This week, the A-share market's focus shifted from optical modules to a new theme centered on laboratory monkeys, and Joinn Laboratories (China) Co.,Ltd. (SHSE: 603127) found itself on a rollercoaster.
The price of a single research monkey has now reached 200,000 yuan, and having the money doesn't guarantee you can buy one.
With a large stockpile of these animals, JOINN (HKEX: 06127) subsequently released a blockbuster earnings forecast: net profit attributable to shareholders for the first half of 2026 is expected to reach between 600 million and 900 million yuan, representing a maximum increase of nearly 14 times year-over-year, with adjusted net profit surging over 20 times.
Driven by soaring monkey prices and explosive earnings, the stock enjoyed two consecutive daily limit-up gains, briefly becoming one of the week's most frenzied pharmaceutical plays.
However, on July 17th, the trend abruptly reversed. As the broader A-share market weakened, Joinn Laboratories shares were pushed down to the daily limit-down within just ten minutes of market opening, with its Hong Kong-listed shares also falling over 10% at one point.
A single day's limit-down does not, of course, signify the market has completely written off the company. Particularly in a broad market decline, sentiment, profit-taking, and sector volatility can all amplify losses.
Yet, the dramatic reversal from consecutive limit-ups to a swift limit-down in just a few days makes one question unavoidable: was the market's earlier enthusiasm for JOINN based on a recovery in its core business, or on monkeys priced at 200,000 yuan each?
Both appear profitable, but their inherent value may be entirely different.
The answer lies within that earnings forecast promising near-14-fold growth.
A Pricier Primate
First, the 200,000-yuan monkey.
According to reports, inquiries to several monkey breeding farms in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Sichuan posing as a buyer yielded a nearly uniform response: this year's crab-eating macaques are already reserved by regular partners, with some farms not expecting new stock until late next year at the earliest.
Currently, mixed batches of male and female crab-eating macaques are quoted at around 190,000 yuan each. Specific requirements for gender or age add 20,000-30,000 yuan, with adult females potentially exceeding 200,000 yuan.
Public procurement prices also show a consistent upward trend.
In March 2026, the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica purchased 450 specific pathogen-free crab-eating macaques at a unit price of approximately 131,000 yuan. By June, a purchase by the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control for 40 monkeys saw the price rise to 178,000 yuan each. Another procurement the same month had a budget equating to 190,000 yuan per monkey.
While factors like species, age, and delivery terms vary between projects, the price escalation is unmistakable.
The surge is driven by a rebound in the innovative drug market.
CROs, in essence, are outsourcing partners for pharmaceutical R&D and testing. As new drug projects increase and pre-clinical research demand recovers, research monkeys naturally become a hot commodity.
Monkeys, however, are among the hardest "raw materials" to scale up production for. Crab-eating macaques typically have one offspring per birth, requiring several years from birth to meet experimental standards. Even if farms expand breeding now, new supply cannot immediately enter the market.
With demand spiking and supply locked in by breeding decisions made years prior, prices have soared.
In earlier years, a research monkey cost less than 7,000 yuan. By 2022, prices had once peaked above 160,000 yuan before a subsequent correction. Starting in the second half of 2025, alongside the innovative drug sector's recovery, monkey prices re-entered an upward channel.
Joinn Laboratories sits squarely at the center of this price surge.
In 2022, the company spent 1.805 billion yuan to acquire two monkey farms, Guangxi Weimei Biotechnology and Yunnan Yingmao Biotechnology, securing a resource of nearly 20,000 monkeys in one move.
This acquisition was not cheap at the time. The combined net asset value of the two targets was only 201 million yuan, yet Joinn paid over 1.8 billion.
When monkey prices fell, these assets were a heavy burden; when prices rose, they suddenly became a gold mine.
But Joinn doesn't need to sell a single monkey to book profits from this "monkey mountain."
Paper Profits Before Sale
The mechanism that directly translates monkey prices into profits is an accounting policy change Joinn implemented in 2021.
That year, the company changed the subsequent measurement method for productive biological assets like research monkeys from the cost model to the fair value model.
These terms sound technical but are straightforward.
Previously, a monkey's book value was primarily based on its acquisition cost, minus depreciation and impairment.
After adopting the fair value model, the company must re-evaluate what its monkeys are worth based on current market prices at each reporting period end.
If monkey prices rise, even while the animals remain in their cages, paper profits can increase.
In 2025, changes in the fair value of biological assets brought Joinn a net gain of 476 million yuan; excluding this impact, its laboratory services and other operations actually reported a loss of 164 million yuan.
For Q1 2026, net profit attributable to shareholders was 238 million yuan, of which 246 million came from the appreciation of biological assets. In other words, without the monkey price increase, the company's core lab business would have lost 28.46 million yuan.
This contrast became even more pronounced in the first half-year forecast.
Joinn expects first-half revenue between 669 million and 739 million yuan, representing year-over-year growth of only 0% to 10.5%. Yet net profit is projected at 600 million to 900 million yuan, with a maximum year-over-year increase of nearly 14 times.
Fair value changes from monkey price increases and natural growth are expected to contribute between 703 million and 777 million yuan to net profit, essentially supporting the entire earnings forecast.
Net profit growth up nearly 14 times, versus revenue growth of at most 10.5%.
This is the secret behind Joinn's profit surge: profits from price increases are recorded on the income statement before the monkeys are even sold.
Such profits are compliant with accounting standards and do not constitute fraud. However, they are clearly not the same as profits earned from growing order books and service delivery.
