non-crosslinked hyaluronic acid) series listed in 2016, which is the only product in China to get a neck injection certificate.
As the saying goes, people get old before they get old. Women are afraid of getting old, in fact, the most concerned is the skin problems in their eyes and neck.
"Hi Body" is the right medicine for this, focusing on improving the fine lines of women's eye and neck skin and improving the surrounding skin tone, thus becoming a "hit" for Amyak.
"Hi Body" reached sales of more than 30 million yuan in the year of listing, and in just three years, sales increased to more than 200 million yuan, accounting for 43.5% of revenue. In the following two years, with the new "Panda Needle", the sales of "Hi Body" doubled again, almost half of the sales of Aimeike.
Behind the ultra-high sales of Aimek is a super high gross profit margin, and the gross profit margin of its hyaluronic acid gel products and solution products is as high as 92%.
In March 2019, Aimek officially submitted a prospectus to the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
According to the prospectus, from 2016 to 2018, the total revenue of Aimec was 140 million, 220 million and 320 million yuan in three years, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 45%; the net profit was three steps in three years, jumping from 53 million and 76 million to 120 million.
In 2019, Aimek's revenue reached 557 million yuan, net profit reached 305 million, and it became the "sales crown" of the medical aesthetic industry with a proportion of 14% of the sales amount.
On September 28, 2020, Aimek was successfully listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM). On the day of listing, the stock price soared all the way, the issue price was 118.27 yuan per share, and by the time of closing, it had risen to 340.10 yuan, an increase of 287.56%, and the market value was nearly 70 billion yuan.
After the listing, the stock price of Aimek soared all the way. By March 2021, the stock price of Aimek rose to a terrifying 1330 yuan / share at its highest, and the market value directly doubled, breaking through 130 billion, becoming a big bull stock in the A-share market.
At this time, Aimeike also surpassed Guizhou Moutai (91.68%) in the same period with a gross profit margin of up to 92.5%, and was jokingly called "women's Moutai" by shareholders.
The brewer behind this "fine wine", the 58-year-old Jian Jun is listed on the "2021 Hurun Rich List" with a value of nearly 44 billion, and Zhao Yan, who is also on the list and has a net worth of 46 billion, is almost equal.
During this period, Aimeike also became the largest customer of Bloomage Bio in China.
In the entire industrial chain of medical beauty, the two female entrepreneurs are both competitors and partners with each other.
6
Behind the huge profits are strong market demand and high industry barriers
There is a saying that "mediocre businesses try to make money, and top companies try to make money for women".
Bloomage Biologics and Aimeike, which have developed by relying on hyaluronic acid industry so far, intuitively verified this sentence and earned a lot of money early.
The domestic medical aesthetic industry can be divided into three levels: upstream raw material manufacturers (injection manufacturers), midstream medical aesthetic institutions and downstream medical aesthetic platforms, and the gross profit margin is also 80%-95% upstream, 40%-65% in midstream, and 82.75% downstream, respectively.
Bloomage Biology and Aimec belong to upstream raw material manufacturers and injection manufacturers, and the gross profit margin is more than 80%, while the gross profit margin of ordinary medical beauty institutions is generally only about 50%.
Bloomage Biotech is mainly engaged in four businesses, namely raw material business (21.46%), medical aesthetic terminal business (16.23%), functional skin care products (62.07%) and functional food business (0.24%).
According to the data released by Bloomage Biotech, the revenue in the first half of 2021 reached 1.937 billion yuan, an increase of 104.44% year-on-year, and the net profit was 361 million yuan, an increase of 35.01% year-on-year. Of these, 1 billion is contributed by its hyaluronic acid functional skin care products such as "Runbaiyan" and "Kwadi".
But even if hyaluronic acid has the title of "liquid gold", the actual cost is not high, which can be clearly seen in bloomage's prospectus.
The actual factory price of hyaluronic acid injections with a price of up to thousands of yuan is only a few tens of yuan, or even lower. If the real cost is calculated according to the hyaluronic acid market of several thousand yuan per kilogram, in fact, it is only a dozen pieces.
