A covid-19 pneumonia epidemic has ushered in a high light moment for the independent clinical laboratory (ICL) industry and attracted the entry of Internet giants.
On December 29, 2020, Shanghai Weihe medical laboratory Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Weihe medicine”) was established with a registered capital of 1 million yuan. Its business scope includes inspection and testing services, medical services, medical research and experimental development. Tianyancha equity penetration shows that Weihe medicine is 100% controlled by Xiaohe Health Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of byte beat.
Third party medical examination refers to a medical institution with independent legal personality, independent of medical institutions, engaged in medical examination or pathological diagnosis services and capable of independently undertaking corresponding medical responsibilities under the permission of the health administrative department. At present, there is a big gap between China’s third-party medical testing and developed countries in terms of penetration rate and the number of detectable items. Relevant data show that the penetration rate of third-party medical testing institutions in China is only 5% – 6%, while this figure has reached 38%, 50% and 67% in the United States, Europe and Japan respectively.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the strong demand for nucleic acid detection of covid-19 virus has driven the performance of ICL related enterprises. However, with the stabilization of China’s epidemic prevention and control situation, how to deal with the development after the dividend subsides is an inseparable proposition for enterprises.
“From the perspective of current policies and people’s health needs, the development of the whole industry is upward and has a good prospect. The covid-19 pneumonia epidemic has expanded the exposure of the testing industry. It is a bonus period. Some enterprises catch up and naturally get a wave of dividends.” “A senior person in the ICL industry who asked not to be named told times finance,” but covid-19 testing business alone can not achieve considerable development. Third party medical testing still needs to return to routine business, especially some innovative directions, such as molecular diagnosis. In particular, enterprises that have not caught up with the covid-19 bonus period should expand in the non covid-19 business direction, otherwise they will be easily eliminated by the industry.
Annual achievements of epidemic situation
The detection methods for New Coronavirus mainly include nucleic acid detection, antibody detection and antigen detection. Nucleic acid detection has the characteristics of early diagnosis, high sensitivity and specificity. It is known as the “gold standard” for covid-19 virus detection and has been most widely used in “anti epidemic”.
Based on the huge testing demand, as a medical institution that can independently bear the corresponding medical responsibility, the third-party medical testing institution has been driven by both policy dividend and market demand under the realistic situation of testing pressure in China during the epidemic period, and has become the main force of covid-19 virus testing.
According to the data of industrial information network, during the epidemic period, in the covid-19 virus detection in Wuhan, the amount of ICL detection was about 80% and that in public hospitals was about 20%.
According to the financial report data, in 2020, when the epidemic broke out, the performance of relevant companies achieved explosive growth, in which the revenue of Dian Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(300244) (300244. SZ) directly exceeded 10 billion, reaching the highest value over the years; The net profit growth rate of Guangzhou Kingmed Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(603882) (603882. SH) is the highest, reaching 275.24%; The net profit growth rate of Guangdong Hybribio Biotech Co.Ltd(300639) (300639. SZ) has also more than doubled, and the revenue growth rate is as high as 85.7%.
Taking ICL leader Guangzhou Kingmed Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(603882) as an example, the financial report data show that the company’s revenue and profit showed an upward trend from 2017 to 2021, but the outbreak of covid-19 pneumonia became a watershed in Guangzhou Kingmed Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(603882) revenue that year.
Before 2019, Guangzhou Kingmed Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(603882) ‘s revenue growth is relatively flat, and the growth rate is basically maintained at 15-20%. By 2019, the net profit of Guangzhou Kingmed Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(603882) has nearly tripled compared with previous years. In 2020, it will be higher, and the revenue has directly jumped from 5.269 billion yuan to 8.244 billion yuan. In the first three quarters of 2021, this figure has reached 8.617 billion yuan, exceeding the annual revenue in 2020.
From the product composition of its revenue, the third-party medical diagnostic services account for a large proportion, and the growth of gross profit margin also shows a watershed in 2019, realizing from negative growth to positive growth. By 2020, the operating revenue of the third-party medical diagnostic services will directly increase from less than 5 billion yuan to nearly 8 billion yuan.
ICL is hot, and capital is also moving. From 2021 alone, there have been many investment, financing, listing and other events in China’s ICL industry. In April 2021, Beijing Zhide medical laboratory Co., Ltd. announced that it had completed the pre-A round of financing of RMB 20 million; Then in June, ADICON, one of the three giants of China’s ICL, embarked on the journey of listing and submitted a prospectus at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; Shanghai Labway Clinical Laboratory Co.Ltd(301060) (301060. SZ) was also listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in September, with an issue price of 4.17 yuan / share. Since then, the stock price has soared all the way; On January 6, 2022, Shanghai Labway Clinical Laboratory Co.Ltd(301060) closed at 32.79 yuan / share, up 686.33% from the issue price, with a total market value of more than 13 billion yuan.
Covid-19 test shows that the enrichment effect is weakened
From the perspective of China, the demand for a wide range of full staff testing has decreased significantly. At present, the demand for nucleic acid testing is concentrated in areas with local epidemic rebound and areas with large entry-exit flow.
Moreover, the unit price of covid-19 continued to decline. Since the outbreak, China, including Beijing, Guangdong, Shaanxi, Zhejiang and other provinces, has carried out centralized collection of covid-19 reagents. In November 2021, the National Medical Insurance Bureau launched the third round of national joint commissioning to guide all localities to further reduce the price and cost of covid-19 virus nucleic acid detection in public hospitals, and reduce the cost of single nucleic acid detection to less than 40 yuan. A few days ago, Shaanxi Medical Security Bureau decided to link the price of the selected varieties in the centralized belt purchase of covid-19 virus nucleic acid detection reagent of Guangdong alliance. After the price linkage, the price of the detection kit decreased by 75.08% and 34.24% on average; The price of disposable virus sampling tube (device) (single test) decreased by 77.81% with an average decrease of 25.16%.
