Samsung Biologics said Tuesday that it has signed one new and four expanded contract manufacturing organization (CMO) deals, bringing its annual order intake to 3.48 trillion won ($2.7 billion) for the first time since its founding. This largely exceeds last year's order intake of 1.78 trillion won.

The five new contracts are with a single pharmaceutical firm or multiple firms in Asia, totaling 760 billion won.

Due to confidentiality agreements with its clients, Samsung Biologics did not disclose whether the deals involved a single company or multiple ones.

Samsung Biologics' CMO contracts often expand in volume after the contract is signed, depending on client needs.

In 2022, out of the 11 contracts, seven contracts were expanded, totaling 805 billion won. Samsung Biologics’ clients include multinational pharmaceutical companies such as GSK, Janssen, Merck, AstraZeneca, and Eli Lilly.

Samsung Biologics continues to grow strongly, driven by large orders. Of the new and expanded contracts announced this year, there are a total of nine large-scale contracts worth more than 100 billion won each.

Plant 4 in Incheon, which began operations in June, is a large-scale facility with a production capacity of 240,000 liters and has been recording a high level of utilization due to large orders from global pharmaceutical companies, the company said.

As a result of the increased utilization rate at Plant 4, in October, Samsung Biologics raised its annual sales forecast for 2023 to 3.6 trillion won from 3.5 trillion won.

Through the third quarter of 2023, Samsung Biologics posted cumulative sales and operating profit of 2.6 trillion won and 764 billion won, respectively, expecting to achieve an annual operating profit of 1 trillion won.

Given the steady increase in CMO demand, Samsung Biologics began constructing its 180,000-liter Plant 5 in Incheon in April and advanced the expected completion date to April 2025, instead of September 2025. 

Samsung Biologics' total production capacity is 604,000 liters, and its production capacity will be 784,000 liters upon completion of Plant 5.

In the meantime, Samsung Biologics recently ranked second on the World's Most Trustworthy Companies 2023 in the health care and life sciences category list, unveiled by data research firm Statista, behind Australia's Cochlear.

The study included 1,000 companies across 23 sectors in 21 countries, with nearly 70,000 consumers, investors, and employees ranking companies on their trustworthiness.

Samsung Biologics was the only CDMO to be ranked in the healthcare care and life sciences category and ranked higher than major global pharmaceutical companies.