CMP Pharma, Inc.

Contracting powerhouse WuXi AppTec expects to hit sales growth between 10% and 15%, or roughly 41.5 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) to 43 billion yuan ($5.9 billion), in 2025. With the fate of the BIOSECURE Act currently in limbo, WuXi AppTec is looking on the brighter side for 2025. Still, geopolitical uncertainties under the second Trump administration loom large over the Chinese contract research and manufacturing giant’s future.After reporting full-year 2024 sales of 39.24 billion Chinese yuan ($5.4 billion) this week, WuXi AppTec said it expects to hit sales growth between 10% and 15%, or roughly 41.5 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) to 43 billion yuan ($5.9 billion), for the coming year.The CRDMO’s total 2024 revenue was down slightly from the 40.34 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) haul the company took home in 2023, WuXi said in a March 17 press release. Nevertheless, sales in the U.S., where the bulk of WuXi’s business is concentrated, grew 7.7% for the entire year.WuXi credited its resilience to its small-molecule unit, WuXi Chemistry, as well as manufacturing expansion efforts across multiple countries.On the production front, WuXi kicked off operations last year at its Taixing active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing site in China and steadily increased capacity at the plant—plus another in the city of Changzhou—throughout 2024.Over the course of the year, WuXi also plugged investments into oral dose production capacity in Switzerland, worked on the build-out of an upcoming manufacturing site in Delaware and started construction on an R&D and production facility in Singapore, which is expected to commence early operations in 2027. WuXi AppTec’s business is heavily focused on the U.S., which accounted for 64% of the contractor’s revenue in 2024, according to a company earnings presentation (PDF). Still, the year proved tumultuous for WuXi following the introduction of the BIOSECURE Act in January.The proposed legislation, which ultimately failed to make the cut in a key defense spending bill late last year, sought to block federal contracts with five China-based life sciences companies—WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, BGI Group, MGI and Complete Genomics—over alleged national security concerns.The bill garnered support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, though many within the biopharma industry—from contract manufacturers to branded pharma majors—were more skeptical.Despite the turbulent atmosphere in 2024, WuXi AppTec said Monday that it continues to grow its customer base and boasted roughly 6,000 active clients by the end of the year. Over the period, revenue from top global pharmaceutical companies reached 16.64 billion yuan ($2.3 billion), signaling 24.1% year-over-year growth after taking commercial COVID sales out of the mix, WuXi said. BIOSECURE’s fate remains uncertain for now, though a flurry of recent actions by the new Trump administration could present another potential hindrance to WuXi’s business moving forward.Notably, President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration said he would install a 10% levy on imports from China, alongside even higher tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico. In the wake of those China tariffs taking effect, the country in February riposted by issuing levies of its own against a range of U.S. trade sectors and placing DNA sequencing bigwig Illumina on a government watchlist.Meanwhile, Trump last month issued a memorandum dubbed the America First Investment Policy that seeks, if put into effect, to bolster national security by restricting inbound and outbound investments tied to “foreign adversaries” in certain strategic industries.China was featured prominently in the memorandum, and both healthcare and biotechnology were singled out as sectors the president aims to regulate.The policy’s implications add yet another layer of uncertainty to the life sciences world, which has been in the doldrums for the past three years, Morgan Lewis partner Laurie Burlingame said in a recent interview with Fierce Pharma about the proposed policy. Still, despite those concerns, more drastic outcomes, such as an outright ban on licensing drugs from China, appear unlikely, according to Burlingame and Stifel analyst Tim Opler. Regardless of what comes in 2025, WuXi AppTec has already had to adjust given the unexpected turn the previous year took.After reports surfaced in early October that WuXi planned to put its cell and gene therapy manufacturing unit, WuXi Advanced Therapies, on the market, the company confirmed the rumors in December, striking a deal to sell the U.S. and U.K. cell and gene therapy unit to New York-based investment firm Altaris for an undisclosed amount.WuXi subsequently sold its U.S. medical device testing business to Ohio-based regulatory consulting firm NAMSA in January.Editor’s note: This story was updated to remove mention of a manufacturing facility sale that was incorrectly attributed to WuXi AppTec.

China CDMO giant WuXi Biologics has sold a vaccine plant in Ireland to Merck & Co. for €500 million ($521 million). With potential passage of the BIOSECURE Act looming and WuXi Biologics seeing its share price and profits decline, the Chinese biopharma contract manufacturing giant is responding with a sizable divestiture.In Ireland, WuXi Biologics has sold a new vaccine plant to Merck & Co. for €500 million ($521 million). The New Jersey company was a natural buyer of the facility as it was the lone client WuXi Biologics served at the site in Dundalk, executing a 20-year contract to produce vaccines worth $150 million annually.Ireland’s Foreign Direct Investment Agency (IDA) and Merck’s MSD Ireland unit revealed the sale on Monday. The companies expect to complete the transaction in the first half of this year. The facility, which currently employs 200, will house an additional 150 workers by the end of this year, according to the IDA.In 2019, WuXi Biologics announced that it was investing €200 million to build the plant, which handles both substance and product manufacturing. The three-story vaccine facility covers 15,520 square meters (167,000 square feet) and becomes Merck’s eighth installation in Ireland, including five manufacturing sites. Merck has another vaccine plant in Carlow, Ireland, but the Dundalk facility will be the only one that can produce live virus vaccines.The BIOSECURE Act, which was passed by a 306-81 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in September, seeks to block a handful of Chinese firms—including WuXi Biologics—from obtaining federal contracts and working with biopharma firms that hold such contracts. WuXi Biologics' plant sale comes after the Financial Times in October reported that the company and WuXi AppTec were weighing certain divestitures amid the BIOSECURE threat.Last month, WuXi AppTec sold the U.S. and U.K. operations of its Advanced Therapies Unit to New York private investment firm Altaris.

WuXi Biologics’ subsidiary WuXi Vaccines is divesting a manufacturing facility in Dundalk, Ireland, to Merck for $500 million, roughly a week after WuXi AppTec also announced it’s shrinking its footprint. WuXi Vaccines expects to close the sale in the first half of the year, the company said in a Monday press release. It will use the cash for share buybacks, WuXi Biologics CEO Chris Chen said in the release. The Dundalk factory was “almost fully booked” with customers for 2025, WuXi Biologics said during its half-year report in August 2024. WuXi Biologics didn’t comment in time for publication. Despite the Biosecure Act losing momentum at the end of 2024 , WuXi Biologics and sister company WuXi AppTec are both rushing to sell their assets. If passed, the Biosecure Act would ban US pharma companies from working with Chinese manufacturers like WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics, who rely heavily on their US customers to generate revenue. On Dec. 26, WuXi AppTec also announced it was selling its cell and gene business , Advanced Therapies, to US private equity firm Altaris for an unknown sum. The cell and gene unit will be rebranded and its HQ will move to the US. WuXi Vaccines originally poured $240 million to build the Dundalk site in November 2019 under a partnership agreement with Merck, WuXi said in the Monday release. The site was operational in 2021 and employed roughly 800 staffers. The factory houses a quality control lab alongside drug product and substance manufacturing. WuXi Vaccines also has a site in Suzhou, China, and is building a new factory in Singapore. The Dundalk facility purchase will expand Merck’s footprint to eight sites in Ireland.