Profits from orders typically come with customer payments and cash inflows; profits from fair value changes are largely paper gains. Only when these monkeys are eventually sold will the current prices be truly validated.
Furthermore, fair value is a double-edged sword.
Rising monkey prices bring paper gains; a price decline could equally result in paper losses.
Joinn's balance sheet is also increasingly influenced by valuation changes.
As of the end of Q1 2026, the company's holdings of financial assets at fair value through profit or loss, productive biological assets, and other non-current financial assets totaled 3.26 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 40% of shareholders' equity.
This means investors buying Joinn stock are not just betting on a CRO industry recovery, but also on the valuation of research monkeys, private equity funds, and unlisted company equity.
As of July 16th, Joinn's total market capitalization was approximately 39.9 billion yuan, with shareholders' equity around 8.557 billion yuan at the end of Q1. This implies the market was willing to pay nearly 4.7 yuan for every 1 yuan of book equity. Even after the July 17th limit-down, its price-to-book ratio remains above 4 times.
If Joinn's core business were experiencing rapid growth, such a premium would be understandable. Leading CROs possess technology, clients, and recurring orders not fully reflected in book equity.
The issue is that Joinn's core laboratory business has yet to demonstrate explosive growth matching its net profit surge, with over 700 million yuan in profits primarily stemming from monkey re-valuation.
This makes its valuation微妙: viewed as a growth CRO, its core business growth isn't strong enough; viewed as an investment vehicle holding significant monkey and financial assets, a P/B ratio over 4 times isn't cheap.
More bluntly, are investors buying a pharmaceutical R&D services company or an "alternative fund" propped up by research monkeys and financial assets?
Notably, some major shareholders have already chosen to convert shares into cash.
In 2022, when both crab-eating macaque prices and Joinn's stock price were high, several major shareholders conducted successive减持. According to public announcements and related statistics, cumulative套现 that year exceeded 1.8 billion yuan.
In March this year, shareholders Gu Xiaolei and Gu Meifang initially planned to减持 up to 4.1% of the company's total shares, nearly clearing their holdings. The plan was later adjusted to no more than 3%.
Ultimately, between April and June, the二人合计减持 22.48 million shares,套现 approximately 630 million yuan. Post-减持, their respective holdings fell to 0.72% and 0.39%.
减持 does not directly equate to bearishness, and the cited reason was personal liquidity needs. But for ordinary investors, observing actions may be more telling than guessing at shareholder intent.
As the market cheered rising monkey prices, some long-term shareholders chose to take profits.
The Higher the Price, the Faster the Search for Alternatives
A 200,000-yuan research monkey represents profit for Joinn, but for drug developers and research institutions, it's an increasingly burdensome cost.
The higher the price, the stronger the industry's motivation to find alternatives. And financial cost isn't the only pressure on animal testing.
In March 2025, PETA sued the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health, demanding real-time audio and video access to laboratory rhesus monkeys.
The organization argued that monkeys' vocalizations, facial expressions, and body movements convey fear, pain, and psychological stress, and the public has a right to "hear" these expressions.
The lawsuit was later dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in February 2026, not altering lab rules. But the question it raised entered public discourse: are monkeys merely research tools and corporate biological assets, or are they sentient beings capable of experiencing fear, pain, and loneliness?
Ethical pressures shift public attitudes, while soaring costs change the real-world choices of drug companies.
Previously, companies needed to send numerous drug candidates into animal testing to observe toxicity, metabolism, and efficacy. As AI models, organoids, organ-on-a-chip, and human tissue models mature, more projects can undergo computational and in-vitro screening first, allowing only the most promising candidates to proceed to animal testing.
If new technologies can淘汰 a portion of lower-probability projects early and reduce the number of animals used per project, overall demand for research monkeys could be affected.
Regulatory policy is also推动 this shift.
In 2022, the U.S. passed legislation allowing the use of non-animal methods like cell-based assays, computational models, and microphysiological systems as supporting evidence for certain drug development and applications.
Subsequently, the FDA issued roadmaps and draft guidelines to advance new methods like organoids, organ-on-a-chip, and computational modeling into drug development and regulatory submissions.
The UK has set a more concrete timeline, planning a phased cessation of certain animal tests and aiming to reduce the use of dogs and non-human primates in some pharmacokinetic studies by 2030.
China is also making moves. In 2025, seven ministries issued an implementation plan for the digital and intelligent transformation of the pharmaceutical industry (2025-2030), promoting the integration of AI, virtual screening, and animal model data mining into drug R&D.
These changes do not mean animal testing will disappear soon.
For the foreseeable future, research monkeys will remain a crucial part of certain innovative drug development, especially in complex toxicology, immune response, and systemic metabolism studies where current替代 technologies have clear limitations.
The real change is that animal testing's status as the "mandatory path" in drug development is weakening.
This presents both risk and转型 pressure for Joinn.
If the company can extend its capabilities into organoids, organ-on-a-chip, and new methodology validation services, it can still participate in the new drug R&D ecosystem. But if its asset value and profits remain highly dependent on monkey price appreciation, long-term uncertainty will only grow.
What Joinn enjoys now is a pricing红利 from a supply-demand imbalance in research monkeys. What it faces long-term are ethical pressures, technological替代, and regulatory reform.
Capital markets may temporarily pay for monkeys at 200,000 yuan each, but a company's long-term premium ultimately depends on its own technology, order book, and competitive moat.
Monkey prices can inflate the income statement, but they cannot answer Joinn's longer-term question: when monkeys are no longer scarce, what will keep this company稀缺?
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