A major strategic acquisition is underway in China's pharmaceutical sector. On the evening of January 13, 2026, SINO BIOPHARM announced a complete acquisition of innovative drugmaker Hejiya Biotech for a total consideration of 1.2 billion yuan. Hejiya possesses the world's first clinically validated liver-targeted delivery platform enabling an "annual injection" regimen, positioning it as a highly promising contender in the domestic small nucleic acid drug arena.
This move follows a pattern of strategic expansion. Just six months prior, in July 2025, the pharmaceutical giant revealed plans to acquire oncology innovation platform "Lixin Pharma" for approximately $500 million, marking the largest M&A deal in China's innovative drug sector that year.
Looking further back, a clear strategic blueprint emerges. The company has progressively shifted from early-stage business development collaborations to access global cutting-edge technologies, to strategic investments in domestic innovators like Ascentage Pharma and RemeGen. Further moves include gaining control of A-listed firm Hauyuebo to create cross-market capital channels, and acquiring the UK-based bispecific antibody platform F-star to accelerate international R&D. This series of deliberate actions outlines a strategic transition from a "generic follower" to an "innovation-driven" enterprise.
Orchestrating this capital strategy are the fourth-generation leaders of the Xie family, siblings Xie Qirun and Xie Chengrun. Under their leadership, SINO BIOPHARM is shedding its reliance on generic drugs at an unprecedented pace. This transformation is not merely about corporate survival but also reflects the broader ambitions of the century-old Charoen Pokphand Group within the evolving global pharmaceutical landscape.
The foundation of SINO BIOPHARM is deeply rooted in the Xie family's business empire. A century ago, Chaozhou merchant Xie Yichu ventured to Thailand with eight silver dollars and established a seed shop named "Zhengda Zhuang" in Bangkok's Chinatown. This modest beginning eventually grew into the multinational conglomerate CP Group, spanning agribusiness, retail, real estate, and healthcare.
The story passed to the second generation. Under the leadership of Xie Yichu's son, Xie Guomin, CP Group turned its focus to the health sector. In the early 1990s, his nephew, Xie Bing, who had a background in traditional Chinese medicine, was tasked with leading CP Pharmaceutical. Instead of building a company from scratch, Xie Bing adeptly navigated the Chinese market and capital operations, opting for a merger and acquisition strategy. He integrated ten regional pharmaceutical companies, including Freda and Jiangsu Chia Tai Tianqing Pharmaceutical Factory (later renamed "Chia Tai Tianqing"), rapidly building a foundational portfolio of pharmaceutical assets.
In 2000, Xie Bing restructured core assets like Chia Tai Tianqing to establish "China Biopharmaceuticals Limited," which listed on the Hong Kong Growth Enterprise Market that same year before transitioning to the main board several years later, marking the start of SINO BIOPHARM's capital market journey. Leveraging Chia Tai Tianqing's deep expertise and near-monopoly in liver disease generics, SINO BIOPHARM quickly established itself as a formidable, albeit low-profile, "hidden champion" in China's prescription drug market.
However, when an innovation wave swept China's pharmaceutical industry around 2015, peers like Hengrui Medicine and BeiGene doubled down on novel drug R&D. In contrast, SINO BIOPHARM remained comfortably reliant on generics, with only tentative forays into R&D, limited investment, and a weak pipeline, causing it to lag behind leading innovators.
A pivotal moment forcing SINO BIOPHARM's transformation was the implementation of the Volume-Based Procurement policy in 2018. As generics were the company's profit pillar, the policy-induced price plunge severely compressed profit margins. Faced with slowing revenue growth and persistent valuation pressure, the company had no choice but to transform.
Fortunately, at this critical juncture, the fourth-generation leaders, siblings Xie Qirun and Xie Chengrun, officially took the helm, becoming the architects of SINO BIOPHARM's innovation shift.
In 2015, 23-year-old Xie Qirun graduated from the Wharton School and returned to China, assuming the role of Chairperson and Executive Director of SINO BIOPHARM within months. She began steering the group's strategic planning, international expansion, and capital market activities.
In 2018, her brother, Xie Chengrun, also a Wharton graduate, joined the family business as Assistant to the Chairman of SINO BIOPHARM. He was promoted to Executive Director a year later and took over management of the core subsidiary, Chia Tai Tianqing. In July 2020, he became Chairman of Chia Tai Tianqing and was further elevated to CEO of SINO BIOPHARM in 2022, taking full responsibility for the operations, organizational optimization, and efficiency improvements across all subsidiaries.
