Despite a remarkable surge in the sales of its flagship product, Xcopri, an epilepsy drug, in the U.S., SK biopharmaceuticals is still facing an operating loss, which raises concerns about the company's financial health.

In the third quarter, Xcopri achieved record-breaking sales of 75.7 billion won ($57.7 million), up 19.2 percent from the previous quarter.

However, this success story is marred by the stark reality of the company's bottom line of an operating loss of 10.7 billion won.

The figures suggest a troubling narrative for SK biopharmaceuticals.

Even as Xcopri's U.S. sales witnessed a dramatic sales increase, the company's operational efficiency is being questioned by investors.

In particular, the addition of SK Life Science Labs has increased selling, general, and administrative expenses by over 8 billion won. Despite efforts to control costs and improve operations, the company has only marginally reduced its operating loss by 8.2 billion won compared to the previous quarter.

The company has set ambitious targets, banking on the accelerated growth of Xcopri and continuous efforts to streamline selling and administrative expenses, alongside seasonal effects, to turn profitable by the fourth quarter.

SK biopharmaceuticals reports that the trend of rising new patient prescriptions in the U.S. continues, and the total number of prescriptions has seen a significant increase.

"From January to September this year, the monthly number of new patient prescriptions increased by an average of about 37 percent compared to the same period last year, and due to this increase in new patients, the total number of prescriptions for the last quarter increased by about 54 percent," the company said.

SK biopharmaceuticals also revealed a medium to long-term accelerated growth plan to achieve the blockbuster sales target of $1 billion by 2029 for Xcopri.

"This includes aggressive marketing strategies such as widening the focus of promotions from epilepsy specialists to general neurologists, utilizing accumulated data effectively, and introducing new marketing tools suitable for the AI era," the company said. "We also plan to expand the indications and age groups of Xcopri by 2025 to 2026, respectively."