In 2022, the company reported a net profit of 4.736 billion yuan, making it the top profit earner in the biological vaccine sector. However, by 2025, it recorded a significant loss of 398 million yuan, marking its first loss in nearly a decade.
Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co., Ltd., in which billionaire Zhong Shanshan holds a 53% stake, has experienced a dramatic roller coaster in both financial performance and stock price.
At the end of 2019, the company's domestically produced bivalent HPV vaccine, Cecolin, received approval for market launch, providing Wantai Biological with a key to substantial wealth. In April 2020, the company went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with an issue price of 8.75 yuan per share. By October 2021, its share price had surged to a peak of 344.7 yuan, an increase of nearly 40 times, with its market capitalization reaching close to 180 billion yuan (currently 49.2 billion yuan), establishing it as a highly sought-after blue-chip stock in the A-share market.
Between 2020 and 2022, the domestic HPV vaccine market faced severe supply shortages and high demand. As the sole domestic supplier, Cecolin, with a gross margin exceeding 85%, became a major cash cow for Wantai Biological. In 2022, revenue from the vaccine business exceeded 5 billion yuan, contributing over 70% of the company’s total profit.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic provided another growth engine for the company. From 2021 to 2022, exports and domestic demand for COVID-19 antigen and antibody test kits surged, driving diagnostic business revenue to over 6 billion yuan, with a gross margin as high as 90%.
Driven by these two segments, Wantai Biological’s performance soared. Net profit grew from 677 million yuan in 2020 to 2.021 billion yuan in 2021, and further surged to 4.736 billion yuan in 2022, a more than sixfold increase in just two years.
Starting in 2023, however, several regions in China initiated centralized procurement programs for HPV vaccines, causing the price of the bivalent vaccine to plummet from 300 yuan per dose to as low as 27.5 yuan per dose. As a result, the gross margin dropped sharply from over 85% to below 20%.
Amid the price collapse, the market landscape also shifted. At the end of 2022, Merck’s nonavalent HPV vaccine expanded its target age range to include individuals from 9 to 45 years old, directly capturing high-end customers who might have otherwise opted for the bivalent vaccine. Consequently, sales of Wantai Biological’s bivalent HPV vaccine plummeted by 42.4% year-on-year in 2024.
An even more critical issue was the inventory crisis. Due to aggressive production expansion in earlier years, the company’s inventory of bivalent HPV vaccines exceeded 10 million doses, with a significant portion nearing expiration and becoming unsellable. In 2025, the company recorded an inventory impairment loss of over 200 million yuan.
Additionally, as the pandemic receded, demand for COVID-19 diagnostic test kits dropped sharply. In 2024, diagnostic business revenue fell to just 1.6 billion yuan, a decline of more than 70% compared to the 6 billion yuan recorded in 2022. With gross margins shrinking significantly and a large amount of production equipment and raw materials related to COVID-19 testing left idle, the company further recorded depreciation and impairment losses in 2025, ultimately leading to a net loss of 398 million yuan.
Amid the sharp rise and fall of Wantai Biological’s fortunes, the question remains: who profited handsomely, and who ended up trapped at the peak?
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