ScinoPharm Taiwan Ltd (台灣神隆), which makes active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), said it expects adverse market conditions to continue to affect its business this year.
The company’s core business of exporting generic drugs has been hit by falling prices as a series of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) raised the bargaining power of US-based drug distributors through joint procurements, it said.
The company also said it expects continued headwinds from a stronger New Taiwan dollar, after sales last year declined 6 percent due to exchange-rate fluctuations.
ScinoPharm on Friday reported that net income last year fell 36 percent annually to NT$422 million (US$14.4 million), with sales dipping 13 percent to NT$3.52 billion.
Earnings per share were NT$0.53, it said.
The company’s clients have trimmed their orders for Paclitaxel, a chemotherapy for ovarian and breast cancer, amid an inventory correction, while shipments of other major generic drugs were delayed due to the replacement and integration of product lines and factories in the wake of M&As among clients, ScinoPharm said.
However, the company said that manufacturing contracts for newly approved antibiotics Baxdela and Vibativ helped offset some of the lost sales in generic drugs.
ScinoPharm said that its partnership with Baxter International Inc has begun to bear fruit as it expands into the generic oncology injectibles market.
The partnership with the US-based Baxter enables the companies to jointly develop formulations while sharing the risks and profits, ScinoPharm said.
Royalties from its anticoagulant Fondaparinux last year increased significantly from a year earlier, it added.
As for the operations of its Changshu plant in China’s Jiangsu Province, ScinoPharm said that the increase in the plant’s revenue contribution has not been as fast as expected due to the rapidly changing environmental safety and health-related laws in China.
The company will continue with its strategy of integrating niche APIs and venturing into formulation, chief executive officer Fred Chen (陳勇發) said in a statement.
In terms of product selection, the company aims to prioritize the distribution of vertically integrated injectables, including small molecule injections and peptide APIs, Chen said.
Regarding the contract research and manufacturing business, the company is seeking new projects in targeted therapy and orphan drugs that have shorter development cycles, he said.
Anna Bhobho, a 31-year-old housewife from rural Zimbabwe, was once a silent observer in her home, excluded from financial and family decisionmaking in the deeply patriarchal society. Today, she is a driver of change in her village, thanks to an electric tricycle she owns. In many parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa, women have long been excluded from mainstream economic activities such as operating public transportation. However, three-wheelers powered by green energy are reversing that trend, offering financial opportunities and a newfound sense of importance. “My husband now looks up to me to take care of a large chunk of expenses,
SECTOR LEADER: TSMC can increase capacity by as much as 20 percent or more in the advanced node part of the foundry market by 2030, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to lead its peers in the advanced 2-nanometer process technology, despite competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, TrendForce Corp analyst Joanne Chiao (喬安) said. TSMC’s sophisticated products and its large production scale are expected to allow the company to continue dominating the global 2-nanometer process market this year, Chiao said. The world’s largest contract chipmaker is scheduled to begin mass production of chips made on the 2-nanometer process in its Hsinchu fab in the second half of this year. It would also hold a ceremony on Monday next week to
TECH CLUSTER: The US company’s new office is in the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan US chip designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) yesterday launched an office in Tainan’s Gueiren District (歸仁), marking a significant milestone in the development of southern Taiwan’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the Tainan City Government said in a statement. AMD Taiwan general manager Vincent Chern (陳民皓) presided over the opening ceremony for the company’s new office at the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City (沙崙智慧綠能科學城), a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan. Facilities in the new office include an information processing center, and a research and development (R&D) center, the Tainan Economic Development Bureau said. The Ministry
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
RSS