It should be known that Bloomage's hyaluronic acid production has already increased from 0.8 tons in 2000 to 258 tons in 2020 through process improvement.
During the period from 2016 to 2020, Bloomage's gross profit margin was also increasing, with 77.36%, 75.48%, 79.92%, 77% and 81.41% respectively.
However, compared with Aimeike, Bloomage Bio's gross profit margin is not the highest.
As an upstream injection manufacturer with high bargaining power, Aimeike products positioned in the field of "light medical beauty" have pushed the gross profit margin of the entire industrial chain to the peak.
According to aimek's third quarter 2021 financial report, the total revenue was 1.023 billion, hyaluronic acid products contributed more than 98% of the revenue, and the comprehensive gross profit margin reached more than 92%.
Similarly, from the prospectus of Aimeike, it can be found that the direct cost of "Bao Nida", which focuses on long-acting hyaluronic acid, is only 13 yuan, even if the cost of research and development, labor, materials, etc., is only 33 yuan; for example, the "Hi body" that specializes in neck lines, the total cost is only 24.72 yuan, and its other products are almost all less than 100 yuan.
However, in the market, the price of "Bao Nida" is basically 13800-17800 yuan / ml; the price of "Hi Body" is almost 2800 ~ 3920 yuan / ml.
Such a gross profit margin is really a huge profit in the windfall profit, and any enterprise is ashamed of itself.
This makes one wonder, why has such an obvious profiteering product been able to survive to this day?
Among them, on the one hand, women's money is still easy to earn. In order to become beautiful and young, women are willing to spend thousands of dollars and millions of dollars, and the market demand is extremely strong.
On the other hand, these two hyaluronic acid companies entered the market earlier and ate policy dividends. Subsequently, there were very few hyaluronic acid products that were approved by the national regulatory level, which made Bloomage Bio and Aimeike, which produce and operate hyaluronic acid, invisibly establish their own "moat".
By the end of 2021, the State Drug Administration has only 23 kinds of hyaluronic acid products for injection that have been approved for listing, which belong to more than a dozen domestic and foreign enterprises such as Bloomage Biologics and Aimek.
It is the high entry threshold that makes the upstream raw material manufacturers (Bloomage Biology) and the injection manufacturer (Aimeike) always in the high-end position of the industrial chain, firmly control the right to speak, and take away most of the profits of other enterprises that are far less than their own.
This may also be the reason why Bloomage Bio's stock price is close to 100 billion when it is high, and then the stock price is almost "waist cut", but the price-earnings ratio is still as high as 109 times.
The same is true of Aimek, although the revenue in 2020 reached 709 million, the net profit was 440 million, which was not worth mentioning in the entire A-share market. But it still maintains a market value of 100 billion, and the price-earnings ratio is as high as 195 times.
As more and more strong competitors emerge on this track, the market is constantly questioning how long the valuation of these two hyaluronic acid "bull stocks" can last.
7
The hyaluronic acid industry is packed with competitors
In the domestic hyaluronic acid industry, there is also a company that must be mentioned, Hao HaiShengke.
Jiang Wei, the founder of Haohai Biotech, who was listed on the Hong Kong stock market in 2015 and landed on the science and technology innovation board in 2019, is extremely low-key and mysterious.
In 2007, Mr. and Mrs. Jiang Wei founded Shanghai Haohai Biotechnology Co., Ltd., and after successively acquiring three medical sodium hyaluronate preparation manufacturers, they entered the medical aesthetic industry, but the main business is the supply of ophthalmic and orthopedic viscoelastic materials.
In the hyaluronic acid industry, Hao Hai Biotech mainly imported products as an agent in the early days. Until September 2013, the first hyaluronic acid product "Haiwei" was launched, and at the pace of releasing a new hyaluronic acid product every three years, two hyaluronic acid products were successively launched, "Jiaolan" and "Haimei".