Upon her appointment, Xie Qirun's primary task was to break the management's path dependency and establish a board-level consensus on making "comprehensive investment in innovative drug R&D" the core strategic objective.
To execute this strategy, SINO BIOPHARM has focused on three key areas in recent years:
First, consistently increasing R&D investment. The company's R&D expenses grew steadily from 1.368 billion yuan in 2016 to 5.09 billion yuan in 2024. In the first half of 2025, R&D expenses reached 3.188 billion yuan, with approximately 78% allocated to innovative drug development.
Second, aggressively recruiting and cultivating innovative talent. By 2025, the company had built an R&D and clinical team exceeding 3,000 members, covering the entire drug development chain from discovery to clinical research and production.
Third, building an international R&D platform. Through collaborations with top global innovators, technology platforms, and leading scientists, the company has prioritized前沿 fields like siRNA, multi-specific antibodies, ADCs, and therapeutic vaccines, introducing nearly 20 promising innovative drug projects to establish a global innovation system.
The results of this transformation are beginning to materialize.
The ability of SINO BIOPHARM to rapidly shift from generics to innovation is closely tied to the siblings' sophisticated capital maneuvers. The Xie family is renowned for its capital market prowess, and the fourth-generation leaders have demonstrated strategic vision beyond their years. Since 2019, while promoting internal R&D, they have systematically used BD collaborations, industrial investments, and strategic M&A to quickly address technological gaps and enhance the industrial ecosystem, accelerating the company's transformation.
On the product front, BD collaborations have been key to rapidly enriching the innovation pipeline. Between 2019 and 2023, SINO BIOPHARM partnered with overseas firms like Octapharma AG, Abpro, Symphogen, and Shionogi to license products such as human albumin, bispecific antibodies, LAG-3 monoclonal antibodies, and COVID-19 oral drugs. Domestically, collaborations with firms like Akeso, BioMice, and Hongyun Huaning targeted hot areas like anti-PD-1 mAbs, fully human antibody drugs, and the GMA106 weight-loss drug.
Beyond product BD, the siblings have bolstered innovation through industrial investments. In 2019-2020, the company became a cornerstone investor in Ascentage Pharma and RemeGen and led the Series D funding round for Akeso. Notably, a late-2020 investment of over $500 million in Sinovac Life Sciences yielded substantial returns due to the COVID-19 vaccine boom. Reports indicate that from 2021 to 2024, SINO BIOPHARM received at least 6.5 billion yuan in dividends from Sinovac, with an additional 1.353 billion yuan in the first half of 2025, providing crucial cash flow for innovation and M&A.
Concurrently, the siblings have decisively streamlined assets. Starting October 2023, SINO BIOPHARM divested subsidiaries including Chia Tai General, Suzhou Tianqing, Lianyungang Chia Tai Tianqing, and Zhejiang Tianqing, fully exiting the low-margin drug distribution and generic drug sectors. In February 2024, it sold its 67% stake in Chia Tai Qingdao. These "slimming-down" actions optimized the asset structure, released cash flow, and, most importantly, created strategic and financial flexibility for the high-investment, long-cycle innovative drug pipeline.
As the transformation deepened, the capital strategy evolved from分散 collaborations and investments to more strategic, large-scale M&A.
In 2023, subsidiary invoX Pharma acquired UK biotech F-star for $161 million, gaining access to its mature bispecific antibody platform. Although F-star later became independent, the attempt provided valuable international M&A experience and expanded overseas resource channels.
In October 2024, SINO BIOPHARM acquired a 55% controlling stake in A-share listed Hauyuebo for 630 million yuan, setting a precedent for a Hong Kong-listed company controlling an A-share firm. This move strengthened its position in the in-vitro diagnostics sector and provided access to the A-share capital market.
A landmark deal occurred in July 2025, with the acquisition of a 95.09% stake in Lixin Pharma for up to $951 million. After adjusting for Lixin's cash reserves, the net payment was $501 million, making it the largest innovative drug M&A deal in China that year. This transaction was likened by foreign media to "the Chinese version of Roche's acquisition of Genentech," signaling a new era for Chinese pharmaceutical companies.
