Good evening. Good morning everyone. Thank you for dialing today's earnings conference call for WuXi Biologics 2024 Annual Results. My name is Sean Wu. I cover healthcare analysis data at Morgan Stanley. T oday it's my greatest pleasure to host this earnings conference call. Joining this conference call management includes CEO Dr. Chris Chen, the CFO Ming Tu and IR Vice President and Manager Lina Fan. This call will be conducted in English and the call will be followed by a kind of Q & A. Please tap into the left corner box for any questions. We'll take your questions after the earnings presentation. Without further ado, I'm going to pass over to Lina and Chris.
Thank you, Sean. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to the global investors. It's really my great pleasure to share w ith you our 2024 results. As all of you have seen from the earnings release, I think we h ad a great year in 2024. I think the key message actually is that we are poised for accelerated growth in 2025. Can everyone see me moving the slide? Can you see I'm already on slide five? Can you see it?
Yeah, we can see slide five.
Okay, that's perfect. Yeah. I think our global investors are v ery familiar with the slide. I want to use this one slide r eally to showcase WuXi Bio . On the left side typically is the business metrics. On the right side is financial metrics. You know, beginning at the beginning of the year, we have close to 700 projects. At the end of the year our number of projects increased by 17% to 817. This is an unbelievable number of molecules. With these molecules, if tomorrow you have good news on Alzheimer's, on ADCs, o n bispecifics, on rare disease drugs, oncology and auto immune, you know, 40% chance, WuXi Biologics is behind this.
That's how powerful WuXi's platform is. If you exclude the COVID revenue, our revenue growth was actually 13.1%. We added a whopping 151 new projects. Again, considering the biotech funding, recovery of b iotech funding is uneven and considering the noise that we had last year in 2024, I think it's incredible that we a re able to add 151 projects. Our global market share actually increased i n a number of projects. We also see a very significant increase in number of commercial projects go from 16 to 21, excluding the COVID programs. Our backlog is very healthy. It's a very healthy $ 18.5 billion. Our number of employees remains stable. Our productivity is continuing to increase.
We also still have a very high key talent retention rate, o f almost 96%. On the financial side our revenue grow 9.6%. Again if you exclude COVID then we're growing 13%. Our adjusted EBITDA actually had a v ery healthy growth among RMB 7 billion-RMB 8 billion or 14.4% growth. Our adjusted net profit grow also 9%. Our adjusted profit margin, gross profit margin, adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted net profit m argins are all one of the best in the industry that continue to showcase r eally the WuXi Biologics, good execution, good technology platform and the global acceptance from our partners.
Lastly, I think really it's an incredible business model and our adjusted b asic EPS is also very healthy. You know I want to use this slide to open my presentation basically showcase i n the past 11 years we have s een a tremendous growth of the company. I think the past two, past year, past 12 months you've seen, you know, it seems like has stopped the growth. Reality is actually it's all because of COVID comp. If you take out the COVID comp. If you take out the COVID, we actually have still very, very healthy growth. It happened to be the COVID comp. The law of big numbers happening a t the same time for WuXi Bio.
That's why we have already, I think we have already gone beyond the super f ast growth period where our growth CAGR c ould be 50%. In the next couple of years, o ur growth will be very significant, very fast. We still target twice the industry growth but our growth may be more like i n the teens and 20s instead of 40s and 50s. That is simply because of our size. Right? I'm still very excited that our b usiness model continue to work and I t hink the global clients still trust us. I think that's why the results will a lways be given.
Again highlighting last year's result 2024. If you look at overall our revenue growth by 9.6%, because we still have some COVID comp, if you exclude COVID it's 13% growth. It's very fairly healthy. Again on the right side, if you look at the different phases actually it's very exciting. You see our early- phase basically R and early part of the D we see a very exciting growth of 30.7%. That basically means, globally w hen biotech companies or large p harma has a new project for development, the first company they think of hopefully is WuXi Biologics and most likely it's WuXi Biologics.
In the middle phase program in phase I and phase II, we see a m oderate growth of 5.5% and that's the p hase of the Molecule. That determines by itself there's not much we can manage. On the M part, the phase III and the commercial manufacturing, we s ee a modest decline, a slight decline i you take into COVID. Non- COVID program, actually we still see low- single- digit growth. I think for our CMO revenue, it's a matter of timing, right? You know we have, as I said earlier, you know, if you tomorrow, if you see a good news, you know 40% chance, WuXi Biologics is behind them.
Basically our M will be very powerful. It's a matter of time because currently we have 21 manufacturing projects. Most of them are in the early s tage of their product launch. The revenue may not be high. Eventually the revenue will become $50 million, $100 million or even $200 million. For our M, I think that actually will be the most. Our M growth will be very significant starting next year, starting in 2026 and then that will actually be our growth d river for the years to come.
I n another way to look at this, for the past 10 years, our success is mostly because of R&D growth. In the next 10 years R&D w ill continue to be very strong and dominant position. In the meantime our M will deliver a fantastic growth comparing to R&D b ecause our M basis is still very small. Most of our M project are the b eginning of the life cycle instead of the middle or end of the life c ycle for our peers, f or our peer CMOs. If you look at the revenue by g eography, that's how usually we summarize the stuff. We do not manage this per se. I t's a summary of guiding WuXi. Where we should be focusing our energy. Where we should be investing more in resources.
