"China's first targeted anti-cancer drug stock" is facing a lack of green and yellow

What was once China's "first anti-cancer stock" is no longer the halo.

On April 7, Beida Pharmaceutical disclosed its 2021 annual report, with annual revenue of 2.246 billion yuan, an increase of 20.08% year-on-year, and the same growth rate as in the past. It is noteworthy that in 2021, Beida Pharmaceutical achieved a net profit attributable to the mother of 383 million yuan, down 36.83% year-on-year.

On the same day, Beida Pharmaceutical announced that it intends to use no more than 1 billion yuan of idle own funds to purchase wealth management products.

As a representative of China's first batch of innovative pharmaceutical companies, Beida Pharmaceutical has created a large number of "firsts" in China's pharmaceutical industry, which are recorded in the 2021 annual report and marked in bold.

In the bright moments of the past, it is difficult to hide the current decline.

A new class of drugs, ektinib hydrochloride, once carried the glory of China's innovative drugs. In 2011, after the launch of this lung cancer drug, Beida achieved almost nothing in ten years, until November 2020, when there was a second innovative drug ALK inhibitor ensartinib. During this period, a variety of innovative drugs in the industry continued to emerge, and Beda missed the market opportunity.

Today, once the "first anti-cancer stock", it is best not to become the tomorrow of other Chinese innovative pharmaceutical companies.

The front wave is old, the back wave is not coming

After walking in the spotlight for many years, Beda was criticized for how long it was "difficult to stand alone".

Starting in 2023, a number of patents for exetinib will expire one after another, which may be violently impacted by generic drugs. But Beda Pharmaceuticals has obviously not yet found the next "extinib".

Beida Pharmaceuticals tried to save itself. On the one hand, Beda has been exploring new indications for exetinib, expanding the scope of clinical applications and covering more patient populations; on the other hand, Beda has also opened up a large number of pipelines, and new drugs have been listed in recent years.

At the end of 2020 and the end of 2021, Beida Pharmaceutical has successively launched two new drugs, ensartinib and bevacizumab.

However, at present, the sales of the two drugs cannot provide strong support for the company's performance. Bevacizumab is a biosimilar, and as of the beginning of December last year, there were 9 approved varieties in China, and Beda was the 9th.

What about ensatinib? Judging from the annual report, in 2021, the sales of exetinib and ensartinib totaled 2.206 billion yuan, and the sales of ensatinib were not disclosed separately. However, in the third quarterly report, Beida Pharmaceutical once revealed that the sales of ensartinib in the first nine months of last year were 120 million yuan.

Apparently, Extinib still dominates, and the "successor" has not yet appeared.

It is worth noting that in 2021, Beida also experienced the loss of R & D personnel. In March 2021, Mao Li, senior vice president and chief medical officer of Beida Pharmaceutical, left his post. Beida Pharmaceutical said: Mao Li's departure will not affect the normal operation of the company.

In the 2021 annual report, Beida Pharmaceutical also admitted that the current talent competition in the pharmaceutical industry is intensifying, and if there is a loss of core technology or business personnel, it may cause the leakage of project information and trade secrets, affecting the progress of the project and market sales.

In recent years, Ding Lieming, chairman and CEO of Beida Pharmaceutical, has stated that the entry and exit of talents are normal, and "flowing water can not be corrupted."

The question is, what if the water doesn't flow in? After Mao Li left, the post of chief medical officer of Beda has been vacant for a year.

In the past decade since the listing of exetinib, the core executives of Beida Pharmaceutical have left one after another. The former Three Musketeers of Beida are now only Ding Lieming, and Beida has also confronted Zhang Xiaodong, who once fought in Jiangshan, several times.

Nowadays, the "front wave" of Exetinib is old, and the "back wave" is long gone, which is the biggest crisis facing Beida Pharmaceutical.

Seeing the future of the innovative pharmaceutical industry?

The annual net profit fell by 36.83% year-on-year, which is difficult not to pay attention to.

In 2020, Beida Pharmaceutical sold the equity of Zhejiang Beida Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. and obtained an investment income of 290 million yuan. Prior to this, in 2019, the net profit of Beida Pharmaceutical was 226 million yuan. Excluding non-recurring gains and losses in 2019, beida Pharmaceutical's revenue and profit growth in recent years has been relatively stable.

But the use of cash on the books of Beida Pharmaceutical has been criticized by the industry for the past two years.

In recent years, in addition to engaging in new drugs through research and development and external introduction, Beida Pharmaceutical is also trying other businesses. Beida spent a lot of money to develop the "Haichuang Park" biomedical incubation base. Like some innovative pharmaceutical companies, Beida also hopes to incubate other innovative projects to achieve investment appreciation.

However, the purchase of wealth management products with its own funds for many years is also considered by the market to be a manifestation of weak research and development. Combined with its thin product line, the problem is even more pronounced.

Making new drugs is never easy. In the field of innovative drugs in China, Beida Pharmaceutical once stood in the middle of the spotlight.

Now ten years later, Beda is no longer the rookie of the medicine world who used to be poor and white, desperately trying to chew bones. China's innovative drug market is no longer just a martial arts arena for multinational pharmaceutical companies.

It's a new era: rising stars are emerging, and the industry landscape is changing with each passing day.

Beida has already smelled the crisis, writing in its annual report: The biomedical industry is highly competitive and rapidly changing, and companies in the same industry have commercialized or are developing drugs with the same indications as the company's products. Exetinib and ensartinib have encountered competition from other EGFR-TKI and ALK inhibitors to varying degrees, and bevacizumab has also faced fierce competitive pressure in the market.

Time shifts, and the me too era gradually fades away. The road of Beida Pharmaceutical should not become the road of the industry.