ScinoPharm Taiwan Ltd (台灣神隆) yesterday said it expects sales to grow steadily this year, but added that it plans to diversify its business from generic active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) to contract manufacturing and research services in a bid to avoid an intense price competition in the generic API market.
The Tainan-based pharmaceutical company reported revenue of NT$3.52 billion (US$114.3 million) for last year, inching up 0.2 percent from a year earlier.
However, thanks to cost controls, net profit rose 4.9 percent annually to NT$443 million, or earnings per share of NT$0.56, the company said.
Revenue from generic API accounted for 65 percent of total revenue, maintaining its top ranking, while combined revenue from contract manufacturing and research services made up 34 percent, company data showed.
ScinoPharm this year expects to gain regulatory approval in the US to supply generic APIs for a treatment for breast cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia, as well as approvals in China and Japan for two other generic APIs, ScinoPharm marketing and sales vice president Portia Lin (林靜雯) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
“However, we found that the prices of generic APIs fell significantly due to intense competition, and we could not win over our peers in countries with lower manufacturing costs, such as India and China,” Lin said.
ScinoPharm’s revenue from generic APIs last year fell 5.6 percent annually to NT$75.8 million, but revenue from contract manufacturing and research services jumped 10.4 percent and 64.7 percent annually to NT$17.2 million and NT$22.4 million respectively, company data showed.
Instead of seeking more API clients, the company plans to expand its contract manufacturing and research services this year, in the hope of boosting revenue contribution from the two segments to 40 percent of overall revenue.
This year, the company aims to focus more on the markets in Japan and China, which offer faster growth opportunities, compared with slowing growth in the US and Europe, where opportunities are further constrained by large-scale mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceuticals sector, ScinoPharm said.
ScinoPharm shares yesterday rose 1.14 percent to NT$26.7 in Taipei. They have advanced 10.56 percent since the beginning of this year, compared with the broader market’s 9.41 percent rise over the same period.
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RESPONSE: The Japanese Ministry of Finance might have to intervene in the currency markets should the yen keep weakening toward the 160 level against the US dollar Japan’s chief currency official yesterday sent a warning on recent foreign exchange moves, after the yen weakened against the US dollar following Friday last week’s Bank of Japan (BOJ) decision. “We’re seeing one-directional, sudden moves especially after last week’s monetary policy meeting, so I’m deeply concerned,” Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura told reporters. “We’d like to take appropriate responses against excessive moves.” The central bank on Friday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 30 years, but Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda chose to keep his options open rather than bolster the yen,
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
Global server shipments are expected to surge to 15 million units next year, from 4 million units this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers accounting for about 30 percent, driven by massive capital spending by major cloud service providers, the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC) said on Thursday last week. Major cloud service providers — including Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Meta Platforms Inc — are projected to budget US$450 million for capital expenditure next year, up from US$400 million this year, MIC ICT [information and communications technology] Industry Research Center director Edward Lin
RSS