On the evening of January 15th, Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Co., Ltd. (Wantai Biological) released its profit forecast for 2024, expecting a decrease in net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company by 93.11% to 90.38% compared to the previous year.
In its announcement titled “2024 Annual Performance Forecast Reduction Notice,” Wantai Biological stated that for the period from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024, it expects a net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company to be between 86 million yuan and 120 million yuan, a decrease of 1.16168 billion yuan to 1.12768 billion yuan compared to the previous year’s 1.24768 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year decrease of 93.11% to 90.38%. The net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses for the year 2024 is expected to be between -220 million yuan and -155 million yuan, a decrease of 1.29822 billion yuan to 1.23322 billion yuan compared to the previous year’s 1.07822 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year decrease of 120.40% to 114.38%.
The significant decline in profits was attributed by Wantai Biological to adjustments in the vaccine market sector, government centralized procurement, and the aging expansion of the nine-valent HPV vaccine, which resulted in lower-than-expected sales and a substantial decrease in revenue and profit from the vaccine sector, leading to a net loss in profit.
According to a report by “Yicai” on January 15th, this marks the second consecutive year of declining performance for Wantai Biological and the first time since the company’s listing in April 2020 that the net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company, excluding non-recurring gains and losses, has shown a loss. Wantai Biological’s revenue comes from the vaccine and diagnostic sectors.
Xinconing, produced by Wantai Biological, is China’s first domestically approved HPV vaccine on the market. It is a bivalent HPV vaccine that obtained its drug registration certificate on December 30, 2019, and was officially launched in May 2020. Starting from the first half of 2023, Xinconing’s revenue began to decline.
Not only Wantai Biological, but in 2024, several other companies producing HPV vaccines also faced sluggish sales. Zhifei Biological’s net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company in the first three quarters of 2024 decreased by 67.07% compared to the previous year. The company distributes imported quadrivalent HPV vaccines as well as nine-valent HPV vaccines.
HPV vaccines are vaccines designed to prevent cervical cancer in women.