À̹ÌÁö È®´ë [Photo provided by Seegene Inc.]
Seegene Inc., South Korean developer of test kits, is more buoyant for this year, eyeing operating income to pass 1 trillion won ($897 million) only after achieving the milestone in sales last year.
According to multiple sources from the brokerage industry, Seegene is projected to raise over 1.5 trillion won in sales this year, up 20 percent from last year. In 2020, the company was projected to have raised 1.19 trillion won in sales, nearly tenfold from 122 billion won in the previous year on explosive demand for Covid-19 test kit products.
The brokerage consensus for its 2021 operating profit is 930 billion won, up from 760 billion won last year and 10.6 billion in 2018. Operating margin hovers at 60 percent.
Shares of Seegene closed 1.91 percent higher at 176,000 won on secondary Kosdaq on Wednesday.
The company is expected to see robust growth in test kits even after vaccine supply begins as health authorities must test before inoculation.
À̹ÌÁö È®´ë The feat of Seegene, which supplies 150 different types of test kits including those of coronavirus to 67 countries, owes to its molecular diagnostic technology, a technique that conducts gene test such as on blood, sputum, and urine, to monitor diseases. The company also has dominant technology in multi-diagnostic technology that enables examination of several viruses all at once.
Seegene¡¯s major product pipeline is the real-time diagnostic kit Allplex series.
Allplex SARS-CoV-2/FluA/FluB/RSV Assay, the latest to receive marketing approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, is a multiplex real-time PCR that helps detect five viruses such as influenza A, influenza B, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) A/B in a single tube. It is the upgraded version of Allplex SARS-Cov-2 Assay approved late last year.
À̹ÌÁö È®´ë [Photo provided by Seegene Inc.]
The company has been eager in protecting intellectual property rights and in research and development. Seegene has completed patent registration of its original technology in 40 countries. The company also invested 10 percent of its revenue in R&D between 2017 and 2019, and one-third of its employees are dedicated to research. In the first half of the year, Seegene plans to double the research workforce to 600.
Seegene will roll out test kits that can identify variants upon the sprout in Covid-19 variants from South Africa and the UK.
Seegene is building five production facilities on 10,752 square meter land it bought last year in Hanam, Gyeonggi Province to more than double its sales this year.
By Kim Si-gyun and Lee Eun-joo
[¨Ï Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]