This call will be conducted in English. My name is Laurence Tam, China Healthcare Analyst at Morgan Stanley. Tonight, we're honored to have the management team of WuXi Biologics present to us their 2025 annual results. We have Dr. Chris Chen, who is the CEO of WuXi Biologics, Mr. Ming Tu, CFO of WuXi Biologics, Dr. Lina Fan, the head of IR team, and Willis Wu, also part of the WuXi Biologics IR team. The call will last for an hour and 15 minutes. There will be prepared remarks from management, followed by a Q&A session. Investors can type their questions into the Zoom Q&A box at the bottom of the window, or you can email me your questions at Laurence, L-A-U-R-E-N-C-E.T-A-M @morganstanley.com.
With that, I will pass it on to Chris to give us an overview of 2025 results.
Thank you, Laurence. It's great to give a global investor an update for 2025. Yeah. I think we believe that we have a very unique business model called CRDMO. I think we're benefiting from all three exciting modalities of bi and multi-specifics, ADCs, and traditional mAbs. I think this combined exciting business model with all those three new modalities will deliver sustainable high growth for us. I will start with talking about annual results, and then our CFO will talk about the financial review. I'll then give a operational update, and then I always want to give global investor an update on our technology platforms and our WuXi Business System and EFT. I'll end with a summary and outlook for 2026.
For global investors, I think this slide should be very familiar. I've been using the same template for a while. I think I'm very excited to share with you that you know, on this slide, almost every number is record high for the company, except the gross profit margin. As you know, during COVID, our utilization rate was very high. That's why our gross profit margin was record high. Now it's close to record high, but it's not highest yet. Other than the gross profit margin, every other number is record high. If you look at the number of incoming projects, we grew from 817 in 2024 to 945. Hopefully, next time when we report, we'll see more than 1,000 projects.
We added a whopping 209 projects. I think this is a record high for the company. Our number of commercial projects also grew from 21 to 25. I always said the backlog is huge, and it's very hard to grow. This time, we actually see a very strong growth on the backlog as well, grown from CNY 18.5 billion to CNY 23.7 billion. We have a record high number of regulatory inspections. Still, we are 100% success. Our talent retention rate is still incredibly strong. On the right side is the financials. You guys read from the news release already. I think I want to quickly highlight. Revenue growth 16.7%. If you do continuous operations plus, twenty-plus percent. Adjusted EBITDA at 22.8%.
Adjusted net profit attributable to the owner of the company, 17.9%, right? I promised investors we're gonna improve our margin by about 100 bps every year for the next couple of years. Last year, we saw a very strong 500 bps improvement on gross profit margin. As a result, our EBITDA margin and then also net profit margin are both near record high. Our EPS grew very strongly at 48.8%. This funnel global investors are very familiar with already. I think I also shared with the global investors during J.P. Morgan meeting conference. I think the four key numbers on the right side of the funnel really represent WuXi Biologics.
Based on this, you can actually see how strong our revenue growth will be, right? We added, you know, a record 209 projects. We have 25 commercial programs. Our total funnel size is 945, and we have 74 programs in phase III. Among the 209 projects we added last year, about two-thirds of them are actually bispecific and ADCs. About half of them come from U.S., right? We also have 23 Win the Molecule projects. That's the 11 + 6 + 6. Among the Win the Molecule projects, also half of them are complex modalities. I think during the past two years, you know, we have encountered quite some noise from the global geopolitical systems. But despite all this noise, you know, our funnel is very sticky.
We lost about 4 projects during the past two years. Essentially, 4 projects transfer out. On the right side, you see many projects terminate. This is actually terminated for cost. Basically, either the program didn't work or our client decided not to proceed. They're not because project transfer out of WuXi Bio. On the right side, we actually only see 4 projects transfer out in the past two years. On the left side, we see about 43 projects transferred in. I use this ratio 10 to 1 to show again how sticky our business is, right? Again, despite all this noise in the past two years, we only lost 4 projects, and we won 43 projects.
Interestingly, for the 4 projects we've lost in the past 2 years, 2 of them may come back later this year. I'll report next time when we actually sign them back. This gives you a summary of the number of projects we added. Before COVID, the average number of projects added was about 60. During COVID, it becomes 100, 110. Then last year was again 209. This really shows our increased market share, global acceptance of WuXi Biologics as a preferred partner, and our strong track record are attracting more and more clients globally, in U.S., in Europe, in China, and in Asia, Japan and Korea. Right? Win the Molecule projects has been very steady, about 20 projects a year.
