Zitong Financial App News, Wuxi Biologics (02269) announced that for the whole of 2017, the group's income was about 1.619 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of 63.7% over the same period last year; gross profit was 661 million yuan, an increase of 69.8% over the same period last year; gross profit increased from 39.3% to 40.8%; adjusted net profit was 408 million yuan, an increase of 85.1% over the same period last year; net profit was 253 million yuan, an increase of 79.0% over the same period last year Basic earnings per share of 0.24 yuan, no final dividend.
During the reporting period, the Group continued to adopt the strategy of "expanding its business following the phase of drug molecular development" and achieved strong revenue growth. As of December 31, 2017, the Group had a total of 161 comprehensive projects, requiring the Group to provide services in different biological development processes, an increase of 56.3% over the 103 projects as of December 31, 2016. The development of the project from the pre-clinical development stage to the later stage (Phase III clinical trials) means that the Group continues to gain a larger global market share and seize booming market growth opportunities.
The total number of outstanding orders of the Group (including outstanding service orders and outstanding milestone payments) has achieved amazing growth.Outstanding service orders surged from approximately $241 million on December 31, 2016 to about $476 million on December 31, 2016, while outstanding milestone payments surged from about $24 million on December 31, 2016 to about $1.002 billion on December 31, 2017.Outstanding service order refers to the amount that has been contracted by the Group but has not yet been provided. Outstanding milestone payment refers to the total amount of milestone fees that have been signed but not yet collected by the Group.
At the same time, the company's projects from pre-IND to post-IND have achieved great success. 90 projects are in the pre-clinical development stage and 62 projects are in the early clinical stage (Phase I and II clinical). In 2017, about 29 projects successfully developed from the pre-clinical development stage to the early clinical stage. Facts show that the company's open biological agent technology platform which provides end-to-end solutions for the discovery, development and manufacture of biological agents has been widely recognized by the company's customers.
In 2017, the Group continued to expand customers, including the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, as well as virtual, start-up companies and small and medium-sized biotechnology companies. On December 31, 2017, the Group has partnered with 13 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies (based on their respective drug sales in 2017). The Group serves 202 customers annually, compared with 163 customers in 2016. The average revenue of each of the top 10 customers increased from 65.9 million yuan in 2016 to 88.4 million yuan in 2017, indicating the success of the group's strategy of "expanding its business with the drug molecular development phase".
It is worth noting that in terms of capacity expansion plans, according to the current situation of ongoing integrated projectsThe company estimates that the existing commercial production capacity may not be able to meet the demand for such projects in the short term in the future, as there were already eight late-stage (Phase III clinical) projects at the end of 2017, compared with only three at the beginning of 2017.
The Group's short-term capacity expansion plan includes the expansion of new ADC facilities and three new cGMP production facilities in Wuxi, excluding the 7000 litres clinical production capacity in Shanghai.