Pharmaceutical Trading Platform Yaoshibang Applies for Hong Kong IPO
Yaoshibang, a Chinese pharmaceutical distribution platform, submitted an application on Tuesday for a public listing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx), with Goldman Sachs and CICC named as co-sponsors.
According to the firm’s prospectus, Yaoshibang was established in 2015, and obtained the license for an online drug trading service platform issued by China’s National Medical Products Administration in 2016.
Yaoshibang claims that its mission is to build a safer and more efficient trading and services platform for the pharmaceutical industry. In its prospectus, it quoted Frost & Sullivan’s report, saying that its gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached 27.5 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 42.9% since 2019. Both stats ranked first among China’s non-hospital digital pharmaceutical service platforms.
The income of Yaoshibang in 2019, 2020 and 2021 totaled 3.25 billion yuan, 6.06 billion yuan and 10.09 billion yuan respectively, while gross profit in the same period was 228.9 million yuan, 608.8 million yuan and 913.8 million yuan respectively. In addition, its net loss in past three years was 1.0455 billion yuan, 571.7 million yuan, and 501.6 million yuan respectively.
As of December 31, 2021, Yaoshibang had attracted about 4,700 merchants and about 434,000 buyers to trade on its platform. In 2021, the GMV of third-party merchants on the platform was 17 billion yuan, accounting for about 61.9% overall.
Before submitting this listing application, Yaoshibang had obtained several rounds of financing worth about $460 million, with investors including Baidu, Sunshine Insurance, Fosun Pharma, Shunwei Capital, and more. Specifically, Baidu and Sunshine Insurance participated in the firm’s E2 round of financing totaling $85.2 million in April 2022. The funds raised from the Hong Kong IPO will be used to further build a digital platform for medicine, develop innovative business and invest in research and development of big data and AI.
