Celltrion recently obtained Europe’s marketing approval for Regkirona (regdanvimab), a Covid-19 antibody treatment, but it met with a lukewarm response from the stock market.
Investors do not anticipate Celltrion’s sales benefits from the Covid-19 pandemic anymore, so the company should restore investors’ trust with robust earnings from biosimilars, the original business of Celltrion, analysts said.
Celltrion Healthcare, the supplier of Celltrion’s products in the global market, said on Tuesday that it started distributing Regkirona in Europe.
Celltrion Healthcare is discussing shipments of Regkirona with 56 countries, according to the company. As of Monday, the company signed agreements with nine European countries for the supply of Regkirona. Under the agreements, the initial volume of 150,000 vials of the Covid-19 treatment (for 50,000 people) will be exported to Europe within this year.
Considering the speed of increasing Covid-19 cases in those countries and the timing of the exhaustion of the initial supply, the countries are likely to order additional Regkirona vials within this year, Celltrion Healthcare said.
Celltrion Healthcare did not disclose the names of the nine countries that agreed to purchase Regkirona. This is because some countries do not want to disclose the name of the Covid-19 treatment maker due to their Covid-19 response strategies, the company said.
Celltrion Healthcare said the company was speeding up talks with 47 more countries in Europe, Asia, Central/South America, the Middle East, and Oceania and planned to supply the first volume as early as this year.
Regkirona also won conditional approval from the Peruvian regulator on Nov. 16.
However, investors are not as enthusiastic as they were in the previous years despite the latest news of the global supply of Regkirona and licensing.
On Tuesday, Celltrion’s stock price closed at 207,000 won ($175.1), similar to the price before winning approval in Europe. On the same day, shares of Celltrion Pharm and Celltrion Healthcare also remained sluggish, closing at 120,000 won and 81,000 won, respectively.
Shinhan Investment Corp. said in a recent report that Celltrion could not raise investors’ expectations with Regkirona only.
Lee Dong-geon, an analyst at Shinhan Investment, said Regkirona’s winning EMA approval and discussions over the supply deals with many countries in Europe will positively affect Celltrion’s earnings. However, investors are likely to continue to question Celltrion’s biosimilars' growth potential, he noted.
“While Korean diagnostic kit manufacturers receive a low valuation despite massive sales since the outbreak of Covid-19, Celltrion will find it difficult to receive a high valuation with extra sales of the antibody treatment alone,” he said.
Celltrion’s Inflectra, a biosimilar of Infliximab, had a 22 percent market share in prescriptions in North America in October, inching up by 0.8 percentage points. Truxima, a biosimilar of Rituximab, marked a 25.2 percent market share, up 1.3 percentage points.