You can see U.S. market, North America market continue to be the largest market for us. It's actually more than 57% last year and it's growing very exciting 32.5% for two reasons. One, U.S. large pharma, US biotech prefer WuXi Biologics. They give us a lot of projects. The other reason is actually in the past couple years there are many, many projects been out licensed from China to North America to U.S. I think, y ou say that convert our China-f ocused asset into a global asset. That basically means, you know, our partners i n the U.S. will run more trials t hat require more batches from WuXi and then more trials are approved and hopefully they w ill demand a lot more commercial manufacturing.
Our R& D revenue for a out-licensed asset, our R& D revenue will increase 2-10x. Our c ommercial manufacturing revenue increase may increase 10-50x . That's the benefit of WuXi Biologics i n all those global out-licensing deals. F or Europe you see a phenomenal, y ou see actually a -16% growth, m ostly because we did a lot o f COVID projects during the past couple years. We have a very high COVID comp. But so everyone know we work with GSK, AstraZeneca, and other European companies on their COVID programs. If you exclude the COVID program and some lumpy R & D revenue, then our Europe is actually low- single- digit revenue growth. It is very healthy.
Europe now actually account for 23% o f the revenue which is significantly higher than the past couple years. China in terms of revenue now is a bout 15% is slightly lower than previous years as I mentioned earlier. If a program in China is licensed to the U.S., then it becomes U.S. revenue. If out-licensed to Europe, it becomes Europe revenue. That's why you see about 9.6% lower revenue in China comparing to year before. That is for two reasons. One is that the out licensure I mentioned. The other one is still relatively weak f unding of biotech in China.
Lastly, rest of the world, mostly Japan and Korea, and Singapore, I think you s ee a very small pace of about 4-5% % revenue. but it is growing very healthy, almost 20%. As I said earlier, this is a result from our out-licensing effort. We do not manage them. This will guide how we will invest in BD resource in serving global customers. I think my final slide is the most exciting slide. I think you guys have been seeing this many, many times since IPO. I always tell investors, you know, for WuXi, this is the only thing you need to pay attention to. If this funnel is healthy, everything e lse is a consequence of the funnel.
I highlight four numbers. One is 151 projects added, record high and higher market share. Then 21 non-COVID commercial manufacturing programs. That is very exciting growth. Again, 31% growth in overall commercial manufacturing projects. An overall portfolio of 817 projects. And then, 66 phase III programs. The phase III program, you know, at some point, you know, in the year or two years after initiating phase III , they will do a PPQ and then once the clinical trial turned out to be positive and then they would start the commercial launch.
So 66 phase III programs. That probably translates into about 40 eventually commercial programs. That basically means in the next 3-5 years our commercial program will go from 21 to 60 to about 60. That's actually the exciting growth. That's why I said the commercial manufacturing will drive our next couple of y ears will drive significant growth for WuXi Biologics in the next couple of years. In the past 10 years is a deep part. It's like snowballing. Go from one project to 800 projects and in the next couple years is the M part g o from one project to 21 projects.
This year eventually 66 programs in the next, m ore than 60 programs in the next couple years and eventually beyond. I think that's the beauty of WuXi Biologics business model. I think this slide really, I think. We added 151 projects, record high again if you look at it before COVID o n average we added about 60 projects a year. During COVID we captured most of the COVID opportunity. It doubles to almost 120. Last year with all those challenges we still achieved rapid high number of projects. That basically means global clients really costing us. We have a fairly sticky relationship w ith the global clients.
Among the new projects signed, there's you k now, a lot of them are Follow-t he-M olecule, but they're also s ome of them are Win-the- Molecule, which is highlighted in the chart below. We started the Win-the- Molecule project back in 2018. At that time we signed one late phase program, phase III and commercial, and overall nine early phase programs overall 10. In the last year when Biosecure broke out, w hat I worry most is actually this part of the business. You know when our peers could not deliver, when our peers could not deliver, w hen clients look for other CMOs, other CDMOs, do they choose WuXi when Biosecure happens?
I think this is the part I worry that we will not be a ble to be as successful as we w ant them to be. The results actually tells totally different story. We actually won the record high number o f projects again in the past couple of years. On average, let's say about 15, you know, 11 to a round 15. We actually won 20 projects. We won 20% more projects than average o ver the past 4-5 years. Among the 20 projects, actually 13 of them, the highest percentage, they face y ou know, almost 2/3 of the 20 projects we won actually are phase III and commercial. That basically means in the companies globally s till trust WuXi to deliver long term for them, despite all those challenges we are facing.
I think this is, I think in a way this is a multi-segment slide because the number of new projects a re added means we have more higher market share, more acceptance from global community. The Win-the-M olecule program is still very, very strong, very, very strong. Those give us the confidence that t he company will grow faster i n 2025 than 2024 and hopefully faster 2026 than 2025. That is why my title of my slide is Poised for Accelerated Growth.
Backlog is something that I use, y ou know, when we IPO'd, I want t o give investors assurance the business will g row significantly year- over- year. We created this backlog, but now o ur business actually changes significantly, b acklog may not be able to capture the real potential of the business. Let me use R & D as an example. If we sign, if I engage with a company for R today and in three months we sign a deal for let's say for $900 million total payment and $20 million upfront, this will not be captured in the backlog at all because in January 1 it did not happen. By December 31 it is already revenue. This is R.
