Key points of investment:
Focus on core technology development and build a platform for the entire peptide CDMO+ API + formulation industry chain. Established in 2001, Shengnuo Biotech is a high-tech enterprise with core technology for peptide synthesis and modification. The company landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2021. Its main business is to independently develop, produce and sell peptide APIs and formulation products with large market capacity and strong competitiveness at home and abroad. At the same time, it also provides pharmaceutical research services for innovative peptide pharmaceuticals, customized production services for peptide products, and technology transfer services for peptide drug production to domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies.
The company's core senior management team is stable, and the founding team is experienced in the industry. Chairman Wen Yongjun is one of the earliest experts in the field of polypeptide drugs in China. He presided over the development of thymopentapeptide, the first approved polypeptide drug in China, and the new thymus method, the first polypeptide drug with sales exceeding 2 billion yuan in China. The company has a core team with more than 15 years of research and practical experience in the field of peptide synthesis, and has won the title of Top Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team for Introducing High-Level Talents from Sichuan Province. As of 2023, the company had a total of 227 R&D personnel, accounting for 19.68% of the total number of employees.
The peptide market is developing rapidly, and the domestic market is expanding. According to the company's prospectus citing data from QYResearch, the global peptide drug market reached an average compound annual growth rate of 8.17% from 2010 to 2018. The peptide drug market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9% in the future, and the market size will reach 49.5 billion US dollars in 2027. In recent years, emerging market countries such as China have moved from R&D APIs into the generic peptide market, gradually taking the initiative with cost advantages, which has greatly promoted the development of the domestic peptide drug industry. With the introduction of China's policy to encourage the development of innovative drugs and promote the consistency evaluation of generic drugs, it is expected that more innovative peptide drugs and generic peptide drugs with remarkable clinical effects will be approved for marketing in the future, further expanding China's peptide drug market.
Profit forecast. We expect the company's net profit to be 0.111, 0.146, and 0.184 billion yuan in 2024-2026, respectively, up 58.1%, 31.6%, and 26.0% year-on-year. Considering that the company is a leading domestic peptide drug company, and its products are competitive, with reference to comparable companies, we think that considering that demand for peptide products represented by GLP-1 related products is strong, we will give them 30-35 times PE in 2024, corresponding to a reasonable value range of 29.78-34.75 yuan per share. Better than the big city? ratings.
Risk warning. Market competition increases risks, global biomedical R&D expenditure risks falling, risk of customer product pipeline expansion falling short of expectations, risk of overseas market expansion, risk of loss due to capacity expansion, risk of product delivery quality, and risk of loss of core personnel.