Samsung Biologics announced on the 22nd that it would establish a new holding company, "Samsung Bioepis Holdings," through a simple spin-off partitioning method, completely separating its contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) business from its biosimilar business.
Through this partitioning, the newly established holding company, Samsung Bioepis Holdings, is expected to fully incorporate the biosimilar company Samsung Bioepis as a subsidiary in the future. As a result, Samsung Biologics will become a pure CDMO company.
Previously, Samsung Biologics and Samsung Bioepis were established by partitioning the institutional sector of Samsung Electronics. Samsung Bioepis is a joint venture established in 2012 by Samsung Biologics and Biogen, which initially had Samsung Biologics holding 85% equity and Biogen holding 15%. Later, Samsung Biologics acquired all of Biogen’s equity in 2022, making Samsung Bioepis a 100% owned subsidiary.
This amounts to separating Samsung Bioepis, which had been incorporated as a 100% subsidiary, after about three years. The company noted that this business separation decision aims to alleviate potential concerns from Samsung Biologics' customers and to enhance the corporate value and shareholder value of each corporation. This is intended to fully separate the CDMO business from the biosimilar business.
Samsung Biologics decided on the partitioning to eliminate fundamental risk factors inherent in the mixed businesses of bio CDMO and biosimilars in a rapidly changing international trade environment and increasing external policy uncertainties, such as drug price reductions.
Simply put, there is a perspective from pharmaceutical developers who entrust production to Samsung Biologics that Samsung Biologics is also competing in biosimilar development. The company explained that this decision is also to resolve the concerns of investors who must simultaneously invest in two businesses with different revenue generation methods.
Samsung Biologics and Samsung Bioepis Holdings stated that they plan to solidify their independent decision-making systems through this partitioning and enhance the competitiveness of each business to improve corporate and shareholder value.