Facing a triple blow of centralized procurement price cuts, the expanded age indication for the 9-valent HPV vaccine, and insufficient consumer demand, Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co.,Ltd. (SH603392), which once created a growth miracle with its bivalent HPV vaccine, is experiencing the pains of transition.
Wantai Biologics' 2025 performance forecast indicates that the company expects its full-year net profit attributable to shareholders to be between -330 million yuan and -410 million yuan, shifting from profit to loss year-on-year. This could mark the company's first annual loss since its listing in 2020. The company stated that the performance decline is primarily due to intensified industry competition and fluctuations in consumer vaccination willingness, among other factors, putting overall pressure on the vaccine market. For the company itself, the sales challenges of its core product, the bivalent HPV vaccine, are the main reason. The company has made corresponding impairment provisions. The overall impact is estimated to affect net profit by 500 million to 600 million yuan, which is one of the reasons for the significant profit decline in the current period.
The profit-generating effect of the bivalent HPV vaccine, which once supported Wantai Biologics' rapid performance growth, is rapidly fading. The key to determining whether Wantai Biologics can return to profitability and get back on a growth trajectory lies in how quickly it can ramp up sales of its 9-valent vaccine to fill the large performance gap left by the bivalent vaccine, while effectively digesting historical inventory and controlling impairment risks.
In 2025, Wantai Biologics is forecasted to turn from profit to loss.
The company's recently released performance forecast shows that during the reporting period, the company achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of -330 million to -410 million yuan; after deducting non-recurring gains and losses, the net profit was between -530 million yuan and -660 million yuan. In the same period last year, Wantai Biologics' net profit attributable to shareholders was 106 million yuan, while the net profit after deducting non-recurring items was -186 million yuan.
Regarding the reasons for the substantial loss, Wantai Biologics stated in its announcement that due to multiple factors including industry competition and vaccine hesitancy among consumers, the domestic vaccine market is under overall pressure, with both industry revenue and profits declining significantly. For the company, it faces severe challenges on both the revenue and production fronts. The bivalent HPV vaccine has been adversely affected by the expanded age indication for Merck's 9-valent HPV vaccine, significant price reductions in government procurement, and insufficient consumer demand, leading to unfavorable outcomes where near-expiry bivalent HPV vaccine products cannot be sold and inventory cannot be liquidated. Consequently, Wantai Biologics has made corresponding impairment provisions. The overall impact is estimated to be 500 million to 600 million yuan on net profit, which is one of the reasons for the sharp decline in profit for the period.
In the diagnostics segment, affected by national centralized procurement price cuts for diagnostic reagents and healthcare policy changes such as the unbundling of test packages, the company's diagnostic revenue and profits declined year-on-year.
In the first half of last year, Wantai Biologics had already recorded its first semi-annual loss since listing, achieving operating revenue of approximately 844 million yuan during the reporting period, a year-on-year decrease of 38.25%; the net profit attributable to shareholders after deducting non-recurring items was -243 million yuan, a decrease of 481.93% year-on-year.
Looking at the full year, the company's loss is expected to widen further.
The decline in the revenue-generating capability of the bivalent HPV vaccine has become an industry consensus.
In 2022, Wantai Biologics' sales of the bivalent HPV vaccine exceeded 25 million doses. That year, the company's net profit attributable to shareholders and net profit after deducting non-recurring items increased by 134.28% and 132.03% year-on-year, respectively. Among these, the vaccine business achieved revenue of 8.493 billion yuan, accounting for 75.93% of the annual total revenue, a year-on-year increase of 152.55%, with a gross profit margin of 93.89%. The company attributed this mainly to the bivalent vaccine maintaining strong production and sales.
However, starting in 2023, the bivalent vaccine began to decline.
In 2023, Wantai Biologics' revenue plummeted by 50.73% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders decreased by 73.65% year-on-year. By 2024, the downturn intensified, with revenue falling further by 59.25% year-on-year, and net profit sharply decreasing by 91.49% year-on-year. This decline evolved into a comprehensive loss in 2025.
The core factor behind the performance change is precisely the decline in revenue from the vaccine business.
In 2024, the listed company's vaccine segment revenue fell by 84.69% year-on-year. More critically, the market fell into a vicious cycle of declining both volume and price. In terms of sales volume, vaccine sales in 2024 were only 9.0492 million doses, a significant reduction of 42.4% year-on-year, while production volume also sharply decreased by 64.66%.
In terms of price, amid fierce market competition and government-led centralized procurement, the price of the bivalent vaccine continued to "nosedive," from a minimum winning bid price of 63 yuan per dose to ultra-low prices reported by competitors as low as 27.5 yuan per dose, severely compressing profit margins. This directly led to serious inventory accumulation. By the end of 2024, the company's vaccine inventory reached 31.37 million doses, necessitating corresponding inventory impairment provisions.
This series of difficulties stems from multiple market shocks. Firstly, Merck's 9-valent HPV vaccine gained approval to expand its applicable age range to women aged 9-45, directly covering the core audience of the bivalent vaccine, creating a disruptive competitive pressure. Secondly, after the domestic competitor Walvax Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (SZ300142) launched its bivalent vaccine, price wars became inevitable. Finally, after the initial concentrated release of demand, the growth rate of the entire HPV vaccine market has noticeably slowed down.
On November 10 last year, the bivalent HPV vaccine was formally included in the national immunization program. On one hand, this provides Wantai Biologics and Walvax Biotechnology with a stable and large-scale public procurement market. On the other hand, it signifies that profit margins are greatly compressed, with little room for further price reductions under the centralized procurement model. Wantai Biologics' future growth drivers have clearly shifted to the commercial performance of its 9-valent HPV vaccine and the expansion into international markets.
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