For D is very similar. If I sign a D project in January, by October we created all the revenue. Let's say we sign, let's say we sign 10 projects in January on a verage value of $6 million. By October all the $60 million already converted revenue. Both R & D now actually are now not in the backlog because our conversion time is so fast. So a portion of our R & D are not in the backlog. That's why backlog does not reflect our full potential anymore. That's why I always said the. Backlog only reflect a fraction of our portfolio revenue. This will still give you a hint of how reliable, how predictable, how foreseeable you can see our revenue growth.
We announced a couple of months a go that we are selling the facility from Ireland on the vaccine project to MSD. Because of that we are adjusting our backlog by almost about $3 billion. Adjust that out w e still have a very healthy backlog, about $18.5 billion. On the three- year backlog, you're clear that in the next three years we actually still need to do the adjustment as well. For the past two years someone take u p to $300 million off. For 2022, the backlog, excluding the v accine, the backlog is $3.6 billion. F or 2023, it's about $3.85 billion and then, f or 2024 it's $3.76 billion.
You still see our three- year backlog actually with moderate growth. That gives us the confidence again t hat our revenue will grow. We're poised for accelerated growth. If you look at portfolio and this is probably represent about 40% global portfolio already and it's very significant and you can see, you know which industry or which modality represents the best opportunity. You can see a bispecific and multispecific growing 32%. We now actually have 151 projects that are multispecific. And we have almost 194 projects with a 35.7% growth on ADCs.
Bispecific ADCs are our industry's future. Where WuXi Biologics and WuXi XDC have a very high market share on those. W e are recognized by our industry that the tougher the molecule, the better chance that WuXi can help them solve the problem, the higher accept, the higher winning rate from WuXi. I think both multispecific and ADCs are very exciting for our industry in the near future. For bispecific, we actually now have commercial programs. We have a couple of commercial programs i n, and we have program in phase III and program in phase II, phase I. We have a higher market share of bispecifics than the overall market share.
Another thing of note is actually our 313 first-in-class program. 313- first- in- class program and that's very exciting overall if you look at WuXi Bio, we are enabling so much innovation into our industry and we will benefit from that. That's what I said tomorrow when you read the good news about exciting new program being successful, 40% chance WuXi is behind the scene supporting the program. Be it autoimmune program, be it oncology program, be it a rare disease, be i t is Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and be it another immunologic program. With that I'll hand over to Ming t o talk about our financials for 2024.
Okay, thank you Chris. Now I'm going to talk about our financial performances. Slide 14 gives us the highlights of our financial metrics for the fiscal year 2024. First, revenue. As Chris mentioned, despite the geopolitical headwind, the post- COVID industry slowdown and also uneven biotech funding recoveries across the globe, our revenue continues to grow at a solid pace. As you can see, our revenue exceeded RMB 18.6 billion last year. 9.6% increase within striking distance of a double- digit growth.
Excluding the RMB 0.5 billion of the COVID revenue in the baseline of 2023, our non- COVID revenue grew over 13%, c ontinuing our journey of solid growth over the past five years, and improved our resilience under such a tough macro environment. Our revenue growth last year was primarily driven by the following factors. First is the successful execution of our Follow and Win Molecule strategies as more and more projects advancing through our funnel towards the later stages.
Now excluding the COVID projects, we have 66 in phase III and 21 non-COVID projects in commercial manufacturing phase. Win-the- Molecule strategy also added 20 projects to our portfolio with 13 in late phase. Excluding COVID impact, o verall late phase and commercial manufacturing revenue grew close to 4% and represented over 40% our total portfolio during this reporting period. That's why Dr. Chen had mentioned earlier that our success for the next 10 years will be driven by our success in commercial manufacturing.
On the development side, the improved biotech funding environment in some parts of the world together with our share gain in the pre- IND space created significant revenue growth year-over-year at a rate over 30%. If you recall, in our first half earnings release we talked about how biotech funding constraints in the first half of 2023 created some headwind for our revenue conversion in the first half of 2024. We saw a significant rebound in the pre-IND revenue in the second half of last year thanks to the 151 new projects we scored last year following a record 77 projects in the fourth quarter of 2023.
We had a 30% sequential revenue growth in the pre-IND space from the first half to the second half last year. At the same time, our early phase revenue still grew at a steady 5.5% year- over- year, all enabled by our competitive strength in the development of our unique CRDMO business model. In R, our discovery services, w e have also seen significant growth in the second half of last year. You might recall that during our first half earning release we talked about the difficult comparisons year- over- year due to the timing of the MAGA licensing deals under our discovery services.
As we promised, we had a full pipeline of discovery services deals that yielded fruition in the second half of last year thanks to our strong innovative technology platforms on CD3, CD19, bispecific, multispecifics, and ADC. Altogether we announced seven Molecule licensing deals with about $140 million of the upfront payments. Half of the revenues were recognized in 2024 and the other half will be recognized throughout 2025 with potentially $2.3 billion of the milestone and royalty incomes in the future years to come. Also, the new exciting growth platform such as ADC, bispecifics contributed significantly to our overall revenue increase during the reporting period.
Lastly, with our capacity expansion globally, we had Dundalk, Ireland, Leverkusen, Germany, and Cranbury, New Jersey contributing over $100 million of the incremental revenue to our commercial and the clinical manufacturing sector. Now moving over to gross profit which increased about RMB 900 million to approximately RMB 7.7 billion last year. The 12.1% increase in gross profit also gave us a 90 basis point margin expansion year- over- year.
