Aug 26 (Reuters) – China’s Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group, a Roche partner, reported a near 36% rise in first-half profit on Wednesday driven by strong growth in sales of innovative medicines and higher investment income.
The oncology and metabolic disease specialist posted net profit of 4.26 billion yuan ($633.90 million) for the six months ended June 30, up from 3.13 billion yuan in the year-ago period and beating an HSBC Qianhai Securities forecast of about 2.9 billion yuan.
Drugmakers in China are expanding licensing deals and developing new medicines as Beijing’s centralised bulk buying programmes squeeze their revenue.
Hansoh, which sells both generic medicines and those it has developed itself like lung cancer drug Ameile, has more than 70 clinical trials of these innovative medicines underway as of last year, according to its annual report.
The company’s gains from an unlisted equity investment held through life-science venture capital funds helped other income more than double to 1.32 billion yuan.
Hansoh declared an interim dividend of HK$0.285 per share ($0.0364), up from HK$0.2316 a year earlier.
Revenue from innovative medicines rose 15.4% to 7.09 billion yuan, or 85.4% of total revenue, up from 82.7% a year earlier.
Total revenue increased 11.7% to 8.3 billion yuan, compared to 14.3% growth for the same period in 2025, 44.2% for the first half of 2024 and 1.7% for the first six months of 2023.
Hansoh did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the slower revenue growth.
Shares in the company, which reported its first-half results after Wednesday’s market close, are down around 12% so far this year, underperforming a 14% rise in the Hang Seng Biotech Index.
($1 = 6.7203 Chinese yuan renminbi)
($1 = 7.8385 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Roshan Thomas, Jasmeen Ara Shaikh in Bengaluru and Andrew Silver in Shanghai; Editing by Diti Pujara, Kirsten Donovan)
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