Under the problems of involution and homogenization, the pharmaceutical industry ushered in pains. According to statistics, the first half of 2024 has come to an end, and the A-share pharmaceutical sector has shown a volatile trend, with more than 9% falling. Among them, Aier Ophthalmology, Zhifei Biotechnology, and United Imaging Medical fell out of the market value of 100 billion yuan, and ST Changkang's share price fell by more than 90% in the first half of the year, and now it has locked in the face value and delisted. There are only 5 stocks with a market value of more than 100 billion, including Mindray Medical, BeiGene, Pien Tze Huang, etc.
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More than 9 percent of pharmaceutical stocks fell collectively
Nuotai Biotech has become the most bullish stock
According to data from Oriental Wealth Choice, as of the end of the first half of 2024, there are 11 100-yuan stocks in the A-share pharmaceutical sector. Xinmai Medical, Kailaiying, and Jiankai Technology all fell out of the 100-yuan stock team, of which Kailaiying and Jiankai Technology fell by more than 40% in the form of resuming rights after the first half of the year.
Among the 489 pharmaceutical stocks, the number of stocks whose stock prices rose in the first half of the year was less than 10%, and only 46 stocks rose in the first half of the year, including Zuoli Pharmaceutical, Lingrui Pharmaceutical, Haisco, Kelun Pharmaceutical, Huahai Pharmaceutical, China Resources Sanjiu, etc., accounting for about 9%.
Specifically, among the top 10 market value increases in the first half of 2024, Nuotai Biotech has the largest cumulative increase, reaching 75.29%, with a total market value of 16.69 billion yuan. Aidit, Allist, Twining Biotech, Innova, etc. followed, and the stock price rose by more than 50%.
Top 10 market capitalization increases in the first half of 2024
Source: Public information, compiled by Xinkangjie
According to statistics, among the rising stocks, 15 stocks such as Mindray Medical, Baiyunshan, China Resources Shuanghe, Yunnan Baiyao, and Jiu'an Medical rose by less than 10% in the first half of the year; 17 stocks such as Sinopharm Modern, Yuyue Medical, and China Resources Sanjiu rose by 10%-20% in the first half of the year; Lingrui Pharmaceutical, Garden Biology, Shuoshi Biotechnology, Baili Tianheng, Xingqi Eye Medicine and other 9 stocks rose by 20%-50% in the first half of the year.
It is worth mentioning that the first-ranked Nuotai Biotech is not only the first biomedical company to disclose its performance forecast in the Science and Technology Innovation Board and the entire A-share market. According to its 2024 semi-annual performance forecast, it is expected that the attributable net profit in the first half of 2024 will be 180 million to 250 million yuan, an increase of 330.08%-497.34% year-on-year, setting the best half-year performance since the listing of Nuotai Biotech.
Nuotai Biotech said that the reason for the company's large year-on-year growth in semi-annual performance in 2024 is mainly due to the continuous increase in the volume of self-selected products and the increase in the proportion of revenue. It is reported that in the self-developed product pipeline, Nuotai Biotech has covered semaglutide, liraglutide, tirpatide, lanreotide acetate, oseltamivir phosphate, thymus fassin, eptifibatide and other well-known varieties.
Previously, when the capital market was scrambling to hype the hot spot of weight loss drugs, Nuotai Biotech had even given actual profit performance. Its revenue in 2023 increased by 58.69% year-on-year, and its profit increased by 26.2% year-on-year; According to the Q1 quarterly report of 2024, the net profit attributable to the parent company increased by 161.74-233.13% year-on-year.
Source: Enterprise announcement, sorted out by Xinkangjie
The collation report found that the revenue of Nuotai Bio's self-selected products has increased year by year, from 131 million yuan in 2021 to 629 million yuan in 2023, and the proportion of revenue in the company's overall revenue has increased from 20.34% to 60.84%, and the gross profit margin of products has also increased from 50.63% to 64.43% in the same period.
02
Under pressure, the industry is approaching
More than 50 biotech companies have raised more than 100 million US dollars
In the first half of this year, most medical people were still quite difficult. However, innovative enterprises with R&D achievements and traditional Chinese medicine companies with increasing concentration have unexpectedly come with a lot of good news.
Brokerage analysis pointed out that in the first half of 2024, the pharmaceutical sector will fluctuate, and medical services and biological products will fall significantly, but sub-sectors such as APIs, in-hospital rigid demand varieties, and overseas destocking cycle varieties will perform steadily, and the traditional Chinese medicine sector will decline the least.
According to the research report, the pharmaceutical index fell by 10.2% in 2024Q2, mainly because the pharmaceutical sector was under pressure. From the perspective of out-of-hospital consumption, the passenger flow is affected by the weak base and consumption, and the growth rate is expected to be low. From the perspective of the hospital, the medical rectification still has a certain impact on the business development of the hospital.
In late June, the medical insurance price comparison system was launched in some areas, which also caused a lot of market fluctuations, and many people were worried that the terminal price of the retail end would move closer to the hospital and online, compressing the profit margins of retail and manufacturers, resulting in the accelerated decline of pharmacies and traditional Chinese medicine sectors in June.
According to Zhongkang CMH statistics, the retail market size of pharmacies in China from January to May this year was about 217.8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 3.7%; The average sales volume of stores fell by 10.6% year-on-year, of which the average customer value decreased by 8.9% year-on-year, and consumers are obviously cautious in spending.
But in fact, although it is still in the stage of strict supervision inside and outside the medical insurance hospital, strict supervision is also accelerating the increase in industry concentration, and leading enterprises are expected to maintain steady growth, so there is no need to be too pessimistic.
At the same time, the purpose of the medical insurance price comparison system is more to eliminate unreasonable pricing at the end of the terminal, rather than a one-size-fits-all unified price, which is expected to have a limited impact on the performance of pharmacies and industrial ends, and the concentration of pharmacies will accelerate.
Therefore, it can be boldly predicted that in the second half of 2024, the overall consumption side outside the hospital will be under pressure, but APIs, drugs and devices with rigid demand in the hospital, as well as the consumables sector and individual stocks that are the first to go out of the impact of the overseas destocking cycle will still maintain steady growth. Driven by the favorable medical insurance negotiations and other favorable factors, or usher in a wave of rebound, traditional Chinese medicine, innovative drugs and innovative devices, taking into account pharmaceutical companies with international capabilities are worth paying attention to.
From a global perspective, recently, the industry media Endpoints News released a statistical report that in the first half of 2024, about 53 innovative drug Biotech companies around the world will have financing of $100 million or more. Of the 50 companies, only about 15 had not yet entered the clinical stage at the time of the funding announcement.
In terms of fields, the hot areas of biomedicine favored by large sums of money include oncology, obesity and metabolic diseases, autoimmune diseases and neuroscience. In the pipeline R&D phase, most of the funds from venture capital are used to support new drug research and testing. Biotechs whose products enter the clinical stage are more likely to receive large investments.
Endpoints News notes that if this pace continues, the size of funding in the biotech sector in 2024 could exceed that of the heyday of 2020 and 2021.
There is a long road ahead, hand in hand. The 2024 CIPU Conference is scheduled to be held in Boao, Hainan Province from August 9 to 14 with the theme of "Moving Forward Under Pressure - Breaking and Establishing from Stock to Increment", to explore the way to break through the stock era and lay out a new future for the health industry with practitioners.
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