Adimmune Corp (國光生技), a Taiwanese vaccine developer, said on Tuesday that it is scheduled to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on May 3.
According to a prospectus posted on the exchange’s Web site, the company, which was established in 1965 and is capitalized at NT$1.64 billion (US$55.59 million), is planning to issue 19.53 million shares to raise about NT$976.50 million in working capital.
While Adimmune has set a tentative issue price of NT$50 for the shares, market analysts said the actual price is expected to range between NT$40 and NT$43.
Adimmune, which is the only vaccine manufacturer in Asia to have obtained GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) certification from the EU, specializes in the development of vaccines for influenza, Japanese encephalitis and tetanus.
Adimmune has teamed up with Dutch-based biotech company Crucell, the world’s sixth-largest flu vaccine manufacturer, for technological cooperation, while it has also partnered with Japan’s largest flu vaccine developer, the Kitasato Institute.
Crucell is one of the company’s majority shareholders, with an 11.39 percent stake, according to the prospectus.
Adimmune chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) told investors that the company completed animal testing for an H5N1 avian flu vaccine at the end of last year and is expected to begin human testing this year.
In addition, Chan said the company’s enterovirus 71 vaccine, which is undergoing clinical trials, is scheduled to hit the market in 2017, while a dengue fever vaccine is expected to be launched in 2019.
Last year, the company sold about 1.5 million flu vaccine doses in Taiwan, taking a 55 percent share of the domestic flu vaccine market. The company expects its market share to fall to about 50 percent this year.
In addition, it anticipates it will be granted permits to sell flu vaccine in China at the end of this year at the earliest.
Adimmune posted NT$290 million in sales last year, but incurred a NT$2.87 net loss per share because of an unsatisfactory capacity utilization rate.
However, on the back of rising production, its capacity utilization rate is expected to range between 70 percent and 80 percent in the second half of this year and it is likely to exceed 90 percent next year, which will improve its bottom line, the company said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
RSS