Welcome to the 30th Deutsche Bank deposit receipts virtual investor conference, DBVIC. My name is Zafar Aziz from the DR Investor Relations Advisory Team at Deutsche Bank. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be from HUTCHMED. Before handing over to our presenters, some points to note. Please submit your questions at any time throughout the presentation. Finally, all of today's presentations will be recorded and can be accessed via the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome our speakers from HUTCHMED.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is David Ng. I'm the Head of Investor Relations and Capital Strategies of HUTCHMED. Together with me, we have Matthew Kwong, who is the VP of Finance for HUTCHMED. Again, thank you, DB, for inviting us back again to this forum to present the latest update on HUTCHMED. Before we start, I'll just go over the safe harbor statement. The performance and results of the operation contained in this presentation are historical in nature, and past performance is no guarantee for future results. First, I will pass to Matthew to go over some of our latest financial performance and results from our 2025 financial year results. I will now turn it over to Matthew.
Thanks, David. Thank you everyone for tuning in. I wanted to quickly run through our key 2025 achievements announced last month. First, on top line, we were pleased how the year ended. FRUZAQLA continues to be the main driver, with 26% in market sales growth year-over-year. For China sales, it was nice to see a strong rebound in the second half, with sales up 21% versus first half. On the bottom left, we point out that we have $1.4 billion in liquidity, which gives us a lot of flexibility to explore in-licensing, M&A, and opportunities to accelerate internal R&D. Third, on the right, we are very excited about our ATTC platform, which we'll go into further detail a bit later.
Continuing on to key financial highlights. Our oncology revenue was $286 million. The year-over-year decrease was partly attributable to 2024 revenue having more collaboration related up front and milestone income. On the right, we had a bottom line profit of $457 million, including $416 million gain on the divestment of SHPL, which was a non-core investment. Even excluding this one-time gain, we were profitable. Next is the R&D expenses. R&D expenses were actually down to $148 million. The decrease is mainly because we're just starting ATTC clinical trials, and our R&D levels should be ramping up as those move forward.
I've already talked about our strong cash, just jumping to the next slide, our revenue guidance. We issued a range of $330 million-$450 million, which reflects solid growth from China for FRUZAQLA and also potential new partnerships that we're exploring. Further on to the commercial side. For FRUZAQLA, we've already been through its strong growth. Takeda, our collaboration partner, has launched this product in 38 countries, and we look forward to their continued success or progress. ELUNATE. ELUNATE is a main driver for China revenue. In-market sales was up 33% in second half versus first half, as it benefited from the streamlining and refocusing of our China sales force in the first half. Okay?
On the other products, ORPATHYS and SULANDA, we remain very upbeat. We look forward to SAFFRON readout for ORPATHYS and PDAC phase III is enrolling for SULANDA. Definitely things to keep an eye on. Okay? The next wave of heme products, we'll be covering it a bit more in our pipeline discussion. Turn it over to David.
Thank you, Matthew. I just go over some of these key achievement for our key products in 2025. Again, I forgot to mention this presentation is also available on our homepage, which you can download very easily. If you look at 2025, you know, our Savolitinib, we got the approval for SACHI in China in the middle part of 2025. We also have two very important phase III trials ongoing. One in China called SANOVO, which is for first-line lung cancer. The enrollment has been completed, we have been going on very smoothly. For the global trial called SAFFRON, the enrollment also completed. This is now going through the follow-up phases.
This trial is being run by AstraZeneca overseas. They are targeting second half this year for the readout. Also for Savolitinib, another indication in third line gastric cancer has the NDA accepted in China. Onto our fourth product called sovleplenib. Like, this is another one of our in-house self-developed product. You may remember that we had submitted ITP indication for the China NDA couple of while ago, but we encountered some CMC issue and has to go back. Now we have resubmitted successfully in February this year. But it is not just ITP. We also have another indication called Warm AIHA, which have met the endpoint for its phase III trial. We are targeting to submit the NDA also first half this year.
The most important thing that is going to shape our future is our ATTC platform. We have A251, first patient already enrolled it in the trial last December. Our second drug candidate, called A580, also had kickstarted with the first patient recruited in March this year, 2026. Both are, you know, picking up the pace. I know that the landscape is getting more and more competitive, and I think HUTCHMED definitely are going to embrace the challenge to bring in more innovative drugs at a faster pace down the road. I won't go for every single details, but let me also highlight one very important thing that may hit the news in the next six months-12 months, which is our savolitinib.
