On the evening of January 5, 2026, A-share vaccine leader Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products Co.,Ltd. announced plans to apply for medium to long-term loans totaling no more than 10.2 billion yuan, with a maximum term of three years. This financing, which almost amounts to "staking the entire family's assets," is intended to refinance existing debt and supplement daily working capital. The move not only highlights the company's own financial distress but also reflects the collective pain felt across China's vaccine industry amid a supply-demand reversal and fierce price competition.
Zhifei Biological's massive financing initiative is underpinned by a continuously deteriorating operational foundation. The company's third-quarter report for 2025 revealed a staggering inventory balance of 20.246 billion yuan, a dramatic 125% increase from the beginning of 2024. Furthermore, accounts receivable reached 12.814 billion yuan. Combined, these two items total 33 billion yuan, which is more than four times the company's revenue for the period, creating a massive "capital blockage lake" that severely ties up funds.
More critically, the shelf life of the company's core inventory product—the nine-valent HPV vaccine—is only three years. A significant portion of these vaccines is set to reach their expiration date in 2026, potentially triggering large-scale bad debt provisions. Although net cash flow from operating activities saw a substantial year-on-year increase of 201.18% in the third quarter of 2025, it remains insufficient to cover the funding gap created by the enormous inventory.
To secure this crucial loan, Zhifei Biological has leveraged nearly its entire chain of guarantee resources. Controlling shareholder Jiang Rensheng and his family have provided a full, joint, and several liability guarantee free of charge, while equity in core subsidiaries and accounts receivable have already been pledged, underscoring the severity of the funding squeeze. Following this financing round, the company's asset-liability ratio is expected to rise from 36.18% to approximately 48%, nearing a historical peak.
Zhifei Biological's predicament is not an isolated case but rather a microcosm of the structural adjustments sweeping the vaccine industry. The once "desperately sought-after" HPV vaccine market, fueled by accelerated production expansion and the rapid pace of domestic substitution, has shifted from supply shortages to overcapacity.
Since 2024, sales of the nine-valent HPV vaccine have shown signs of weakness. Compounding this, Zhifei Biological is trapped in a dilemma due to high-value procurement agreements signed earlier, forcing it to "accept deliveries it cannot sell." Concurrently, domestic vaccine manufacturers have ignited a price war. In the second half of 2025, Wantai Bio's domestic nine-valent HPV vaccine hit the market with a full-course vaccination price of just 1,500 yuan. Meanwhile, under centralized procurement policies, the winning bid price for the bivalent HPV vaccine plummeted from 329 yuan per dose in 2022 to a mere 27.5 yuan per dose in 2025, a drop of over 90%.
The industry's overall profitability has sharply declined. In the first half of 2025, only 6 out of 17 listed vaccine companies were profitable, with 5 falling into losses. The industry's average net profit margin has shrunk to 9.4%. Liu Yongjiang, Chairman of CanSino Biologics, pointed out that the industry has transitioned from an incremental market where "any vaccine could be sold" to a stage of stock competition focused on "selecting the best from the good."
Confronting the crisis, Zhifei Biological has designated "inventory reduction, collection of receivables, and debt reduction" as its core tasks for 2025, launching public benefit vaccination campaigns across the country. However, against the backdrop of an overall industry supply-demand imbalance and a shrinking newborn population squeezing the infant vaccine market, the path to reducing inventory remains arduous.
In the long term, reducing dependence on agency businesses has become an inevitable strategic shift. Zhifei Biological is accelerating the launch of its proprietary products, with its 15-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and quadrivalent meningococcal conjugate vaccine already in the application stage for market approval. The company is also diversifying by increasing its investment in ChenAn Biotech to enter the GLP-1 sector, targeting treatments for diabetes and obesity, in an attempt to build a diversified "prevention + treatment" ecosystem.
Zhifei Biological's 10.2 billion yuan loan is both a desperate act of self-preservation and a mirror reflecting the cooling-off period for China's vaccine industry following a period of狂热扩张. It underscores that only by returning to product fundamentals, strengthening R&D barriers, and improving inventory and market forecasting mechanisms can companies navigate cyclical fluctuations and achieve sustainable, stable growth.
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