(Yicai) Jan. 24 -- Joinn Laboratories, a Chinese provider of pharmaceutical clinical research services, said it expects net profit to have slumped by as much as 71.1 percent last year from the year before due to a slowdown in new drug research and development which has caused the price of experimental monkeys to sink.

Net profit likely fell between 61.1 percent and 71.1 percent last year from the year before to between CNY311 million (USD43.4 million) to CNY418 million, the Beijing-based company said. Revenue is likely to be the same as last year or to have risen as much as 10 percent to CNY2.4 billion (USD336 million).

The decline in performance is largely due to slumping profits from its laboratory services business and the change in the fair value of its biological assets, which are mainly experimental monkeys, it said.

The slumping value of its biological assets directly contributed to net losses of between CNY252 million (USD35.3 million) and CNY283 million last year, while in 2022 it achieved net profit of CNY308 million on these assets, it said.

Chinese demand for experimental monkeys surged amid a surge in new drug development since 2017, especially for Covid-19 jabs and medicines after the pandemic began in 2020. The price of a cynomolgus monkey hit a peak of CNY190,000 (USD26,486) in 2022, according to US business consultants Frost & Sullivan.

However, since then, the price of experimental monkeys has been on the slide. The China Institute for Food and Drug Control bought cynomolgus monkeys three times last year, according to the government procurement website. The first time the monkeys cost CNY170,000 (USD23,800) each, the second batch was priced at CNY140,000 each, and the third purchase was at just CNY125,000 each.

Joinn’s share price [SHA:603127] closed down 3.1 percent at CNY18.90 (USD2.60) today.

Editor: Kim Taylor