This is a drug that we have already commercialized in China, generating sales, but the bigger indication is in second-line lung cancer. For this particular indication, we are running a trial called SAFFRON, as I've mentioned early. The data readout will be second half this year. This is a trial which have the control group. It's a phase III trial that if the data is successful, should lead to a filing to the FDA later this year, which again, if everything goes smoothly, hopefully, will be our second innovative drug to be commercialized globally by our partner, AstraZeneca. In China, we are also doing our own trial in the first-line lung cancer. Now this, as you can imagine, the first-line lung cancer is even a bigger market.
This is a trial called SANOVO. Again, we target MET overexpressed patients in China, which, you know, from our screening progress so far has shown that there is a huge percentage of MET overexpressed patient in the first-line lung cancer space. This one we expect to read out in China late this year or early 2027. Another thing I would like to highlight as we now getting ready to wait for the SAFFRON readout, a lot of people will focus on the overall survival data. We know that this is an increasingly competitive space, but we remain the only one which focus on c-MET overexpressed patient. This is a drug that is going to be used in combination with AstraZeneca Tagrisso.
If you look at our China data, again, like this is a trial, a phase III trial, which has been completed, approved in China last year already. This trial is called SACHI. We can get a little bit taste of what the overall survival may look like when the SAFFRON global trial read out later this year. The overall survival for the treatment group is 22.9 months as compared to the control group, which is just 7.9 months if we exclude patient who had crossover, right? If you look at the very bottom part, the left part of this chart, you can see that, you know, our savol plus Tagrisso group has about 100 patient. For the control arm, we exclude roughly half of those patient which has crossover.
You know, for the remaining patient, it was just 7.9 months. It was a huge improvement with a hazard ratio reduction, hazard ratio of 0.32. One thing to note is that while we do, we did allow crossover in our China trial SACHI, but for the design of the global trial SAFFRON, the one that we expect readout later this year, that one is not supposed to allow crossover. Again, like the overall survival figure that you see here should be quite representative of what you may see with the SAFFRON trial. For sovleplenib, like this is our fourth drug again. You know, this is one drug that we highlight very efficacious data. If you look at our, on the right-hand side of the chart, 48.4 durable response rate.
This is again on patient who had already tried a TPO or TPO-RA drug already and have failed and switched to sovleplenib. They still managed to achieve a 48.4% durable response rate. This is a drug that, you know, we have again resubmitted the application, the NDA application in China, in early this year. Hopefully this will lead to a launch in 2027 if everything goes smoothly. Partly because we got this manufacturing delay, in the last year and a half, our second indication is catching up.
We mentioned that the second indication called Warm AIHA, a little bit in the background, this ITP indication basically is your body self-destroy the blood platelets, whereas the Warm AIHA indication is your body self-destroy for no reason at all the red blood cells which cause anemia. It's a condition that doesn't have any approved drugs globally. You know, we do expect this second indication to submit the NDA in the first half of this year, which if everything goes smoothly, 2027, we may have this product launching in China with two potential indication. For the overseas market, we are also sharing some of this data with potential partners and, you know, we are actively pursuing, you know, partnering strategy for the overseas clinical development.
Stay tuned for this product. Moving on a little bit to the thing that we are most excited about. You know, our company, our scientist has been focusing a lot of attention, resources, and efforts into this new platform called ATTC. For those who have not heard our previous presentation, ATTC basically is a much better version of the ADC modality. We still have the antibody as the targeting beacon to target the tumor cells. Instead of a very toxic chemo toxin payload, we use a small molecule drug payload. Basically, you can call this a chemo-free modality or platform. By using this layer of selectivity to target tumor cells and also to target tumors which may be resistant to ADC.
Another very important concept behind this is, you know, over the last, you know, 40 years , 50 years of development, some were just basically too toxic. Like they do work, but they were just too toxic for the patient, and they basically got progressed. Now with this platform, we may be able to use some of these very toxic small molecule drug, which by itself is not tolerable by the patient. But if you put it onto this conjugated ATTC, it may very well just go directly to the tumor cells and attack the tumor cells very effectively. That's kind of the concept, right? The other thing that I would like to highlight is if this does work, then it may potentially go to frontline application.
