SK Pharmteco bags obesity treatment deal worth up to $1.4 bn

SK Pharmteco Co., a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), has secured an obesity treatment order worth up to 2 trillion won ($1.4 billion) from a global pharmaceutical company, according to industry sources on Wednesday.

Under the agreement, SK Pharmteco will supply GLP-1 drugs over more than five years, becoming the first South Korean company to win an order for glucagon-like peptide-1 in short supply worldwide.

It did not identify the company that placed the order, but industry sources said it might be Eli Lilly that signed the CDMO deal for GLP-1 drugs with the SK Group unit.

The order is estimated at 1 trillion-2 trillion won, more than twice SK Pharmteco’s annual sales of around 900 billion won.

To expand its GLP-1 obesity medication supply, SK Pharmteco in October said that it would build a peptide drug plant in Sejong, South Korea’s administrative capital, with an investment of $260 million. It is expected to come online in 2026 and generate 200 billion-400 billion won in sales annually, starting in 2027.

The GLP-1 market is projected to more than double to 125.9 trillion won by 2031 versus 58.7 trillion won in 2023, according to market research firm InsightAce Analytic.

SK BIOPHARMA

Meanwhile, SK Biopharmaceuticals Co. is on a roll in the US. It is expected to rise to the top spot in the US epilepsy treatment market in 2025, overtaking Belgium-based UCB’s Briviact.

SK sells a new epilepsy treatment Cenobamate under the brand name Xcopri.

Cenobamate’s US sales stood at 309.4 billion won in the first nine months to September this year, surpassing  270.8 billion won in the same period last year.

Since its venture into the world’s largest pharmaceutical market in 2020, Cenobamate has raked in around 100 billion won in quarterly sales there.

The medication’s annual sales are forecast to exceed $1 billion in the US by 2029, growing faster than that of Briviact, said Kim Seung-min, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities.

According to market tracker FnGuide, SK Biopharm is forecast to post 82 billion won in operating profit this year, snapping its losing streak of the past two years.

Write to Dae-Kyu Ahn and Jeong-Min Nam at powerzanic@hankyung.com
 


Yeonhee Kim edited this article.