SK bioscience sent a clear rebound signal this year. Starting next year, the company will transfer to Songdo in Incheon, which it said will be the starting point for a shift in its business structure.
In the market recently, SK bioscience was said to have met expectations for improved losses. The company's consolidation-based third-quarter preliminary results announced last month came to 150.8 billion won in revenue and a 19.4 billion won operating loss. Compared with the same period a year earlier, revenue increased 2.5 times, and the operating loss was cut by about half.
On the day of the earnings release, the stock price at one point soared more than 20% during trading. Cumulative revenue for the third quarter this year was 467.2 billion won, more than quadruple from a year earlier.
This is seen as a noteworthy result given that the global vaccine market has shrunk significantly and has yet to recover since the shift to a COVID-19 endemic.
A company official said, "It is not a simple expense cut or a temporary increase in supply; technology-centered strategies such as contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), next-generation vaccine pipelines, and reorganization of production and research infrastructure have begun to translate into results."
In particular, the contribution of IDT Biologika (IDT), a German CDMO corporations acquired last year, has been confirmed. Since the acquisition, IDT has steadily generated quarterly revenue in the 100 billion won range. IDT is a leading European manufacturer capable of everything from drug substance (DS) to drug product (DP).
The company said it is expanding from a structure focused on a single vaccine to a platform-based revenue model.
It cited "pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV21)" as the key pipeline that will determine the company's growth over the mid to long term. It is a 21-valent vaccine that prevents a broader range of serotypes than the existing 13-valent and 15-valent vaccines, and is currently in global phase 3 trials in the United States, Europe, Australia and Korea. It has also obtained clinical approval in China. The pneumococcal vaccine market is worth more than 10 trillion won annually, with demand across all age groups, from children to adults.
Lee Ji-won, a researcher at Heungkuk Securities, said, "SK bioscience's PCV21 is evaluated as first-in-class, a first new drug with no product yet launched, in this market," adding, "The momentum for PCV21 remains intact."
The company is also aligning its production infrastructure accordingly. At the Andong L House, it expanded its pneumococcal-dedicated production facilities, securing an additional 4,200 square meters of space.
It was redesigned to carry out all processes from fermentation and purification to filling. The goal is to meet global cGMP standards. A company official said, "It will become a key hub for the commercial production of next-generation vaccines."
The Songdo Global R&PD Center is also one of SK bioscience's mid- to long-term strategies. According to the company, the Songdo center will serve as Korea's first vaccine-specialized R&D platform that integrates, in one location, an end-to-end R&D system from basic research to antigen design, process development, pilot production and clinical linkage.
A company official said, "All stages from development to production, which had been dispersed between Pangyo and Andong, will be connected in a single loop, greatly improving efficiency." The official added, "Joint development, technology transfer and pilot scale-up testing with global partners will all be possible within one facility, speeding up international collaboration compared with now."