The margin improvement was primarily attributed to the following factors. First, the solid growth from our research sector which gave us a positive mix impact. We reported that we inked seven licensing deals in the second half of last year with upfront payments of RMB 140 million and half of them have been recognized as revenue i n 2024. The margin associated with these upfront payments were close to 90% as the related R&D costs have been extensive during the past years. The margin rate for development sector remained stable while profitability from late- phase and manufacturing sector continues to meet or exceed our expectations.
Plant utilization rate in China remained stable compared to that in 2023 post- COVID. Globally we're still in the ramp- up phase at our new facilities in Ireland, Germany, and the U.S. The overall financial impact from a facility ramp up has been reduced compared to that in the prior year. The efficiency improvements from WBS, our lean manufacturing implementation, also gave us one point of the margin lift. Excluding share based compensation, o ur adjusted gross profit margin stands at 45.4%, a 10- basis- points improvement year- over- year and still one of the leading positions in the industry.
Adjusted EBITDA, which is a proxy of our operating cash generation capability, increased about 14.4% to just about RMB 8 billion during the reporting period. The adjusted EBITDA margin rate increased 170 basis points to 42.8%, which is also one of the highest in the CDMO industry. Adjusted net profit is the IFRS- based net profit excluding the impact of foreign exchange gain and loss, share based compensation, fair value gain and loss from our investment portfolios, and also XDC's IPO- related one- time listing expenses.
This is a proxy for our business profitability and the continuous operation as you can see that as adjusted net profit reached RMB 5.4 billion last year, 9 percentage points increase. The growth in adjusted net profit was slightly less impressive than the growth in adjusted gross profit that was largely due to the SG&A increases. As we continue to build the stand alone capabilities for WuXi XDC which is now a publicly listed company and also continue to invest in our global footprint in business development for our future growth.
Next page please, page 15 here give us key profitability metrics you can see that IFRS- based net profit, net profit attributable to owners of the company, earnings per share, and also adjusted earnings per share. You can see that our net profit has grown at a CAGR of 31.3% between 2019 and 2024 and approached RMB 4 billion last year. The 10.5% growth is largely driven by the 12% of IFRS gross margin increase year- over- year, partially offset by the RMB 300 million of the increases in SG&A expenses as we continue to invest in our global footprint and building XDC's standalone capabilities, a s we talked earlier.
N et profit attributable to owners of the company was flattish at about 1.3% negative growth year- over- year compared to the IFRS- based net profit. The 10 points of the negative impact was largely driven by the minority interest pickup as XDC just completed its first full- year operation as a public company. V ersus in 2023, t his dilution impact from IPO was less than two months, and also XDC's net profit increased a whopping 277% in the reporting period. The minority interest exclusion between consolidated net profit and net profit attributable to the owners of the company amounted to over RMB 580 million.
Basic earnings per share moved in tandem with the IFRS net profit attributable to the owners of the company stayed flat at $0.82 per share. If we exclude share-based compensation, investment gain and loss, foreign exchange translation impact, our adjusted EPS was about $1.17 per share, a 3.5% increase over that in 2023. Again, the most important metric here is the adjusted EPS as it strips out the one- time non- cash impacts and it is a better profitability indicator of our continuing operation. Next page please.
Slide 16 gives us more insights into our gross profit and the cost of sales. Last year, our gross profit margin was about 41%, a 90- basis0 points improvement over that in 2023. Excluding share- based compensation, our adjusted gross margin was about 45.4%, a 10- basis- points expansion year- over- year. Compared to earlier years of 2022, o ur GP margin had roughly 3-5 percentage points of compression last year largely due to the ramp up impact from our new manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Europe.
As we disclosed in the past, the fed-batch and the perfusion facilities in Dundalk, Ireland, the drug product facilities at Leverkusen, Germany, and also the clinical manufacturing facilities at Cranbury, New Jersey, were in various stages of ramping up. In the ramp-up phase, we usually have the step changes in manufacturing costs such as labor and overhead taken together at once, but the revenue increases are usually linear. Hence most of our biologics facilities will incur a loss at the initial startup stage and turn in a profit as the utilization gradually improves towards the steady state.
In 2024 these new facility ramp-ups created about 3 percentage points of the GP margin compression compared to our normal. The good news here is that the negative impact from ramp-up was smaller in 2024 as the new sites improved their operations and utilization and also WBS, o ur lean manufacturing and productivity improvements also provided partial offset. You can see the composition of the cost components in the stat bar below, which is roughly 18.7% in labor costs, 19.5% in material, and 20.8% in overhead, which includes maintenance, utility, and depreciation of the manufacturing facilities.
The higher overhead costs were primarily driven by the new facility coming online as we expanded our global capacity from 150,000 L at the beginning of 2023 to over 300,000 L at the end of last year. The new capacities brought on more depreciation, utilities, maintenance and also other fixed overheads. The labor components were smaller last year than the previous years, largely driven by our productivity improvement and also because the higher R and M, the mix in our portfolio. Next page please.
Page 17 is about liquidity. At WuXi Biologics h ere, we have a strong balance sheet and solid cash position. At the end of last year we have about RMB 10.7 billion cash sufficient funds to support our rapid global expansion. As a result of our long- term conservative funding strategies we only have about RMB 2.6 billion of debt, 30% of which are working capital facilities and our gearing ratio which is defined as the interest bearing debt over the equity is merely 5.8%. At the same time we have close to RMB 6 billion of the bank credit facilities to tap into if we need to.