Lixin Pharma is one of the few firms possessing both bispecific antibody and ADC technology platforms recognized by international peers. Its deep expertise in oncology and quality clinical pipeline highly complements SINO BIOPHARM's strengths in clinical development, registration, production, and commercialization. Xie Qirun expressed high expectations for the deal, stating its core value lies not in simple resource addition but in achieving synergistic "1+1>2" benefits by integrating R&D innovation with industrial capabilities.
Merely six months later, in January 2026, SINO BIOPHARM announced the full acquisition of Hejiya Biotech, focused on small nucleic acid drug R&D, for 1.2 billion yuan. Hejiya's differentiated delivery technology allows SINO BIOPHARM to quickly enter this前沿 field and significantly enrich its pipeline for major chronic diseases. Xie Qirun revealed the deal adds over 20 innovative projects, particularly in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, with some projects offering strategic synergy with the existing pipeline, helping build a competitive portfolio for metabolic diseases.
No corporate transformation is without challenges, and SINO BIOPHARM's journey has seen its share of growing pains.
Since the 2018 Volume-Based Procurement policy, prices for its core generic drugs plummeted, severely squeezing profits and causing volatile performance. Financial data shows revenue growth dropped sharply from 41% in 2018 to 15.98% in 2019, followed by a 2.4% decline in 2020—the first negative growth in 14 years—highlighting转型 pressure.
Profit fluctuations were more dramatic: Net profit attributable to owners plunged 70.08% in 2019, saw a slight 0.35% increase in 2020, then surged 427.17% in 2021, primarily driven by the massive Sinovac dividend rather than core business improvement. As the Sinovac windfall subsided, net profit saw negative growth again in 2022 and 2023.
A genuine turnaround emerged in 2024. As several self-developed and partnered innovative drugs were launched, the innovation business began contributing substantial revenue. Full-year 2024 revenue grew 10.18% year-on-year, with net profit up 50.08%. This recovery trend strengthened in H1 2025: revenue increased 10.71% to 17.57 billion yuan, while adjusted net profit surged 101% to 3.1 billion yuan—though over 40% of this remained attributable to Sinovac dividends.
Two positive signals stand out from the financial details:
First, innovative drug revenue is accelerating, and the revenue structure is improving. In H1 2025, revenue from innovative products reached 7.8 billion yuan, a 27.2% increase, significantly outpacing overall revenue growth. The contribution of innovative drugs to total revenue rose to 44.4%, quadruple the 11% share in 2015, driven by the rapid uptake of products like anlotinib, PD-L1 (Andevi), third-generation long-acting G-CSF (Yilishu), and several approved biosimilars. The company anticipates nearly 20 innovative drugs launching between 2025 and 2027, expecting innovative products to contribute over 60% of revenue by end-2027.
Second, profitability quality has notably improved, and operational efficiency has increased. As innovative drugs generally carry higher margins than generics, and with the divestment of low-efficiency assets, the product mix optimization has lifted the company's overall gross margin from 80% in 2018 to 82.5% in H1 2025.
Concurrently, cost control has been effective: The sales expense ratio decreased from 38.5% in 2018 to 34.9% in 2024 (though it rose to 36.7% in H1 2025 due to new product launches). The administrative expense ratio dropped from 10.5% in 2018 to 6.2% in H1 2025, which GF Securities attributed to "the effectiveness of strategic management in digitalization and organizational integration."
Despite these promising signs, challenges remain for the Xie siblings.
On one hand, while the shift to innovation is significant, the generic drug business remains a crucial cash flow source. With drug procurement policies becoming常态化, price pressure on generics will persist. GF Securities explicitly lists "greater-than-expected医保 price cuts" as a primary risk.
On the other hand, innovative drug development is inherently high-risk, involving long cycles, substantial investment, and high failure rates. For SINO BIOPHARM, clinical failure of any key asset—especially major acquisitions or partnerships—could render massive prior investments futile, impacting the pipeline and severely damaging market confidence and valuation. Many brokerages also cite "new drug R&D failure" as a core risk.
Fortunately, unlike peers navigating转型 without strong backing, SINO BIOPHARM is supported by the century-old, globally expansive CP Group and the billionaire Xie family. This foundation of industrial experience, substantial capital strength, and vast global resources provides not just ample funding but also the resilience and strategic patience needed for a successful long-term transformation.