Among them, some are early phase, some of them late phase. Because over the past 7 years, we have won so many projects, every project are tech transfer in. Those are project either completed at large pharma, tech transfer to us, or completed at our peers and transfer to us. I think we have over all those, 100+ project are delivered successfully. We actually have 12 CMO projects already come from this Win the Molecule strategy. Now we are proven by our industry as the company who are most versatile, who are able to receive anyone's process and make it work.
I think we have worked with probably more than a dozen different cell lines, different process, different media, and then we are able to make all the process work. They are either ADCs or bispecifics or mAbs. I think this tech transfer excellence really will drive our future revenue growth as well. I mentioned tech transfer, right? That basically means either large pharma or our competitor don't have enough capacity or fail to do the project and then transfer to us. The other phenomenon in our industry is acquisition. When large pharma acquire biotech or when large biotech acquire asset from China, you know, if the program is already done at WuXi, what do they do? Do they transfer project to someone else? The answer is absolutely no.
For all the programs who are in the clinic, if the program is acquired either by a biotech company or by a large pharma company, they actually end up, the project stay at WuXi 100%. Beyond that, they actually, because they know more about WuXi, because we are doing the project for them, they actually give us more project. Over the past almost seven years, we actually see 32 more assets coming to us. Because through the acquisition, client get to know us better, and then they trust us, they give us more projects. Again, this you know, all those slides basically show how sticky our business model is. Now, that's why I always said the funnel. You know, if you look at the funnel, that's how the assurance I have for future revenue growth.
The funnel is very sticky. Once the project get into the funnel, despite all the geopolitics, we lost 4 projects, and then two of them may come back. We are talking about a total of about 900 projects, right? In the funnel during the past two years. I think in term of revenue, we see a very strong growth in early phase, right? From R and early D or DNA to IND enabling. We see a thirty, almost 32% growth. In term of M, basically PPQ and commercial, we see a 26% growth. In the middle, the program of who are in phase I or phase II, we see a decline.
As I explained during last time already, I think we've seen the similar trend last year last time. It's because the quite a few strong programs give us a lot of revenue in phase II. Now, we classify them. We move them to phase III because they are already in phase III. Our clients move them to phase III. As a result, we move them from phase II to phase III. That's why you see a very strong growth of phase III, and you see a decline of phase II. Hopefully, this is only temporary, and we'll see all three segments grow again. If you look at it geographic-wise, we actually see China being fairly stable and all other regions actually grow significantly.
You see U.S. accounts for 58% of revenue. It's still growing 18%+. Europe is 23% revenue and growing almost 17%. Combining U.S. and Europe is actually more than 80% revenue and is growing around 17%-18%, right? The highest growth actually went to Japan and Korea. We actually see almost 70% growth. It's become now very meaningful revenue. A couple years ago, it was only 1%-2%. Now, it's actually 6.5% of revenue, half of China already, right? In China, we see a slight decline of revenue. But if you have seen so many out-licensing deals, if you adjust the out-licensing deals of last year alone, you will see almost a flat year-over-year growth.
If you put all the out-licensing deal in the past added together, China, you will see a much stronger growth. Overall, I think this we don't manage this. This is a result of our last year's operations. You can see our revenue is very diversified. In U.S., Europe, 80% of the revenue. China, Japan, another 20% of revenue. Other than China, every other region grows very well. Investors are already very familiar with our backlog. I think I also keep mentioning over the past couple years, our backlog is already so big, it's very hard to grow. When you look at from 2020, 2022 to 2024, it is true. The backlog, you know, barely grew, right? Because it's so big.
Now as we sign on more and more large manufacturing project, the backlog start to grow as well. We see our service revenue grow by CNY 1 billion. We see milestone backlog grow by about CNY 4 billion, right? I think this is very healthy growth. That again give us more confidence that we can deliver continuously to deliver high growth. Our funnel is already have 945 asset. It's almost mimic our industry. Among them, you see bi- and multi-specific grow 30%. You see ADC project grow 30%. I think if you look at our portfolio now, complex modality is already more than half of the portfolio. The more complex it is, the higher our market share WuXi Biologics has because it's very hard to handle.
We got a reputation to be able to handle tough project in our industry. For traditional mAb, we may have more than 1,000 competitors, but once it go to bispecific and ADC, we're becoming a few, only a few competitors. That's why we have a higher market share for those newer modalities. That's the complex modality are also much more stickier, I'll explain later on. Which is actually right in my next slide. As you know, bispecific and multispecific are actually becoming very, very popular. We start to work on those projects back in almost 10 years ago. Now bispecific and multispecific actually is you can see strong growth in R&D and M.