Our debt level increased about RMB 300 million last year was largely for the onshore- offshore funding balancing to take advantage of the lower borrowing costs in China while keeping enough dry powders for our global expansions in Singapore and the U.S. Our CapEx spending last year was about RMB 3.9 billion, mainly for our capacity expansion in Singapore for both Biologics and XDC and also XDC's MFG and the DP capacities enhancement in China.
Our CapEx is much lower than the RMB 8 billion adjusted EBITDA number we generated last year, so adjusting for working capital occupation, our tax payment and also free cash flow in 2024 was about RMB 1.3+ billion . This is our third year in a row delivering positive free cash flow, but this time in a much more meaningful way.
For 2025, because of the continuation of the Singapore expansion by both WuXi Biologics and XDC and also the investment in Worcester, Massachusetts, our CapEx will be about RMB 6 billion, but our goal here is to continue to deliver positive free cash flow in a measurable way for the years to come. Now I'm going to pass the baton back to Chris to share more insights into our business operations.
Yeah, I want to give to the global investors and R&D a quick update. O n our part, really, t his is using our proprietary platform to h elp global community developing novel drugs. What I want to highlight here is actually mostly the bispecific platform, the anti-CD3 and the CD19 bispecifics, and this is a collaboration. This is a collaboration we had with a biotech company called Curon, and Curon was acquired by Merck. A nd then GSK had a full- program deal with us. We helped them develop best- in- class bispecifics and then later most recently Medigene, we worked with the best TCR company t o develop bispecifics for TCRs.
I think those, all of those showcase really a strong, very strong platform that WuXi Biologics developed. Just to share with you that we s tarted to plan the bispecific platform back in 2014. Our CD3 platform, our WuXiBody platform. As of now, now we actually h ave more than 50 programs and that incidentally our IP was shared with the global companies and then as a result we received upfront payment, milestone payment, and royalties. I think we highlighted already that Ming highlighted already that we have last year w e have signed seven global programs with about $140 million near- term payment and actually more than $2.3 billion of potential milestone payment.
I think that's a very unique aspect o f WuXi Biologics business model. I think this R will help global b iotech companies, pharma companies develop better products. And enventually, R will lead to D, D to M. We start to engage with clients 5-10 years e arlier than most of our peers. I f you look at detailed breakdown of the 50 programs, some of them are already on the market. Mostly the PD-1 and PD-L1 from China, w e are eligible to receive low- single d igit royalties. I n the program i n phase III, f or example PDX PD-1, w e actually receive up to 10% royalties on product sales.
PD-1 is not, you know, PD-1 is, you know, PD-1 probably number seven, n umber eight in the U.S. but P1 franchise, still very valuable. We may receive very meaningful royalties from Arcus and Gilead. For example, in phase II, t he program with Duality and in phase I program with Curon , the GSK programs. I want to highlight the Curon- Merck program. Actually we are able to receive royalty up to 10% of product sales. This is very significant, right? If you think this is a $5 billion drug, Merck will pay us up t o $500 million a year. If it's a $10 billion drug. Merck then will pay us a $1 billion royalty. I think this is the beauty of o ur IP.
And a billion dollar royalty is actually almost, is even higher than the total profit from the company, entire company this year. That's the beauty of the program. Among the 50+ programs, actually m ore than almost half of them, a ctually, sponsored by the global client. Some of them large pharma companies like GSK, Merck, some of them are, you k now, Gilead, some of them are biotech companies I think. Those have really a big potential for us.
I think this gives us the confidence, you know, we will receive higher and h igher revenue on milestone- payment royalties and will actually help improve our gross margin from the current 45% range to more like close to 50% range. It may be even beyond 50%, that make our profitability probably the best i n the industry, if not one of the best in the industry, if not the best. T hat's the progress on the R side.
On the D side I mentioned, w e actually we do everything ourselves, try to improve ourselves to make sure we offer a very competitive timeline. Before we get into this industry, t he average timeline from DNA to IND, i f you look at the bottom left chart. B efore we get into this industry, a verage DNA to IND timeline is 24 months. It is 24 months. Every year we push ourselves to s ay how can we do better, how can we do better? Now last year the average is nine months. If our partners are willing to pay a premium, they pay us $1 million or $2 million more, w e can actually cut the nine months to six months.
If you are a biotech company for a nine- month timeline versus the industry a verage of 12 months or 15 months. That saves them a lot of money. That's why this formed a very sticky relationship between WuXi Biologics and biotech companies because we help them deliver the next milestone much faster than the global peers. I think this is also one of the reasons I mentioned that a significant part of our DP contract is not in the backlog. Because again back in the old days, if we sign the project program for $6 million, it takes us two years to deliver. Let's just do an even distribution then $3 million will be in the backlog by end of this year.
Now we signed a $6 million c ontract in January of this year and by October it's already all gone, it's already all revenue. That's why our backlog actually now d oes not capture a significant chunk of the revenue. I think this is, you know, we actually help, we continue to improve ourselves t o make sure that we, you know, w e save every week of clients' time. In the meantime we have 100% delivery, very high, very strong technology, the fastest speed, almost 100% delivery.
And together with the technology, that formed the basis of the stickiness between WuXi Biologics and the global community. That's why our market share actually increased in the tough time of 2024. As every one of you seen, i n the global community, biotech get acquired by large pharma. Recently, Chinese assets now are licensed global. Both of them actually benefitting WuXi. This is our analysis o n average once the programs get acquired or licensed, we actually get $30 m illion more revenue from each program. $30 million or more revenue.
