SK Pharmteco announces delay in Nasdaq listing
Executives of SK Inc's bio-related units shake hands during the SK Bio Night on Wednesday in San Francisco. From left are SK Pharmteco CEO Joerg Ahlgrimm; Kim Yeon-tae, head of SK Bio Investment Center at SK Inc.; and Lee Dong-hoon, CEO of SK Biopharmaceuticals.
SAN FRANCISCO — SK Pharmteco will push back its plan to list on the Nasdaq to as early as 2024, after the markets have had time to recover from the current downturn.
The year 2024 will be “the earliest possible period” to reconsider its initial public offering (IPO), said SK Pharmteco CEO Joerg Ahlgrimm during an event titled SK Bio Night, which was held on the sidelines of the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
The biopharmaceutical company initially planned to kick off the IPO procedure last year, but the bearish market conditions and a global economic slowdown prompted it to change course. SK Pharmteco specializes in contract manufacturing and drug development.
Headquartered in Sacramento, California, it owns eight factories in North America, Europe and Asia, as well as five research and development centers. It plans to increase its manufacturing capacity by 50 percent from the current 1,000 cubic meters through 2025, with products that include a range of raw pharmaceutical materials for medicines including anticancer drugs and Covid-19 treatments.
The SK Bio Night event brought together chief executives of SK’s bio related units and their partners to share the latest developments and strategies. The participants include Jang Dong-hyun, CEO and vice chairman of SK Inc., Lee Dong-hoon, CEO of SK Biopharmaceuticals, and Kim Yeon-tae, head of SK Bio Investment Center at SK Inc. SK Inc. is the largest shareholder of SK Pharmteco and Biopharmaceuticals.
Kim at SK Bio Investment said that SK Pharmteco will stick to its initial plan to go public on the Nasdaq bourse.
“Nasdaq is one of the most ideal options, but we are still keeping open all possibilities,” Kim said, “Our basic plan is that we go public in the United States.”
“As we are now making aggressive investments in cell therapy products, the ideal timing for the IPO will be when the segment bears a certain form of visible result,” he said.
CEO Lee from SK Biopharmaceutcials shared the experience of directly managing sales of its epilepsy treatment, Cenobamate, in the United States.
“It’s been around two years since we entered the United States with Cenobamate, and it was a bold decision to handle the sales of the drug on our own rather than outsourcing it,” said Lee.
“We’ve learned a lot from the experience, and we've come to a stage where it runs in a stable manner. What we are going to do is sell a wider range of drugs through the sales team.”
Cenobamate is SK Biopharmaceuticals’ first commercialized drug, marking the first case in which a Korean company developed a drug independently and got approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
SK Biopharmaceuticals plans to sell the epilepsy treatment in the Middle East and Africa this year, following launches in the United States, China, Japan and Europe.
BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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