On the R side, our CDMO platform, now we have close to 20 royalty-bearing projects. On the D part, this is the largest portfolio globally. On the M part, we have 3 commercial projects. All of them hopefully have a multi-billion-dollar potential. Developing bispecific actually on the CMC side is not. So development and manufacturing of bispecific is actually very, very hard. I want to use one example, right? So if you use one A, one B bispecifics, when you work on a cell line, you potentially get one A, one B, or you could get two A or two B or two A, one B, two B, one A. So if you don't do it well, you're gonna get a mess.
How do you get the product you want from the mess? It is actually very, very complicated. That's why for bispecifics, cell culture is very different, difficult. Cell line is very difficult. You also need to purify the downstream. When you purify, you also lost the yield. Then what's key is actually you need all the tools to look at it. You need the analytics to look at it. One analogy what you're looking at, for bispecific, when you look at the common, commonly available tools, you're only looking at the tip of iceberg. The bottom, you know, the iceberg under the sea, you need to use a very high-power analytics. Not every company have this power, and WuXi Biologics is actually the best at it.
You need to use a mass spec, you know, or very advanced tools to look at this. We actually have a few cases where, you know, a large pharma acquire an asset and come to us. We actually found out, you know, the product that they their the company they acquired claimed the product is pure, with 95% pure purity. In our hand, when we use magnifying glass look at iceberg, you know, the company only see the tip of the iceberg. We actually see the bottom of it. It's actually only 70% pure, 65% pure. That's how difficult it is for bispecific. Because of that, you know, when you have a issue, troubleshooting is also very, very difficult. I mention all those challenges of developing and manufacturing bispecific.
The message is that bispecific is actually very, very sticky. Once the project come in, it's very hard for them to leave WuXi Biologics. With that, I'll hand over to our CFO, Ming Tu, who will talk, give you an update on the financials for 2025.
Thank you, Chris. Now I'm going to present our financial performance for the fiscal year 2025. This slide 16 gives us the highlights of our financial performance last year. First, the revenue. Although there were still tariff and geopolitical uncertainties, and also uneven paces of our biotech funding recovery, our revenue continued to grow at an accelerated pace. As you can see from the chart that our revenue reached RMB 21.8 billion, 16.7% increase over that in 2024. Sequentially, our revenue in the second half was about 18% higher than that in the first half. We're not just continuing our journey of solid growth over the past five years, but also transitioning into a phase of accelerated growth post-COVID. Our revenue increase last year was driven by RDM, all three cylinders.
In R, our research and discovery service segment, we were able to sustain the momentum from the second half of 2024, landing mega deals from our innovative platforms of bispecific, multispecific, and ADC. Overall, upfront payments for our research services more than doubled last year and reached $115 million, with potentially over $4 billion of the milestone income streams in the future years. We also have a full pipeline of new deals, so the momentum in R will continue into 2026 and also the foreseeable future.
On the development side, with the tailwind of our biotech funding recovery throughout the last year and also our share gain in the pre-IND space, we achieved a revenue growth of about 32% year-over-year, thanks to the 209 new projects that we scored last year, among which 186 were in the pre-IND space. This is a new record representing over 60% of the global presence. Our process optimization and the productivity improvement also enabled us to shorten our revenue conversion cycle from DNA to R&D to about 6-9 months. The decline in our early-phase revenue year-over-year, as, Dr.
Chen mentioned, is largely due to timing, as five large-scale clinical manufacturing projects progressed from phase II to phase III, created a gap of about RMB 1 billion, which will be replenished by the projects from pre-IND phase over time. On manufacturing side, with the successful execution of our follow and Win the Molecule strategies, more and more projects were advancing through our funnel towards the later stages. Now we have 74 projects in phase III and 25 at the commercial manufacturing stage. The volume of these late-stage projects are ramping up steadily with the growth of our clients' drug sales. Overall, late phase and the commercial manufacturing revenue grew over 26% year-over-year and now represented over 43% of our total portfolio during this reporting period. From a modality perspective, bispecific, multispecific, and ADC contributed half of our overall revenue in 2025.