If you see some of the approved indication by the ADC program, because by itself is already a chemotoxin, when used in combination, they tend to be combined with other antibodies instead of being combined with chemotherapy. You know, our modality may potentially be, because of its good safety profile, may be potentially be used in combination with chemo drugs down the road. Again, that will push it potentially into first line application in tumor, in cancer indications and a much bigger market potential. Our very first one called A 251, we employ this small molecule which we also in-house develop called PI3K/PIKK inhibitor. Some may be more familiar with the pathway called PAM pathway. Let me maybe just skip to one particular diagram.
If you look at this is so-called the PAM pathway, which has a couple of nodes along the pathway. This is a notorious pathway in two senses. Number one is very prevalent among solid tumors, like between, you know, 30%-50% of the tumors actually have some alter or some mutation in this pathway. The second thing is that this pathway has so many nodes and so many alternative ways, which if you just suppress or inhibit one particular node, the tumor may find an alternative way and keep growing, right. As you can see, our A251 payload hit on five different nodes.
Actually, this AKT node, even though we do not put a check here, is basically downstream from PI3K, which is also supposed to be inhibited if we successfully, you know, stop the PI3K node. By hitting all these nodes, you can immediately imagine that this can be a very potent and maybe sometimes very toxic drug if it is just by itself. Our design is to basically put this payload or conjugate this payload with a HER2 antibody. Now, the HER2 antibody is a very well-established antibody called trastuzumab. We did not go too in too different along that antibody part, but our payload is definitely innovative and never been made into a drug previously globally yet. This is kind of our concept, right?
You know, we hit multiple node, make it as effective as possible, but we mitigate the toxicity by telling the drug to go to just the tumor cells. The other thing that may be a little bit technical here, right? Is also to shows that we don't necessarily need to have this PAM alteration or PAM mutation for the drug to be effective. When we do it in the preclinical study, we look at HER2 positive tumors. As you can imagine, HER2 positive tumors are the breast cancer, gastric cancer, and a couple of other gynecological cancers. Even if these tumors have the normal PAM or the non-alter or the wild type PAM, it seems that our HMPL-A251's still quite effective in inhibiting the tumor growth.
We actually even go as far as looking at some HER2 low express tumor cells. In this case, it does require PAM to be altered to be effective. We are still exploring these different tumor types to see which one will be most responsive with to our A251. I think the ongoing phase I trial will tell us both the safety and the efficacy data from this program. I won't go over some of these, but I think this is a very important slide, again, just to give everyone a sense of our next few years of focus.
Apart from our existing small molecule program, which some of these molecules will start to get into later stage and also commercialize in the next few years, our big add-on is this large molecule platform. For the first three candidate, you know, one, two, three, these are all ATTC. Basically the same concept, large molecule and conjugated with a small molecule drug. We have already disclosed the identity of the first and the second one, being a HER2 conjugate with PI3K and another one EGFR conjugate with a PI3K. The third one we haven't disclosed yet, but we do anticipate that it go into clinical trial second half this year. At that time, we will share with you the payload and the antibody for this one.
Beyond this, we have a lot of candidate in the discovery phase by our very good scientific team. They are not necessarily ATTC. They can be ADC with novel targets. They can be potentially, you know, dual payloads. They can also be bispecific. We are definitely entering a new phase where on top of our good franchise in small molecule drugs, which of course provide good sales and earnings and, you know, balance sheet to our for our operation, but then we are adding on a new universe of potential pipeline of molecules that can drive the medium-term future for our company. What to look for, I think this may be the second last slide.
What to look for in the next 15 months for savolitinib, we talk about these two trials, SAFFRON trial, SANOVO trial. Readout will be like second half this year for SAFFRON, and SANOVO will be, you know, late this year or early next year. sovleplenib, this is a new potential contributor to our sales in China. By the way, our sales team definitely is gearing up for this new franchise. You know, this is our very first hematological self-developed drug to potentially hit the market in China next year. I think the big thing, the thing that really swing the needle is our ATTC program. Already two in clinical trials, and we are also actively pursuing potential partnership to for global development of these molecules.