Under the centralized purchase policy, the prices of relevant products in China are further under pressure, and the profit space of relevant enterprises is facing compression.
“The current centralized reagent purchase policy will not adversely affect the company’s main business. The company is an integrated solution provider of medical diagnosis with ‘product + service’ as the core, and centralized purchase will promote IVD (in vitro diagnostic products) Further cost reduction will help the diagnostic service sector under large-scale benefits to expand its cost leading competitive advantage; Secondly, centralized purchase will gradually eliminate the extensive agency model, and the concentration effect of leading channels represented by Dean will be significantly improved. ” Dian Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(300244) the Secretary replied to the questions of times Finance on the interactive platform.
“After large-scale centralized purchase, the cost of covid-19 testing is brought to the same level for both hospitals and third-party medical inspection institutions, and the rest is the competition of efficiency and scale. If a hospital finds that its own testing volume is limited and its long-term development will not bring corresponding profits, it will consider outsourcing the testing items, which is very important for third-party medical inspection institutions It’s good to say. ” The above-mentioned senior people in ICL industry told times finance and economics, “in addition, there are disadvantages. Because centralized procurement makes the price of the whole nucleic acid detection transparent, which means that the space left for the mobilization of third-party medical examination is very limited, and finally we have to make a profit by quantity.”
Looking for new profit growth points
According to ADICON’s prospectus and frost Sullivan’s data, the scale of China’s ICL market has increased from 11.7 billion yuan in 2016 to 19.8 billion yuan in 2020, with a CAGR of 14.0%. The agency predicts that the overall market scale will reach 46.3 billion yuan by 2025, with a CAGR of 18.4%.
It has become a basic consensus in the industry that the high performance growth brought by the epidemic is not sustainable. “COVID-19 detection alone can not achieve rapid development. The third party medical inspection still needs to go back to routine business, such as cancer, reproductive health, infectious diseases and other diagnostic products, but once back to regular business, the problem of unstable development of the industry is gradually exposed. In fact, third party medical inspection is developing in China and will soon be opened up to the hospital and become a hospital outsourcing. It’s not easy to do things like that. ” Insiders told times finance.
Many ICL enterprises have begun to make efforts and explore in the directions of artificial intelligence assisted diagnosis, precision medical diagnosis and internet medical treatment.
Among them, Guangzhou Kingmed Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(603882) set up a genomic clinical service and data center, trying to focus on the fields of genetic rare diseases, blood tumors and solid tumors, and focus on marketing and cold chain logistics; Dian Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(300244) has a product layout in the fields of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, nucleic acid mass spectrometry, molecular diagnosis and cell pathology.
“In essence, the third-party medical examination is a service industry, and the business logic should conform to the laws of the service industry. If an organization does not provide services with too high technical content, and other organizations can provide services, the organization itself does not have core competitiveness, and the profit level is very limited. However, if an enterprise can provide some high-quality products to achieve production Product differentiation can provide patients with more accurate diagnosis and better services, so the development level of the whole enterprise will be improved. After the covid-19 reshuffle, how to innovate and meet the needs of patients and healthy people is very important for third-party medical examination. ” The aforementioned senior people in ICL industry frankly said to times finance.
In addition to hospital outsourcing business, the opening of C-end business for patients is also in the layout of leading enterprises. Although there is no response to the establishment of a third-party medical testing company, it is not the first time that an Internet company has settled in medical testing in China.
On October 15, 2021, Dian Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(300244) and Baidu health signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Beijing. The two sides said that they would integrate their own advantageous resources and provide services such as health management, disease diagnosis and management, inspection popular science education, appointment inspection and so on.
Dian Diagnostics Group Co.Ltd(300244) the 2021 interim report shows that at present, to C business division has opened three types of products: home self collection, blood collection point blood collection package and online laboratory billing, and more than 500 blood collection points have been opened in China. According to the observation of times finance and economics, a variety of playing methods such as full charge reduction, direct broadcast and goods delivery have been adopted in the official flagship store of e-commerce platform.
“At present, testing enterprises are not limited to becoming the development mode of hospital outsourcing. How to obtain customers in a wider range is particularly critical to the development of enterprises. Internet enterprises have many traffic entrances and channels, which is an auxiliary for third-party medical testing. Secondly, from a longer-term perspective, precision medicine is the development trend of the industry, but we should be precise Quasi convenience means big data. For traditional testing enterprises, there are some deficiencies in data processing and some technologies of artificial intelligence. Cooperation with Internet enterprises can also add a certain amount to the enterprise’s big data acquisition and processing of precision medicine. ” The aforementioned senior people in ICL industry told times finance.
However, according to the data disclosed by the flagship store of the platform, covid-19 nucleic acid detection products and services are purchased the most, followed by HPV detection, and other products are only purchased sporadically.
“This actually involves the question of whether the consumer demand is just needed. During the covid-19 epidemic period, nucleic acid detection is just needed. However, in some other emerging diagnostic products, the rigidity is insufficient. The products are mostly aimed at groups that pay more attention to health problems. Moreover, for this group, there is also the problem of ‘do it or not’. In most cases, they choose not to do it Unless someone pays for him; Secondly, lack of awareness is also a problem that makes it difficult to promote products. Taking HPV products as an example, HPV related products have been discussed for some time in China, and the public’s awareness of disease risk has been established, so it is natural to buy relevant diagnostic products. ” “In other words, whether the product benefits the purchasing group is very important,” said the senior person in the ICL industry to times finance
(times Finance)
