Celltrion aims to achieve $3.7 bil. in sales in 2025, says Chairman Seo

Celltrion has set an ambitious revenue target of 5 trillion won ($3.73 billion) for 2025 as it pushes forward with its expansion plans in the biopharmaceutical market. The company also projects achieving 3.5 trillion won in sales for this year.

These goals were unveiled at the 22nd Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference held in New York last Friday (local time). Seo Jung-jin, Chairman of Celltrion Group, and Seo Jin-seok, CEO of Celltrion and the eldest son of Seo Jung-jin, presented the group's competitiveness and future growth strategies to global institutional investors.

In a Q&A session with Daniel Cohen, Global Head of Pharma Services Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, Chairman Seo provided further insights into Celltrion's sales projections and growth prospects.

Seo put much emphasis on the newly launched autoimmune disease treatment, Zymfentra.

"Zymfentra has secured contracts with three major PBMs for formulary listings within six months of its U.S. release," Seo said. "With a media advertising campaign set to launch this month across TV and social media platforms, we believe the product will reach its 250 billion won sales target for the year."

Seo also stressed that if Zymfentra continues to expand its market share as planned in the U.S. market, coupled with the steady growth of its other biosimilar products in key markets, Celltrion could potentially surpass 5 trillion won in revenue by 2025.

Seo also outlined its plans to broaden its new drug pipeline, focusing on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and multi-specific antibodies.

The company aims to sequentially unveil multiple best-in-class drug candidates from this year through 2025, with the company currently accelerating the development of three ADCs and three multi-specific antibody drugs, targeting commercialization of its first product by 2029.

In the biosimilar sector, Seo stressed that Celltrion plans to secure regulatory approvals for 11 products by 2025 and expand its portfolio to 22 products by 2030.

"The company intends to extend its therapeutic reach beyond autoimmune diseases to areas such as asthma, urticaria, ophthalmology, and metabolic bone diseases," Seo said.

Celltrion to enter CDMO business in earnest

Addressing new business initiatives, Seo announced plans to expand manufacturing capacity.

"To ensure a sustainable future, expanding our production capacity through new manufacturing facilities is inevitable," Seo said. "We will finalize decisions regarding new local or overseas plants by the end of this year."

However, Seo did not elaborate on whether the company plans to build a plant from the ground up or purchase an existing plant.

He added that these facilities would be operated as wholly-owned subsidiaries of Celltrion and actively utilized for contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business.

Seo explained that by securing new manufacturing facilities to build top-tier global scale production capacity, Celltrion could leverage its accumulated expertise in drug development, clinical trials, production, regulatory approval, and sales to offer customized services to client companies.

Seo also revealed that Celltrion is actively considering investments in the sector.

"We are examining multiple target companies that could create synergies with Celltrion Group," Seo said. "If the right opportunity arises, we are prepared to move quickly."