According to Caixin, benefiting from the price rebound and increased market share of the company's insulin products in the follow-up procurement in 2024, as well as the sale of held stocks, Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (603087.SH) achieved double growth in revenue and net income in the first half of this year. At the mid-year earnings conference held on the 5th, the company once again emphasized the impact of the price rebound of insulin products in the procurement on the company's performance, and stated that the company's GLP-1 receptor agonist GZR18 injection has good competitiveness.

"The results of the follow-up procurement for insulin in 2024 will be implemented in various provinces from May 2024 to December 31, 2027. In this follow-up procurement, all of the company's products were selected, and the company maintained the same selection category. The mainstream products in the market all received Class A selection." When responding to investor questions about the sustainability of performance, Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals CEO Du Kai said so.

Public information shows that Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals' insulin products include mainstream second and third generation insulin, covering the long-acting, rapid-acting, and premixed sub-markets. In the 2021 insulin special procurement, all six of Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals' insulin products were selected, but the selected prices were relatively low, resulting in a 52.60% decrease in revenue in 2022 and a net income loss for the parent company.

However, in the follow-up national procurement of insulin in April this year, all six of Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals' insulin products were selected, and the bid prices for the products all increased, which may be one of the reasons for the double growth in revenue and net income in the first half of 2024 for Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals.

In addition, as a leading company in domestic insulin and diabetes treatment drugs, Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals also has layout in the GLP-1 related pipeline. Its GLP-1 receptor agonist GZR18 injection is undergoing Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2DM), obesity, and overweight management, and GZR18 tablets are undergoing Phase I clinical trials.

In fact, in the domestic GLP-1 pipeline, there are already many companies entering the market, including Huadong Medicine (000963.SZ), Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals (600276.SH), Livzon Pharmaceutical Group (000513.SZ), Tonghua Dongbao (600867.SH), Innovent Bio (01801.HK), CSPC Pharma (01093.HK), and other listed companies are actively laying out GLP-1 drugs. Among them, both the subsidiary of Huadong Medicine, Jiuyuan Gene, and Livzon Pharmaceutical Group have submitted applications for the listing of Semaglutide biosimilars. Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals has also laid out Class 1 new drugs targeting GLP-1, GLP-1/GIP, and GLP-1/INSR.

At the earnings conference, in response to a question from Caixin journalist, "Has the research and development progress of the company's weight-loss drugs lagged behind and what is its competitiveness?", Du Kai stated that after 35 weeks of treatment, the weight of the GZR18 once-weekly dosing group decreased by 18.6% compared to the placebo group, and the weight of the GZR18 once-every-two-weeks dosing group decreased by 13.5% compared to the placebo group. Compared with the results of Phase III clinical trials with similar dosing cycles of similar drugs, the weight loss effect of GZR18 injection exceeded the study data of Semaglutide 2.4mg (9.8%) and Dulaglutide 15mg (17.5%) in the same comparable population.

"This indicates that the efficacy of the single-target glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) biweekly formulation in the treatment of obesity may be comparable to that of multi-target GLP-1RA drugs. It also demonstrates the potential of GZR18 injection to provide better weight loss efficacy than multi-target GLP-1RA drugs when administered weekly or bi-weekly. In addition, the biweekly formulation GZR18 injection of GLP-1 receptor agonist achieved a 17.29% weight loss in the 30-week phase IIb clinical trial," Dukai told the Caixin reporter.

According to the financial report, in the first half of 2024, Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals achieved a revenue of 1.315 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.92%. Among them, domestic sales revenue was 1.188 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.70%; the net income attributable to the parent company was 0.299 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 122.80%.