[Pharmaceutical Network Industry News] In recent years, with the advancement of policies such as centralized procurement and the increasingly fierce market competition, the pharmaceutical industry has accelerated the transformation and upgrading, and the innovative drug industry has developed rapidly. According to data, the current proportion of innovative drugs in my country is only 10%. %, the industry expects that there is huge room for the future growth of innovative drugs.

R&D investment is one of the important indicators of innovation capability. In recent years, the R&D investment of innovative drug companies has also continued to grow. Flush iFinD data shows that as of April 26, more than 2,500 A-share listed companies have disclosed their R&D investment status, including 242 biopharmaceutical companies, with a total R&D investment of 50.643 billion yuan in 2020.

Specifically, among the biopharmaceutical companies that have disclosed R&D investment, 20 will spend more than 500 million yuan in R&D in 2020. In addition, there will be 5 pharmaceutical companies whose R&D investment in 2020 will exceed 1 billion yuan, namely Hengrui Medicine. , Fosun Pharma, Shanghai Pharmaceuticals, Junshi Bio, and Health Yuan. Among them, Hengrui Pharma and Fosun Pharma have both invested more than 4 billion yuan in research and development, ranking the top 2.

Hengrui Medicine stated in its 2020 annual report that the company insists on investing more than 17% of its sales in research and development every year. In 2020, Hengrui Medicine's R&D investment was 4.989 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.04%, and R&D investment accounted for 17.99% of operating income. R&D expenses hit a new high since listing. Of its nearly 5 billion R&D expenses, 1.4 billion is for personnel and labor. Hengrui Medicine said that the company has increased the attraction of innovative talents. In 2020, it will introduce more than 200 doctoral students, more than 100 talents with overseas study and work experience, and more than 400 core technical talents. According to Hengrui Medicine's plan, in 2021, the company will continue to increase investment in research and development, accelerate the promotion of innovative research and development, and accelerate the international multi-center clinical development of innovative drugs, focusing on building an international talent team.

And Fosun Pharma, which is committed to vigorously transforming into the innovative drug business, also invests a lot of money in the research and development of new products every year. In 2020, Fosun Pharma's total R&D investment reached 4.003 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.6%, and its proportion of revenue rose to 13.2%. Its high R&D investment is mainly used in the pharmaceutical business. The R&D investment of this business in 2020 is 3.670 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.21%, accounting for 16.77% of the pharmaceutical business revenue. At present, the company has 2,258 R&D personnel, which is equivalent to 1.77 million R&D investment per capita, which shows the firm determination of the company's transformation.

It is also worth mentioning that among the more than 2,500 companies, the top 6 companies with the highest proportion of R&D investment in operating income are all pharmaceutical manufacturing companies.

Among them, Bio-Tech, Frontier Bio and Junshi Bio have temporarily ranked the top three in terms of R&D investment in operating income, 304.15%, 297.05% and 112.72% respectively. Frontier Bio's research and development expenses in 2020 reached 138 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62.13%; Junshi Bio's research and development expenses in innovative drug research and development in 2020 reached 1.778 billion yuan, an increase of 87.93% compared with the same period in 2019. Bio-Tech's R&D expenses in 2020 decreased year-on-year to only 562 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of -11%. However, the company also stated that it will continue to invest large-scale research and development expenses in the future, mainly for the completion of preclinical research, clinical trials and pre-marketing preparations for new drugs under research projects and the commercialization of listed drugs.

From the perspective of the industry, under the background of medical reform, pharmaceutical equipment companies need to continue to increase investment in research and development in order to innovate products and enrich product pipelines, thereby enhancing competitiveness. In addition, capital has also continued to pay attention to innovative drug companies in recent years, and financing events have continued. It will bring more impetus to the R&D and innovation of pharmaceutical companies.

News source: Pharmaceutical Network https://www.zyzhan.com