Once the program get acquired e ither by MNCs or biotech, they actually kept all the program out of WuXi. We are able to keep all the program. The benefit is actually, you know, f rom a small biotech investment program to a multinational, the R&D revenue will increase, the commercial manufacturing revenue will increase from a China asset to a global asset the same way. As the global community has more and m ore M&As, this is actually music t o our ears, because as there are more M& A, more and more auto licensure, all of those are good news for WuXi Biologics.
Let me give the example of in t he past two years China outlicensed assets global. We actually are behind 70% of the d eals when there is a CMO involved. That is really a strong tailwind for us for the next couple years as well. Now let's move on to the t ax record for R&D. TSo overall now we have already finished more than 600 INDs. It's unbelievable number. Last year alone we delivered 124 INDs. Again at 100% success rate. If clients sign the contract with u s, we assure them it will be delivered, it will deliver by the deadline, will deliver on budget and it will deliver with 100% success rate. That is how powerful our track record is now.
Our capacity is 150 INDs and 12 BLAs per year. That's also unbelievable number. As a result now we're building a global network of R, D, and Ms to help the global community. I think this is also a very g ood way to mitigate the geopolitical risk. Now let me give you a v ery high level update of our global site. Everyone is watching how we do in Ireland. Once Ireland is successful, we can replicate t he success in Germany, in the U.S., and in Singapore. I want to share with you we are doing very well in Ireland now. Ireland facility I mentioned we built it during COVID is one of the f astest facility built and also one of t he fastest to get HPRA basically local regulatory approval.
Now we actually finished already finishing two t ypical campaigns last year and with 100% success rate. We're doing commercial batches right now. I think Ireland, we also proven in Ireland we can do a 16,000 L scale and at a cost comparable to stainless steel. I think that's very, very important to us. Worcester we paused the facility for about a year. We want to redesign the facility to increase more capacity. Previously it was more about 20,000 capacity. Now we're changing to 36,000 liters. We increase the capacity by about 80%.
In the meantime we also designed to b e the most advanced facility in this community. We put a lot of automation, put a lot of digital efforts into this. Really this will be a lighthouse p roject for WuXi Biologics. It will also be one of the best biologics manufacturing facilities in the global community. Moving on to Singapore, we are, you know, WuXi Biologics is continuing to finish the design and build our facility. WuXi XDC is actually, you know, started the piling of the facility last March. The facility now is almost weathertight.
By end of this year will run i n about essentially in less than two years we are able to build a GMP facility and get it run. That's an unbelievable speed. That's why we put most of our future effort in Singapore. Because we believe in Singapore we can h ave a global site to mitigate geopolitical risk. In the meantime, have close to China's track record in quality, in execution, and in delivery.
Now let's move on to M. You know one of the part for t he program in phase III, you start a phase III trial, and if the program looks promising, you start a PPQ. You file the PPQ through the ACE to FDA, and if FDA approves you can start sales at once. PPQ is actually our most leading indicator of our CMO revenue growth. That's why I will share with you h ow many PPQs we are doing right now is actually, you know. S o this year, even based on the contract signed today, is actually record high already. Most likely we'll sign a couple m ore later this year. That will make 2025 the highest number of PPQs.
And PPQ is also very, very technically challenging. You probably hear quite a few companies tell CMOs fail to deliver PPQ for certain projects. At WuXi Biologics so far we o nly failed one out of more than 50 projects we delivered in the past couple years. Our PPQ success rate of 98% is almost like our IND 100% success rate. Both our early- phase IND success r ate and late- phase PPQ success rate are the best in the industry. That's why clients still trust us. That's the stickiness we build between WuXi Biologics and global communities.
Besides the PPQ execution quality absolute requirement, absolutely critical, right? When companies like CMO, the number one they are looking for is track record. What I mentioned is before the 98% s uccess. N umber two is quality. Number three, public price. You know, so track record and a uality are more important than pricing. I think, you know, we deliver the best track record in PPQ delivery. We also now have the best track r ecord in BLA approval in the past couple years. Every year you probably hear one or two companies, you know, they get a letter from FDA called CRL. Basically FDA said I cannot approve you because your facility has an issue.
You heard that a few times in the past couple years. So far, you know, we hear B iologics 100% success on our interaction with the FDA. E very BLA we file get approved in the past. Now that's some of the best results in our industry. I think last year we actually have a very, even more exciting news to share. A large pharma's commercial manufacturing program filed t o EU for approval. EU because they had an inspection of WuXi back in March, t hey inspected 10 products and every one of them was successful. EU was so happy that they waived the inspection for this large pharma. As a result, we're saving this client millions of dollars and also 6-9 months of time f or BLA for product approval.
This is so how we can help our peers, help our clients. One of the main effort we are also embarking right now is actually making ourselves ready for the future. We are doing a digital solution to accelerate everything we do from the way. W e interact with the client. We are designing a DaVinci client portal. In the future our client just log into the DaVinci, they can get everything they need, the bill, the data, you know, the progress of every project. They don't need to contact our PM for any information. We are also putting all the data in one system. It's called B ioF oundry. T his way again this is our i nternally help our science be more efficient.
