(Yicai Global) Feb. 10 -- Chinese drugmaker Sino Biopharmaceutical has dropped its plan for a secondary listing of shares on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-like Star Market.

Sino Biopharm, which owns Sinovac Life Sciences, the maker of Covid-19 jab CoronaVac, said on Feb. 8 that it had terminated the listing application because of the current market environment and the Beijing-based firm’s development plans.

An affiliate of Thailand's Chia Tai Group, also known as Charoen Pokphand Group, Sino Biopharm mainly researches, develops, and sells drugs in China. It unveiled the plan to list on the Star Market in February 2021, attracting widespread attention.

Abandonment of the secondary listing will not have an adverse impact on Sino Biopharm’s business and financial performance, the company added.

Shares of Sino Biopharm [HKG: 1177] fell 2 percent in Hong Kong today to close at HKD4.49 (57 US cents) each, giving the firm a market capitalization of HKD84.5 billion (USD10.8 billion). The Hang Seng Index fell by the same amount.

The drugmaker acquired a 15 percent stake in Sinovac Life for USD515 million in December 2020, just a couple of months before CoronaVac was approved in China. Sinovac Life became an associated company of Sino Biopharm in the first half of 2021. 

Sino Biopharm’s net profit surged over five-fold to CNY14.6 billion (USD2.2 billion) in 2021 from the previous year, thanks to the contribution of Sinovac Life. Revenue jumped 13.6 percent to CNY26.8 billion. But as CoronaVac’s dividend waned, Sino Biopharm’s profit shrank 80 percent to CNY1.9 billion (USD280 million) in the first half of 2022 from a year earlier.

Last December, Sino Biopharm became the second Chinese drugmaker to secure the rights to market Ensitrelvir, a Japanese Covid-19 oral antiviral treatment, in the Chinese mainland. But the market size is limited because as many as five Covid-19 oral antiviral drugs have been approved in the country and the future course of the pandemic an unknown.

Editor: Futura Costaglione