In the third quarter of 2021, Haohai Biotech's revenue was 1.27 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.9% in revenue, and a net profit attributable to the mother was 310 million yuan. Among them, the revenue of hyaluronic acid products was 120 million yuan, an increase of 143.16% year-on-year.
Hao Haishengke's efforts in the field of hyaluronic acid are concentrated on the plastic surgery and wound care product series, although it is different from Bloomage Biology and Aimeike industrial chain, but it belongs to the same track, and its product gross profit margin is also above 90%.
It is precisely because of the ultra-high gross profit margin of hyaluronic acid products, HaoHai Biotech and Bloomage Biology and Aimike are also known as A-share "Three Musketeers of Medical Beauty".
The medical beauty industry is hot, and it is natural that other enterprises will come to share the cup, such as the veteran pharmaceutical company Huadong Pharmaceutical.
Compared with the previous three private institutions, the volume of Huadong Pharmaceutical is much larger, and it is a comprehensive listed pharmaceutical company integrating research and development, production and sales, with a total revenue of 33.683 billion yuan and a net profit of 2.43 billion yuan in 2020.
The hunky East China Medicine has actually been "running" unhurriedly on the track of medical beauty.
In 2013, Huadong Pharmaceutical occupied 25% of the market share of the domestic hyaluronic acid industry by representing the Korean hyaluronic acid brand "Yiwan", and for five consecutive years it has suppressed the "three musketeers of medical beauty".
In the following years, huadong pharmaceutical, which had a lot of money, acquired and invested in shares, and successively acquired foreign technologies and agency rights such as long-lasting microspheres, whitening and botulinum toxin products.
Huadong Medicine, which has learned technology and will integrate it, has also created its own "secret weapon".
In April 2021, Huadong Pharmaceutical's long-acting microspheres, a collagen stimulating agent, had just been approved for listing by NMPA, and its stock price rose by 42.7%.
Ellansé, also known as the "Girl Needle", combines the advantages of hyaluronic acid and child face needles, which can not only fill, but also promote collagen regeneration, the key is to maintain for up to three years. It can be said that this pair of competitors such as Aimek will be a crushing "weapon".
In addition to these upstarts and established pharmaceutical companies, the industry chain from hyaluronic acid raw materials to consumables is also crowded with "new students".
There are Freda Pharmaceutical, which has returned to the track, Shandong Focus Biology, whichse output is second only to Bloomage Biology, Jinbo Biology, which became famous by the "recombinant TYPE III humanized collagen product", Aoyuan Meigu, which also relied on "buy, buy and buy", and Langzi shares from the clothing industry to change the track...
At the same time, they all set their sights on the hyaluronic acid industry with the high gross profit margin of Maotai fragrance.
It is worth mentioning that because of the rise of hyaluronic acid enterprises including Bloomage Biology and Shandong Focus Biology, China has become a major supplier of hyaluronic acid in the world.
Today, at least six of the ten bottles of hyaluronic acid used in the beauty industry in Japan, South Korea and other countries come from China.
In the face of many competitors, Bloomage is constantly expanding the downstream market, and even launched hyaluronic acid cat food with the concept of "hyaluronic acid for everything", even the pet field has not fallen.
Aimek did not dare to slacken off, not only is it stepping up the approval of botulinum toxin products cooperated with South Korea's Huons Co., Ltd, but also quietly developing GLP-1 drugs in genetic recombinant proteins, ready to be applied to the field of weight loss. This product is aimed at a larger object, and the significance for Aimeike is more profound.
The addition of many competitors is certainly not a good thing for Bloomage Biotech and Aimek. But for consumers, it's a great thing.
After all, the industry competition is intensifying, and the overall price of hyaluronic acid will naturally be reduced, and there may be an opportunity to drop to the "people-friendly price" that everyone can accept.
However, women's money cannot be earned.
As long as women still desire to become beautiful and young products, the track of medical beauty, the industry of hyaluronic acid will continue to be noisy.