In manufacturing we're going paperless. We're also using advanced planning to e nsure that we can take advantage of e very slot in manufacturing to make us more nimble. I think in two or three years, when all those are done, we are actually much more efficient than where we are now today. In my first slide, I mentioned our headcount remain very flat but revenue grow almost double- digit growth means our p er- person productivity improved 10%. I think that on average we have been doing that for the past five years. On average every year our per- person productivity improved by 10% and in the future this will be enabled by this digital solution.
We may even be able to be more efficient than what we are in the past couple of years. Every year when I share with investors I also want to highlight really t he technology platform because that's one of t he differentiating factor of WuXi Biologics and major for complex modality for ADCs for bispecifics. Global communities like us because we have innovative technology, we can help them troubleshoot the problem. We are more technical than some of our peers.
I think I already highlighted the CD3 bispecific platform but that's only one of them. We have the gamma delta T-cell engager. We have NK engager, we have macrophage engager. We have a lot more platforms. We're building now for our industry's future needs. Again, go back to CD3 platform. We start to build that in 2014 and in 2018 we have a value. In the past couple of years, w e have multiple clinical programs. A nd then l ast year, it was close working as one of the best. That is why GSK is coming in four programs, other large pharma covered programs, and Merck acquired one of those assets for almost $1.3 billion of cash in two tranches.
That's bispecific. I think as I mentioned ADC is also a very exciting part. Now we are also enabling a c lient who's cutting-edge conjugation and also payload linker technologies. I think again, I think we always want to anticipate what technology our industry may need in five years. I think we started working on bispecific ADCs back in 2014, 2015. Now we are working secretly on some of the technologies our industry may need in the next five years. I think that always makes us always a head of the game in terms of industry and t echnology needs, thus make us well prepared to serve our global community.
I think as I have talked about this many, many times, you know, when we, when WuXi Biologics started, we fed on single- use technology to be the mainstream. N ow 10 years later, it's already a fact. I think we believe, you know, we have already in the early days, most people believe single- use can only do small batches. We said why not, why not multipack them? You know, why don't we combine two, three, four, five, six of them together. As a result, you know, in t he past couple of years we have already made 300 batches using this approach in five manufacturing facilities in China and Ireland, we are able to do 97% success rate overall and 99% success rate in the past three years.
We have already proven single- use t echnology is the best, is almost the b est of technology in manufacturing. It gives you all the flexibility you need, is low on CapEx, it's faster delivery, and is also actually environmentally more friendly, more ESG friendly. We demonstrate over and over again s ingle- use can offer the same cost- of- goods at large scale both in China and in Ireland. When I mentioned Ireland, we can do a 16,000 L scale comparable to someone else's 15,000 L of scale, same scale time i n terms of cost.
I think WBS and ESG are key components of our business strategy. I want to share with you that, as Ming already mentioned, the WuXi Business System. This is something we're learning from Toyota, the Danaher, on how do we improve business. Basically, every employee, how do we identify waste in the system? How do they improve on themselves, improve the business process, improve the technical aspect of the project. As a result, we have already achieved a bout a one- point improvement in gross margin. Last year we did more than 260 Kaizen projects. Kaizen means improvement.
That is why I said the WuXi Biologics culture now is a continuous improvement. From a bench scientist to a VP to the CEO. Every year we're driving for improvement. We want to come in enough time to make sure that everything we do i s better this year than last year and t he year before. I think we also want to be our green CDMO f rom the R, D, and M. As I mentioned, the technology we u se the disposable platform and coupled with our processing technologies can actually reduce o ur carbon footprint by up to 80%. This is not only a web- based technology, it's actually also ESG- friendly technology.
As a result we won so m any awards from ESG community on Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, MSCI AAA, EcoVadis, you name it. I want to summarize, you know, I think you know for WuXi Biologics I think the best thing we have is our business model. R will lead to D, D will lead to M. R improve our profitability as we receive more and more milestone payment and eventually royalties. D is our strongest segment, really generating a very strong cash f low and also a very high profit margin. You know, give us a couple of years, our M will be as strong as anyone in this community.
Looking back to 2024 we believe t his is a, 2024 is a post- COVID normalization and crediting year for us. Despite that we still achieve, you know, a 13.1% growth in non-COVID revenue. Gross profit increased 9%. EBITDA increase of 14.4%, r ight? Our R&D revenue actually had 30% growth last year. Looking forward to 2025 we'll see a ccelerated growth and also improved profitability. In R, 50+ programs that we're collecting milestone payment. The D part, y ou know, we continue to make our timeline more competitive, continue to win more market share, continue to have Win-the- Molecule programs.
In the M part, we have more PPQ s than ever in our company history. We also have several mega-blockbuster projects that will initiate. When we look at our portfolio, w e actually now see 10 programs potentially with $5 billion sales. The five programs certainly will be $10 billion sales. When those M manufacturing hit, o ur manufacturing will be as big as some of our peers. As the company continues to embark in WBS and digital, that will drive increased efficiency of the company.
Overall, I want to guide our 2025 revenue growth will be in the range of 12-15%. We actually facing some uncertainties of the geopolitical environment. If you look at the continuous operation, basically excluding revenue from vaccine in Ireland. We actually will expect a 17-20% growth. This is one of the fastest growth of the CDMO space. As I mentioned earlier, we're doing everything w e can also try to improve profitability in 2025. With that I want to thank e veryone for investing in WuXi Biologics. I think you will be very, very excited following us in the next couple of years.