Moving over to growth profit, which increased about RMB 2.3 billion to over RMB 10 billion last year. The whopping 31% increase in growth profit also gave us 500 basis points of a growth margin expansion year-over-year. The margin improvement was primarily attributed to the following factors. The first is solid growth from R&D, the research sector, which gave us a positive mix impact as the upfront payments and the milestone income grew more than 2x during the reporting period. Margin rate for development sector expanded at 1 point, largely driven by the productivity improvement and also the higher margins delivered by the complexity of the modalities as bispecific and ADC now represent more than half of our pre-IND portfolio. At the same time
Mm-hmm
The profitability from late phase and the manufacturing sector continued to meet or exceed our expectations as the plant utilization rate in China continued to improve throughout 2025. Also our Dundalk, Ireland facility continue its ramp-up journey. The productivity improvement from WBS, our lean manufacturing implementation, also gave us 150 basis points of the margin lift. Lastly, SBC, our share-based compensation, decreased to CNY 200 million year-over-year as we continue to optimize our CMB structure. This gave us about 150 basis points of the GP margin expansion. Excluding share-based compensation, our adjusted profit margin stood at 48.8%, 340 basis points improvement year-over-year, one of the leading positions in the global CDMO industry.
Adjusted EBITDA, which is a proxy of our operating cash generation capabilities, increased about 22.8% to RMB 9.8 billion during the reporting period. This enabled us to have another phenomenal year from a free cash flow generation standpoint. The adjusted EBITDA margin rate also expanded by about 230 basis points to 45.1%, one of the highest in the global 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 portfolio or asset divestitures, and some one-time restructuring charges. This is the proxy for our business profitability under continuous operations.
As you can see from the chart that our adjusted net profit increased 22% year-over-year to reach RMB 6.6 billion, 5.3 percentage points higher than the rate of the top-line growth, which gave us a margin expansion of 130 basis points to 30.2%. The adjusted net profit margin expansion was largely driven by the solid control in SG&A, partially offset by the tax expense increase year-over-year due to the Pillar Two, you know, the adoption of the 15% minimum tax in Hong Kong, and also the one-time DTA, the Deferred Tax Asset Adjustment in Ireland in our 2024 baseline. Next page, please.
This slide shows our profitability growth over the past five years, including 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 all these financial metrics reached record high in 2025. As you can see that our IFRS-based net profit has grown at a CAGR of 27.6% during the past five years and exceeded CNY 5.7 billion in 2025. The CNY 1.8 billion of the 45% growth last year was primarily driven by the 31% increase of the IFRS gross profit, as we discussed earlier, and also the CNY 400 million of the net gain and loss from investment, divestiture, and the foreign exchanges, partially offset by some one-time restructuring charges we took at the end of last year.
These gains and also cash inflows from our investment and divestiture activities will give us more dry powder in the future for global capacity expansion, biotech incubating, M&A, or share buybacks. IFRS net profit attributable to the owners of the company grew by 46% last year, slightly higher than the IFRS-based net profit at both WuXi Biologics and the subsidiary WuXi XDC grew at a similar pace. Hence, the financial impact of the minority interest pickup remains proportional to the net profit growth. Basic earnings per share grew from $0.82 to $1.22 per share, 49% increase, 250 basis points higher than the growth rate of IFRS net profit attributable to the owners of the company as we completed our two-year, $600 million share buyback program in the first half of last year.
Our shares outstanding is smaller. After we exclude the share-based compensation, investment divestiture gain losses, FX translation, and one-time restructuring charges, our adjusted EPS stood at $1.40 per share, approximately 20% increase year-over-year. Next page, please, Chris. This slide gives us more details into our gross profit and cost components. In fiscal year 2025, our gross profit margin reached 46%, 500 bips expansion from the prior reporting period, a multi-year high post-COVID. Excluding the CNY 800 million of the share-based compensation, our adjusted gross profit margin was 48.8%, 340 bips improvement year-over-year. In the second half of last year, our adjusted gross profit margin reached 51.5%, another multi-year high post-COVID.
As we discussed earlier, the gross margin expansion was primarily attributed to the takeoff of the research and the discovery services, which gave us about 1 point of the favorable mix impact from the upfront and milestone payments, which command 80%+ of the gross margin. We gained 150 basis points of the margin expansion from WBS, our lean productivity implementation. The improved capacity expansion in China and also steady ramp-up in Europe also supported the margin growth. You can see the components of the cost elements in the stacked bar below, with roughly 17% in labor, 18% in material, and 19% in overhead, which includes maintenance, utilities, and also depreciation of the manufacturing facilities.
