Seo Jeong-jin "Confident in Jimpenetra's Growth with 3.5 Trillion KRW Annual Sales This Year"

Seo Jung-jin, Chairman of the Celltrion Group, and Seo Jin-seok, Co-CEO of Celltrion, highlighted the group's competitiveness and presented future growth strategies at the 22nd Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference held in New York, USA, on the 6th (local time), Celltrion announced on the 9th.

Seo Jung-jin, Chairman of Celltrion Group, and Seo Jin-seok, Co-CEO of Celltrion (from the center), are presenting at the Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference.
[Photo by Celltrion]

Now in its 22nd year, the Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference is an event hosted by the global investment bank Morgan Stanley, inviting promising biotech companies worldwide to connect with global institutional investors and others. This year, over 400 healthcare companies and investors from around the world, including Celltrion, participated, with company roundtables and thematic presentations held over three days.

The Celltrion Group conducted both thematic presentations and roundtable discussions simultaneously. In the presentation titled "From Pioneer to Innovator," delivered by CEO Seo Jin-seok, explanations were given on Celltrion's new drug pipeline, the development status of follow-up biosimilars, and future schedules. In the new drug pipeline, Celltrion plans to expand its scope with antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) and multispecific antibodies, sequentially unveiling multiple "Best in class" drug candidates from this year through next year to further solidify its position as a leading antibody company. To this end, the group is accelerating development by selecting three ADC new drugs and three multispecific antibody new drugs targeting the first product commercialization by 2029. In particular, two ADC new drugs with rapid progress will be disclosed within this year and will enter full clinical procedures starting next year.

Regarding the biosimilar business, Celltrion emphasized that the current global market environment allows only companies with a solid portfolio and pipeline, stable supply and sales networks, and a multi-product strategy to survive. The company plans to obtain approval for 11 products by 2025 and secure a portfolio of 22 products by 2030 to expand market dominance. Specifically, it aims to extend treatment areas beyond autoimmune diseases to asthma, urticaria, ophthalmology, and metabolic bone diseases, and enhance sales efficiency by strengthening negotiation power with Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) through a multi-product strategy.

In the subsequent roundtable, Chairman Seo Jung-jin held a dialogue and Q&A session with Daniel Cohen, Marketing Director of Morgan Stanley's U.S. Healthcare Investment Division. At this session, Chairman Seo presented Celltrion's growth outlook for this year and a concrete vision for new businesses.

First, the drug Zimpenetra, which debuted in the U.S. in March, successfully secured contracts for listing in prescription formularies with the three major Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) within six months of its launch, establishing a foundation for sales expansion from the early stages. With media advertising campaigns starting this month on TV, SNS, and other platforms, there is an expectation to achieve the annual sales target of 250 billion KRW this year. Other biosimilar products are steadily increasing their market share in key markets, making it likely to comfortably achieve the overall sales target of 3.5 trillion KRW this year. Furthermore, if Zimpenetra's market share expands as planned, annual sales could exceed 5 trillion KRW next year.

Regarding new businesses, Chairman Seo stated, "Expanding manufacturing facilities to secure production capacity is inevitable for a sustainable future, and decisions regarding new factories domestically or overseas will be finalized within this year." He added that these facilities will be operated as subsidiaries wholly owned by Celltrion and actively utilized for contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business.

He also said, "We are actively considering corporate investments to leap into a global big pharma," adding, "We are reviewing numerous target companies that can create synergy with the Celltrion Group, and if the right opportunity arises, we will proceed quickly without missing it."