Yuhan Corp. said on the 5th that, on a consolidation basis, operating profit for the third quarter was 24.1200 billion won, a provisional figure down 55.7% from the same period a year earlier.
Sales for the same period were 551.126 billion won, down 5.8% year over year. Net profit fell 23.6% to 18.135 billion won.
On a cumulative basis for the third quarter, operating profit was 78.37500 billion won and sales were 1.576707 trillion won, up 2.7% and 2.9%, respectively, from a year earlier. Net profit was 96.466 billion won, up 14.0%.
Yuhan Corp. cited a decline in milestone (royalty) revenue from Leclaza (ingredient name lazertinib), a new drug for non-small cell lung cancer out-licensed to Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in the United States, as a key reason for the weak results.
The company transferred Leclaza's global commercialization rights to Janssen in 2018 for up to 1.4 trillion won. Since then, Janssen developed Leclaza as a combination therapy with its anticancer drug Rybrevant (amivantamab) and received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Aug. last year. It later received marketing authorization in Europe, the United Kingdom, and Japan as well. Accordingly, the company received about 80 billion won ($60 million) in the third quarter last year and about 20.7 billion won ($15 million) in the second quarter this year as license fees. In contrast, there was no large license fee inflow in the third quarter. As a result, total license fee sales fell 95.6% from a year earlier.
However, Yuhan Corp. received marketing authorization from China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) in July, and is expected to receive license fees within the year equivalent to about 3.1% of last year's sales (2.0678 trillion won). A company official said, "We expect fourth-quarter results to be driven by research and development achievements, including receipt of $45 million from Leclaza's commercialization in China, and strong growth in the overseas business unit."