Labor component was about 2-3 percentage points lower than our historical average as we focus on labor productivity. Revenue generation per employee is a crucial KPI for all our business units. In 2025, our total number of the employees only increased about 2%, while our revenue increased to 16.7%. The reduction of the share-based compensation expenses also contributed CNY 200 million to the overall labor cost reduction. Material cost was down 1 point year-over-year, largely due to the material usage productivity improvement. The overhead cost as a component of revenue was down about 2 percentage points compared to the prior two reporting periods. There were several crosscurrents here.
The first, as we expanded our global capacity from 156,000 liters at the beginning of 2023 to over 300,000 liters at the end of last year. The new capacity brought on more depreciation, utilities, maintenance, and other fixed overhead. However, as these capacities are ramping up, the revenue generated from the manufacturing sector were growing at 26% last year, a pace that much faster than the increase of depreciation and the other overhead expenses. Also, during the last reporting period, as part of our ongoing initiatives to optimize our global manufacturing footprint to improve the return on assets, we divested our vaccine facilities in Ireland and also our DP facility in Germany. These divestitures also helped us reduce the fixed overhead costs. Next page, please. Page 19 here is about liquidity.
At WuXi Biologics, we have a strong balance sheet and a solid cash position. As of the end of last year, we had RMB 15.7 billion cash on hand, sufficient funds to support our accelerated growth globally. Compared to the beginning of last year, the overall cash balances increased about RMB 5 billion, among which RMB 2.3 billion were generated from a free cash inflow from the operating cycle. RMB 4.1 billion cash was contributed by our asset optimization and divestiture activities, partially offset by RMB 1.7 billion of the debt reduction and also share buybacks. We always have a conservative funding strategy. For our RMB 64 billion balance sheet, we only have about RMB 1 billion of debt, most of which are working capital facilities.
Our gearing ratio, which is defined as the interest-bearing debt over equity, is nearly 2%. At the same time, we have close to CNY 7 billion of the bank credit facilities to tap into if we need to. Our CapEx spending last year was about CNY 3.7 billion, mainly for the capacity expansions in Singapore and also in the U.S. Subtracting working capital occupation and tax payments, our free cash inflow last year was a whopping CNY 2.3 billion, a new record in our history. This is the fourth year in a row for us to deliver positive free cash flow. With the acceleration of our capacity expansion in Singapore and U.S., and also the CNY 1.5 billion carryover from last year, our estimated CapEx spending in 2026 will be about CNY 7.1 billion.
However, with our operating cash generation capabilities from business growth and also our focus on working capital management, we are committed to delivering another year with strong positive cash inflow in 2026. Now I'm going to pass the baton back to Chris to share more insights into our business operations.
Yeah. I wanna give every global investor an update on R, D, and M. I already mentioned bispecific is a highlight of this presentation. We start investing traditional mAb on mAb 15 years ago. Then 10 years ago, we started work on bispecific. In the past 5 years, we start working on ADC. You'll see, I think this is a very successful story. We invested a couple of million dollars on the CD3 platform. Now the CD3 platform, the out licensing of CD3 platform already generate, you know, in the past 5 years already, past couple of years already generated $205 million revenue, and then at 85% gross margin. Our partners, including company like GSK, Merck, and Vertex.
I think this is incredibly successful story. Not only this platform investment already generated more than $20 million in revenue and very high profit. We also have $5.2 billion potential milestone that can be achieved in the next couple of months, couple of years. Then for every program using our CD3, we have a 2%-10% royalties and an average about 5%. For all those projects, 100% of them, 100% are going to our development. That also carries into about $80 million downstream contract. I think this is a really very good example of how our business can really help strongly solidify the WuXi Biologics business model.
That's the CD3 platform I mentioned, less than a dozen asset. Overall, we actually have 50 programs like this, right? Fifteen years ago, we start working on mAbs. We accumulated quite some mAbs, and then multispecific, and then now ADCs. All those royalty-bearing programs will help improve our margin profile in the years to come. I think this is the first time we wanna use one table to share with global investors our business model. Our revenue stream is very different from traditional CMO, right? If the program start up with us with the R, essentially, if we are for this client, if we are CRDMO, the economics of WuXi Bio is actually significantly stronger than any other business model you can see.
I'm using an average, you know, average biologics sales of $1 billion. Again, if we have 5% royalty, that actually basically means every year, you know, for about 10 years timeframe, we'll get $50 million revenue from this sales royalty alone, right? That's the sales royalty from our R. If they manufacture with us, we waive the cell line royalty. If they don't, we charge the cell line royalty. You can look at different scenarios. The first scenario, 100% volume manufactured with us, right? We have a $50 million revenue from the manufacturing, and we also have $50 million revenue from the sales royalty. It's almost on, it's the same number.
