Japanese pharmaceutical companies’ Korean offshoots recorded low growth in 2021, according to their audit reports.

The audit reports showed that the combined sales of the nine Japanese drugmakers’ Korean offshoots stood at 1.44 trillion won ($1 billion) last year, marking an increase of a mere 1.4 percent from 2020.

The nine companies registered an operating profit increase of 6.2 percent and a net profit decrease of 1.6 percent over the period. The nine companies are Astellas Korea, Takeda Korea, Eisai Korea, Otsuka Korea, Daiichi Sankyo Korea, Kyowa-Kirin Korea, Santen Korea, and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Korea, and Ono Pharma Korea.

The performance of the nine Japanese companies was much lower compared to the average of the 42 multinational pharmaceutical companies operating here, which recorded a sales increase of 27.3 percent, operating profit gains of 22 percent, and net profit growth of 24.7 percent during the period, according to Korea Biomedical Review’s analysis.

The slow performance by Japanese pharmaceutical companies was due to poor earnings marked by top-tier companies, such as Astellas Korea, Takeda Korea, and Eisai Korea.

Astellas Korea recorded the most sales among Japanese pharmaceutical offshoots in Korea in 2021, with 246.5 billion won. However, the figure was down 7.2 percent from 265.6 billion won reported in 2020.

Takeda Korea and Eisai Korea marked negative growth in annual sales -- the two companies reported sales of 231.5 billion won and 212.9 billion won, down by 8.3 and 4 percent, respectively.

The other six companies showed relatively moderate growth. Daiichi Sankyo Korea’s sales grew 12.6 percent to 245.4 billion won; Otsuka Korea, 9.7 percent to 206.6 billion won; Santen Korea, 5.7 percent to 108.8 billion won; Kyowa-Kirin Korea, 5.9 percent to 79.4 billion; Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Korea, 5.8 percent to 69.6 billion won; and Ono Pharma Korea, 31.3 percent to 40.6 billion won.

Five companies -- Astellas Korea, Takeda Korea, Eisai Korea, Otsuka Korea, Otsuka Korea, and Santen Korea -- turned to a decline in operating profit.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Korea had the largest operating profit with 38.6 billion won, followed by Daiichi Sankyo Korea (26.1 billion won), Eisai Korea (22.8 billion won), Santen Korea (15.8 billion won), Astellas Korea (15.1 billion won), Takeda Korea (8 billion won), and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Korea (6.8 billion won), Kyowa-Kirin Korea (6.6 billion won) and Ono Pharma Korea (3 billion won).

The five companies also saw their net income decrease, with Takeda Korea seeing the highest drop in net profit of 57.1 percent, from 9.6 billion won in 2020 to 4.1 billion won in 2021.