ScinoPharm Taiwan (台灣神隆), which makes active pharmaceutical ingredients, yesterday said it plans to produce oral formulations as the company’s revenue growth slowed last year from 2012.
The company would talk to local partners to co-develop the new products by using their manufacturing facilities, president and CEO Jo Shen (馬海怡) said.
“There is an excess capacity for oral formulations around the world,” she said of the firm’s hesitance to build its own factory for the products.
The company may seek more than one partner, Shen said, adding that it is developing 70 formulations, but has not decided how many will be manufactured in oral form.
Last year, the company’s revenue grew 11.29 percent last year to NT$5.09 billion (US$166.2 million) from 2012, when revenue increased 15.8 percent to NT$4.57 billion from a year ago, according to the company’s filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
“Formulation-making is to help us maintain the firm’s sales growth in the long term,” Shen said.
Meanwhile, Maxigen Biotech Inc (MBI, 和康生技), which makes cosmetics and medical materials for surgical use, said yesterday that its drug for treating cataracts is expected to enter the Chinese market by the end of this quarter.
The cataract treatment market in China is about 10 million Chinese yuan (US$1.62 million) a year, yet currently just one-sixth of patients receive treatment, company president and chief executive officer Edward Chang (張立言) said.
As the Chinese economy improves, the number of treatments will increase, Chang said.
Chang said the firm aims to increase its gross margin in cosmetics to 30 percent this year from the current 19 percent.
In the long term, sales of the company’s medical materials and cosmetic products will each account for 50 percent of Maxigen’s sales, she said.
Last year, the company posted revenue of NT$232.95 million, up 4.93 percent from NT$222 million a year ago, while operating losses declined to NT$3.56 million last year from NT$10.78 million a year ago, according to the company’s stock exchange filing.
Despite its operating losses, the company posted a net profit of NT$2.58 million last year because of government subsidies, Chang said. In 2012, its net profit was NT$2.67 million.
Shares of ScinoPharm rose 1.11 percent to NT$82.2 yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which was up 0.33 percent, while those of Maxigen dropped 0.94 percent to NT$52.5.
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