After 2021, the "Medical Dollar Year", how did the three domestic hyaluronic acid giants have had in the first half of 2022? Recently, domestic leading hyaluronic acid companies, Aimeike and Huaxi Biological and Haohai Biotechnology, disclosed their first half of the year's results. Overall, the performance of the three companies has differentiated. Although Huaxi Bio's growth rate is fast, its profitability has weakened; Aimeike follows closely, but the growth rate of attributable net profit has declined; Haohai Biotech fell behind directly, and is the only one among the three companies that saw a year-on-year decline in net profit, with a drop of nearly 70%.
Huaxi Bio's revenue is far ahead, Haohai Biotech's profit is at the bottom
In the first half of 2022, Huaxi Bio's revenue reached 2.935 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 51.58%, which is the highest revenue and fastest growth among the Three Musketeers. This is mainly based on the rapid development of its functional skin care business. In the first half of 2022, its functional skin care business achieved revenue of 2.127 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of as high as 77.17%. However, due to pressure on raw material business and medical terminal sales in the first half of the year, Huaxi Bio's gross profit margin fell by 0.45% to 77.43% compared with the same period last year.
Aimeike achieved a total operating income of 885 million yuan in the first half of 2022, an increase of 39.70% over the same period last year; although its revenue scale is not as large as Huaxi Biological, its gross profit margin is still "higher than Moutai". Its solution injection products with "Hiyi" as the core are contributing revenue continuously. In the first half of the year, Aimeik's solution injection products revenue was 643 million yuan, accounting for 72.90% of the operating income, and the gross profit margin was as high as 94.07%.
Haohai Biotechnology fell seriously among the " Medical Beauty Three Musketeers". According to the semi-annual report, Haohai Biotech achieved operating income of 968 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.69%; net profit of 71.03 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 69.25%. The annual report shows that its net profit decline is due to multiple factors: due to the Shanghai epidemic, the production of relevant major production subsidiaries was significantly affected, and its operating income decreased compared with the same period last year, resulting in a decrease in gross profit and loss of shutdowns of more than 90 million yuan; secondly, the distribution agreement between the group's subsidiary Aaren and the former domestic exclusive distributor was terminated, and the factory launched a plan to reduce expenditures for phased shutdowns, resulting in an operating loss of approximately 14.66 million yuan, and an impairment loss of 25 million yuan was set aside for some Aaren's asset group .
(Photographer/Intern Hu Mingen)
gross profit margin: Aimeike can make the most money
In terms of gross profit margin, medical beauty customers are far ahead. Wind data shows that its gross profit margin in the first half of the year was as high as 94.39%, even exceeding the gross profit margin of Kweichow Moutai (91.62% in 2021). By product, the gross profit margins of two types of injection dermatitis fillers reached a new high, with the gross profit margin of solution injection products reaching 94.07%. Gel injection products benefited from the sharp increase in operating income and a slight decline in operating costs, with a gross profit margin of as high as 96.05%, an increase of 2.74 percentage points year-on-year.
Aimeike's main products revenue source: Aimeike Financial Report
solution injection products are mainly based on "sodium hyaluronate composite solution for injection (commonly known as hyaluronic acid)" and the product name is "Hiyi". For those who love beauty, HiTi, a super single product for neckline treatment, is far more famous than AiMeke itself. According to the prospectus of Aimeike, Aimeike HiTi obtained the Class III medical device registration certificate in December 2016, and is the first composite injection material in China that is clinically used for neck striatric repair. After HiTi went public in 2017, it has become a certain source of certainty for Aimeike's performance growth. Data shows that from 2018 to 2021, the proportion of revenue of solution injection products increased from 25.1% to 72.3%.
Relatively speaking, Huaxi Bio is slightly inferior in terms of gross profit margin. Due to the pressure on raw material business and medical terminal sales in the first half of the year, Huaxi Bio's gross profit margin fell by 0.45% to 77.43% compared with the same period last year. In addition, although the revenue growth rate is large, the growth rate of net profit is obviously unable to keep up with the revenue growth rate, mainly due to its continuous expansion of the C-end market of skin care products in the past two years and significantly increasing the sales expenses. In the first half of 2022, its sales expenses were 1.386 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 54.68%.
Haohai Biotechnology has performed relatively weakly in gross profit margin. In the first half of this year, Haohai Biotech's overall gross profit margin was 69.84%, a decrease of 4.69 percentage points from 74.53% in the same period last year.Among them, the consolidation of Ouhuameike and Nanpeng Optics both lowered the gross profit margin level of Haohai Biotechnology.
product line: Huaxi Biology has many single products
In the past two years, in order to ensure growth, Huaxi Biology has been making efforts to the C-end, so its product line is also the richest. From a business perspective, the revenue of the functional skin care product business reached 2.127 billion yuan in the first half of the year, accounting for more than 70%. In addition, the revenue from the raw material business was 461 million yuan and the revenue from the medical terminal business was 300 million yuan. The initial layout of the functional food business also brought 44 million yuan of revenue to Huaxi Bio.
Among the four major brands of Huaxi Bio, the fastest growing rate is the new brand BM muscle activity launched by Huaxi Bio in 2020, with revenue increasing by 445.75% year-on-year to 480 million yuan.
Huaxi Bio's functional skin care products revenue Source: Huaxi Bio's financial report
In the past two years, Aimeike's second phenomenon-level explosive product, besides HiTi, has not appeared for a long time, and has been considered by the capital market to be the risk and bottleneck of its company's development. In June 2021, Aimeike's product "crosslinked sodium hyaluronate gel containing levollactic acid-ethylene glycol copolymer microspheres", namely "Wubai Angel", obtained a Class III medical device registration certificate. This is a new product of recycled materials, which has the ability to shape and activate collagen regeneration. This product has also driven the rapid growth of Aimeike gel products revenue. In the first half of 2022, Aimeike gel products including Rubai Angel achieved revenue of 237 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.71%. According to China Securities forecast, Rubai Angel is expected to achieve sales of 100 million yuan in the first half of the year.
hyaluronic acid market is fiercely competitive. The three musketeers are all transforming into
hyaluronic acid track is becoming more and more crowded. With the increase of competitors and the maturity of technology, the price of hyaluronic acid from raw materials to terminal products is declining year by year. According to Frost & Sullivan's report, the average price of hyaluronic acid raw materials has gradually dropped from 210 yuan/gram in 2017 to 124 yuan/gram in 2021, a decrease of more than 40%. In such an environment, is the hyaluronic acid of the Three Musketeers of Medical Beauty still fragrant? It can be seen that the Three Musketeers are all looking for new efforts in 2022.
Take Haohai Biotech as an example. With the advantages brought by hyaluronic acid raw materials, it has diversified non-related through asset mergers and acquisitions, expanding its business to ophthalmology, orthopedics, plastic surgery, wound care, surgery and other fields; Aimeike is more focused on the injection filling medical beauty terminal business, and the layout of botulinum toxin has been accelerated again. In a recent investor inquiry, Aimei said that the botulinum toxin product is currently in the late-stage clinical data collection stage. The clinical units are basically in Beijing, and the clinical progress has not been greatly affected by the epidemic. After sorting out clinical data, the company will submit a registration application as soon as possible. Huaxi Bio is still the largest provider of hyaluronic acid raw materials, and its market potential on the C-end remains unlimited.
What kind of answer will the three musketeers of medical beauty deliver in the second half of the year? Aoyi News will continue to pay attention to.
Aoyi News Reporter Lin Shiyan