Thank you Chris. Thank you Ming for this very comprehensive presentation and congratulations on another year on a very good achievement in face of all those pressures. Now we will start the Q& A session so let me ask a couple of questions, the ones that actually I have got off an email. The other ones will be mentioned in Q& A.
I guess people would say clearly there's some kind of impact from Biosecure Act in last year. What's the overall kind of impact? If you can tell us or that h ow much fast if something we can grow in last year and also this year of course people were expecting kind of low interest rate, but given the situation in the U.S. the rates are not going down. So the biotech funding still appears to be difficult. How to expect the funding environment in the U.S.? Would it affect our operations and our guidance still quite bullish and clearly, you know, acceleration of growth season we are underway? Those two questions.
I think, you know, it's very, if you ask us to estimate what's the impact of Biosecure Act to us in terms of revenue last year versus this year, I think you know last year we g rew 9.6% even there's no Biosecure, probably grow more than 10%. There may be 1% differences last year and this year, probably only 2%. Instead of 12%-15%, if there were no Biosecure, maybe this year will grow 14%-17%. It is still, in terms of the extent, still manageable in terms of Biosecure. We hope Biosecure will be a past tense and we are moving on in terms of serving the global community.
In terms of funding environment, r ight. If you look at the WuXi Bio, I always mention I'm actually very proud. We are the last to feel the pain. We are the first train in victory. The biotech funding really only impacted us in first half of 2023. W e only h ave about 40 projects versus a typical 60 projects. I think that translates into revenue challenge i n first half of 2024.
Now I think we already moved beyond that. I think global community, I already noticed this from global community. Whenever they have money, the first company they sync up for is WuXi Biologics and that's why even with uneven biotech funding recovery, we have seen the highest number of new projects and seen h igher winning rate from our global community. Thank you, Sean.
Thank you very much to you, Chris. Maybe we can take your next question. We'll have questions for the next minutes.
Okay, the next question comes from Huang Benchen at CMBI. The question is, did we book additional milestone payments in the first quarter of 2025 so far? How do you expect the total milestone payments can reach in 2020 in this year? This is the first question.
Yeah, as everyone expects, milestone payment is very hard to estimate based on, based o n, you know, the program moving to the next phase, next stage. Because now we have so many programs, we think we have a range. I think basically, you know, I think this year our milestone payment expected to maybe between $40 million-$80 million. I think combined with upfront a ctually it's a very meaningful part of business and then make our profitability, i mprove our profitability because of the milestone and upfront payments.
Okay, thank you, Chris. The second question is l ast year's CapEx is actually lower than the previous guidance. Is there any reason behind and does the increase in 2025 CapEx contain any delayed payment from last year?
Yeah, I think mostly because we are r edesigning the U.S. facility. We could have spent, we could h ave spent about $100 million last year i n the US in Worcester, but we delay that for this year and that's why this year you see a higher number. Last year you see a lower number. If you even now, then every year is about RMB 5 billion, r ight? I think that difference is mostly because we delay the US facility to m ake it more competitive in the global community. We'll make it more highly automated. We're making it bigger and we'll make it more like a model facility or a tower facility in the global community.
Okay, thank you. The next question comes from UBS's Chen Chen. In last year, pre- IND revenue growth outperformed post- IND. Do you expect pre- IND to decelerate and post- IND to accelerate in this year? In post- IND, do you expect the phase III and commercial projects to outperform the early- stage phase I Iast year?
Thanks, Chen. I think because last year the R&D growth, R&D growth was already so significant, r ight. It's a very high base. I think I don't expect them t o grow that fast this year. We hope to see continued growth in the R and D part and then I think the M part will certainly see meaningful growth. That is why we are bullish on this year. We can expect to see a 12-15% growth. If you look at a normal continuous operation, actually 17-20% growth. Because we expect R, D, and M all growth, R, D, and M, and XDC. Right, i f you look at the four big c omponents of WuXi Biologics business, a ll of them are growing.
Okay, the next question from Chen Chen is what's your current market share in global biologics MO in terms of D and M and how do you expect the share to become three years from now?
Yeah, I think our D market shares is already more than 50%. I think it will be, you know, we'll be very happy if we can keep it this way. I think it's very hard to gain more market share. That's why the D will probably grow with the industry. We expect our M to grow faster than the industry. That's why we think we said overall we can be twice the industry growth. Our M market shares is hard to e stimate, but I think it'll probably be less than 10% or around 10% but hopefully we'll go from 10% to 20% to 30% eventually to 40%.
Okay, thank you. The next question comes from Chris Chang from Goldman Sachs' analyst team. The questions are about the margin improvement. First, what is the gross profit improvement expected from Ireland breakeven in this term and is the utilization rate ramp- up on check? The second question is what was the margin profile for the discontinued vaccine site?
Ming, you want to take that question?
Yeah, sure. From Ireland standpoint this year's breakeven is going to give us about 0.6 GP margin of the expansion. The reason here is that it comes with about doubling their revenue from 2024 level and also generate moderate profit in 2025. The second question here is. I'm sorry, can you repeat the second question?
Sure. What was the margin profile for the discontinued vaccine site?
Yeah, from the discontinued vaccine site here you see the margin is about 15-16% GP. Overall, by excluding the vaccine Ireland from our portfolio here, we can see roughly about 90 basis points of the margin expansion.
Okay, thank you. I think that's all the questions for the Q& A session. Thank you everyone for joining today's meeting with us. If you have any follow up questions, feel free to contact Ms. Fan or WuXi Bio company. Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Bye bye.