Biotechnology companies in Taiwan are gaining momentum again through M&A and buying stakes. Bora Pharmaceuticals, TCI Co., and ShinyBrands, aiming at the hundreds of billions of dollars of business opportunities in beauty and personal care products, have merged and acquired shares in new companies. Genomics, BiOptic, and TCI Gene are targeting the gene sequencing market.
Bora has become the single largest stakeholder to SunWay Biotech through the sale of Bora Health in exchange for 36% of the latter’s stocks. Bobby Sheng, Chairman of Bora, said that Bora sets to expand in made-in-Taiwan health supplements and health foods that can be distributed abroad. SunWay’s red yeast probiotics products are a perfect match, and Bora has ample distribution resources across markets.
In August, Bora Group acquired six products from New Jersey-based Almatica Pharma Inc, with marketing exclusivity for cardiovascular diseases and central nervous system for US$38.5 million (approximately TWD$1.23 billion), and Bora will begin the sales of the six drugs from September onwards, collecting approximately US$260 million in sales in the U.S. for one year.
TCI has taken a 25% stake in Belgium's bionic collagen VeCollal. Vincent Lin., TCI’s Chairman, said VeCollal is the world's first plant-based bionic collagen with the same structure as the first type of human collagen backed by scientific data, and it is estimated that this year's revenue will double that of last year's, and TCI has gained marketing exclusivity of VeCollal in China and the Asia-Pacific market, which has a promising outlook.
This year, ShinyBrands acquired a 45% stake in "YUAN", a personal care brand, for $63 million. The take resulted in August's revenue of TWD$269 million the second highest by month, with an annual increase of 87.3%.
Although YUAN suffered a loss in the first half of the year, it is expected the monthly profit and loss can be balanced and next year's revenue will be doubled with ShinyBrand’s investment.
ShinyBrands focuses on beauty care and personal care. It is expected that with the significant growth in awareness and market share of its brands, the company will gain growth momentum in Q4, and will likely achieve new highs in revenue and profit for the whole year.