On the bottom, something, you know, that you probably more very familiar, our good old fruquintinib, still doing very well in terms of sales, but it's going to add a third indication potentially in renal cell carcinoma middle part of this year. That's on top of the colorectal cancer and the endometrial cancer that has already been approved and also included in the insurance program. surufatinib, I think last but not least, this one we have moved into phase III trial for pancreatic cancer. Again, a very tough to treat cancer. We are using this in first line indication in combination with chemotherapy, you know, hopefully the recruitment can be completed towards the end of this year or early next year.
I think the final slide, we just want to highlight a couple of things, right? You know, 2026 and beyond, we have our readout, we have our hematological assets, you know, coming to the market. For innovation, definitely ATTC, but again, just a reminder, it's not just ATTC. We are also looking at other large molecule modality in early stage. Hopefully, we can share more of those information next year and onward. For our commercial, you know, our FRUZAQLA continue to have global expansion. Our China fruquintinib, it has resumed its growth, and that will lend support to our revenue guidance of $330 million-$450 million for 2026.
I think I have a couple of questions on the chat box. Let me just go over some of them. So the first question is how do you expect China commercialization and ex-China partnerships to drive 2026 top line amid competitive pressure? Definitely China is a very competitive market, and I think our drug with superior efficacy is a key differentiator against our competitors. We also have new indication. As I mentioned, for fruquintinib in China, we had this new indication in second line endometrial cancer. We have the insurance program inclusion effective beginning of this year, that would help the sales this year. For middle part of this year and then onward, we're looking forward to have the third indication in renal cell carcinoma.
Just a small point on renal cell carcinoma. The potential treatment duration is roughly five times, at least five times that of colorectal cancer. It has a very long PFS. That should help to sustain the momentum of the sales in China. For ex-China, Takeda doing good work in commercialization all around the world. Japan is doing very well, volume gain. Europe anticipating more reimbursement in different countries. The U.S., right now doing very well in the fourth line indication. We hope to see more penetration in the third line. That's basically our China and ex-China commercialization progress. Next question. Are we looking to in-license additional oncology asset to leverage that platform?
Yes, we have a very strong team. We have about seven plus sales people, very experienced in China. We now selling two asset, fruquintinib and surufatinib. We are looking forward to have our fourth drug sovleplenib to be launched next year. Beyond that, we also have a couple of hematologic assets. We have a third generation PI3K. We have IDH1/2 that is going to come on stream hopefully in the next few years. At the same time, we are definitely open mind that, you know, we have a strong cash balance. We are looking at both different type of assets on the market to complement and to obtain more synergies in our sales efficiency. I may have to go faster with just four minutes left.
What are the biggest regulatory or trial risk to your oncology pipe? Just like everything, right? ATTC is a brand new modality. It attract a lot of attention from potential partners, but it does have to show that it has good safety and efficacy profile in phase I. You know, in the preclinical stage, the data is very impressive. We just need to replicate that in the, in the human trial. It's just the same thing. I think, you know, the trial risk that is applicable to all biotech, especially new modality development, but we are very confident. With SACHI already approved, SAFFRON, SANOVO, regarding savolitinib lung franchise.
AstraZeneca did not really give a specific sales target or guidance at this stage but, you know, just to give you some idea, in the second line lung cancer who is resistant to EGFR therapy, one third of the patients are c-MET high, which is basically our target patients. And that's applicable to both China and overseas. In the first line, the SANOVO trial, we have seen, you know, 30%-50% of the patient expressing overexpression of the c-MET, right? This is again, in terms of like the genetic mutation, that may be a very small percentage, but in terms of the protein overexpression, it's a surprisingly large percentage of patients. It's definitely targeting a very sizable market in lung cancer. Okay.
Stage trial, does that create more room to expand for operating margin to expand meaningfully as Ruseq and the global grow? I think R&D, we do anticipate it start to.
Matthew, it appears David is frozen. Any other question or we can wrap up?
I think we've moved, we're pretty close to time, probably it's a good segue to wrap up.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you everyone for attending. We will revisit all of the questions, and we will try to reach out in due course. Thank you. Thank you very much for your participation