(Yicai Global) March 25 -- WuXi AppTec Group's shares jumped after the Chinese biopharmaceutical firm announced a 34 percent revenue gain last year and a plan to boost its production capacity in the United States to meet global demand.

The shares [SHA: 603259] rose 5.2 percent today to close at CNY96.63 (USD13.62), giving the firm a market cap of CNY159 billion (USD22.4 billion). The yardstick Shanghai Composite Index gained 2.2 percent.

Despite the risks posed by the global spread of the Covid-19 virus, the Shanghai-based company will boost its US output capacity via mergers and acquisitions or self-built plants, Chief Executive Li Ge said in its earnings report published yesterday.

Last year, 60 percent of WuXi AppTec's revenue came from the US, nearly a quarter from China, and 12 percent from Europe, the report showed.

For the year ended Dec. 31, revenue stood at CNY12.9 billion (USD1.82 billion) as all of its business segments posted "strong growth," it said. But net profit fell 18 percent to CNY1.9 billion, which it attributed to a CNY180 million loss related to the fair value change of its investment portfolio and a CNY21 million loss of equity pick up from joint ventures and associates. That in turn was mainly due to declines in the value of some publicly traded firms in the portfolio.

The Covid-19 outbreak has cost WuXi AppTec a month of work in China but at the beginning of the epidemic the company launched a program to mitigate the impact on drug deliveries, Li said.

"Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, we were expecting yet another year of strong revenue growth in 2020," Li said. "As a result of the timely implementation of our Business Continuity Plan, we expect that we will win back some lost time and reduce the Covid-19 impact to potentially two to three weeks of operations."

More than 60 percent of listed Chinese companies that have released earnings forecasts in the week to March 23, and especially those with a high proportion of overseas business, said they had been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Wind data.

Editor: Emmi Laine