Vaccine maker Adimmune Corp (國光生技) yesterday reported revenue of NT$236 million (US$8.52 million) for last month, up 40 percent from a year earlier, on the back of advanced shipments of flu vaccines to China.
Chinese customers this year ordered 1.5 million flu vaccines from the company, five times more than last year, Adimmune said in a statement, adding that it began shipping some of the vaccines last month.
Revenue from overseas markets is expected to grow, with orders from customers in Thailand and Europe, it said.
As for the domestic market, Adimmune last month began manufacturing quadrivalent flu vaccines after it obtained Good Manufacturing Practices certification for its newly established second fill and finish line at its factory in Taichung, it said.
Under a contract with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Adimmune would start delivering the first of 3.68 million flu vaccines at the end of the month and Taiwanese would be able to receive the shots next month at the earliest, it added.
With the launch of the second fill and finish line, Adimmune expects annual production to rise to about 100 million doses, a fivefold increase from before, it said, adding that it would use the second line to produce drugs for overseas customers once it is approved by regulators in Europe and the US.
For the first eight months, Adimmune’s cumulative revenue fell 36 percent annually to NT$383 million, corporate data showed.
TTY Biopharm Co Ltd (台灣東洋藥品), a biotech company that also has a ministry contract to provide 890,000 flu vaccines, yesterday reported revenue of NT$331 million for last month, up 9.57 percent year-on-year, company data showed.
Its net profit was NT$60.7 million last month, up 40 percent year-on-year, but cumulative net profit fell 32 percent annually to NT$366 million for the first eight months of the year, or earnings per share of NT$1.48, corporate data showed.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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