BeOne Medicines is in rude health despite increasing friction between Beijing and Washington over biotech. The $50 billion China-founded, Swiss-headquartered company last week delivered blistering quarterly earnings, powered by its world-class cancer drugs. Policymakers in Washington and Beijing are starting to treat cutting-edge drugs and therapies like AI and chips. But life-saving therapies like those BeOne makes offer it some protection.
Among the drug stars that have risen up in China, BeOne is widely seen as one of the most cutting-edge. Sales of its pioneering cancer treatment, Brukinsa, recently surpassed a rival treatment from the $286 billion AstraZeneca (AZN.L) to become the global market leader. BeOne's revenue rose 34% in July to September, results reported on Thursday showed, and net income tripled from a low base, putting full-year earnings on track to triple too. More than half of its sales came from the US.
The 16-year-old company was co-founded by John Oyler, its American CEO, and Xiaodong Wang, who was born in Wuhan and educated in the US. Although the drugmaker started out as a research and development company based in Beijing, following its 2016 Nasdaq debut, it also listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Last year, it rebranded itself to BeOne, from BeiGene, and moved its legal headquarters to Switzerland.
For its part, BeOne insists it was conceived as a global company from the start. It uses the People's Republic as a major hub for research and clinical trials, as well as parts of its supply chain, helping it to turn new ideas into products more quickly and cheaply. BeOne also runs clinical trials in more than 45 countries, and has set up manufacturing in the US too. Still, its story has echoes of Chinese-founded companies like fast-fashion giant Shein (0625.HK) and AI agent company Manus that have tried, and largely failed, to distance themselves from Chinese origins.
Investors remain optimistic. BeOne's US shares have rallied 8% since Thursday's earnings and are up more than 30% this year, in line with the Nasdaq Biotech Index (.NBI)
. That's largely because Beijing and Washington have, so far, crafted controls to protect national security interests without restricting access to key medicines - or in China's case, US capital.
For instance, in October, the US proposed adding biotech to a list of industries subject to outbound investment controls, but included a carve-out for licensing deals that let Chinese companies sell innovative drugs into the US by striking deals with global pharmaceuticals. Also last month, China shared a plan to add certain biotechnologies to its export restrictions list, but similarly protected licensing.
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