With that, we are able to generate a net profit of $53 million for this program alone. I think that hopefully is 10 years, as I said earlier, right? Even if the manufacturing volume is not 100% with that, it's 70%, our profit is actually $50 million. If even if all the manufacturing is done somewhere else, but if this is our R, our profit is actually $44 million. If you go to the extreme, to the right side, that's basically means the CMO. If you're a pure CMO, with $50 million revenue, your profit is about thirteen million. Thirteen million, right? I think that's really that shows how our business model is very different.
The CRDMO profitability is about four times this traditional CMO profitability. I wanna even go to extreme case. If we use our cell line, if we do not manufacture at all, we still have about RMB 5 million cell line royalty, and there was a RMB 4 million profit. That's basically mean, if someone else do the manufacturing, I don't do anything, but I have 30% the profit of the CMO. That really. I think this table, if you study this table, it really showcase how different our business model is. With the R, I can generate 3-4 times more profit than the traditional CMO. With the D, even if we don't manufacture anything, we can generate a 30% of net profit. Certainly, we want our M to be big.
We want our M to grow as well. I think that's why this slide really showcases our strong business model and a strong and very unique business model and CRDMO. That's a very kind of quick update on our R&D. I think that's really you know the strength of the company. So far, we have delivered more than 786 INDs by end of last year. Last year, we delivered record high 156 INDs. Then among them, 38 projects were delivered at a 6-month timeline. Just to give you context, most of our peers deliver projects at 10- to 12-month timeline. We are almost twice as fast as our peers, other competitors. I was always joking with biotech CEO.
I said, "You know, if we deliver a six-month project for you, and if they pay you pay me $6 million-$8 million to deliver the IND." I save them six months. If their burn rate is $2 million a month, I save them $12 million, while they only pay me $6 million-$8 million. I think that's how WuXi can help the biotech community. That's why biotech companies prefer WuXi as a partner of choice, right? As a result of the recent growth, now we have already increased our capacity to handle 200 INDs a year and 20 product filings. Look, if you look at the bottom right chart, when we IPO-ed, we can only deliver 20 INDs a year. Last year, we delivered 156.
This year, we deliver 180, a 9x increase in the past couple of years. I think that's an update on D. On manufacturing, everyone knows our manufacturing is excellent. You know, we have very strong track record. You know, if you manufacture with us, it's almost a guarantee. If we said we're gonna deliver material to you by Christmas, we'll deliver to you, material to you by Christmas. It's like buying an insurance. That's our manufacturing. One prerequisite or leading indicator of bio-manufacturing, commercial manufacturing is that PPQ. So that's a step. Essentially, you do a PPQ, you file the FDA, and then when FDA approve, you begin selling the product, right? So on the left side, you see the PPQ growth. You know, in 2019, we only have six projects.
I think by end of this year, we'll have more than 137. I think this is based on the contract we signed as of today. Most likely, this year it will even be higher. If you look at 137, you may think this is just a pure number. For every successful PPQ, potentially, for 20 years, that can generate for a reasonable biologic with $3 billion sales, one PPQ can generate a future potential of $3 billion in 20 years. I assume your $1-$3 billion drug and then the manufacturing, and if you build that 20 years, it's actually a $3 billion potential.
I have 133 of 137 of them. If you adjust for industry failure rate, adjust for someone else taking it home, adjust for all those variables, this 137 PPQ means cumulative revenue potential of $75 billion in 20 years. On average, about $3.7 billion revenue. That's how powerful this 137 is. $3.7 billion revenue, what does it mean? That means another WuXi Biologics 2025 revenue. In this PPQ alone, you can actually see for the next 20 years, every year, we may have $3.7 billion revenue. That's how powerful it is, this PPQ number.
On the right side, you see, before COVID, we do about only a couple of PPQs. During COVID, we're getting into about 10 range. Now, this year, we're getting into 30s, right? If you look at the blue and green color, that's a global client, mostly U.S. client. You see we have 10 PPQ in 2014, 20 in 2025, and 30+ this year. That's again two-year 3x growth, 3x. That's really the number of PPQs we're doing. This all bodes well for our commercial manufacturing revenue down the road. I think what's the reason why companies love us. Why they want us to do PPQ for them? Because as I mentioned earlier, our PPQ is 100% success.
You know, when they file the PPQ to the agency, we hope it's also 100% approval, 100% success in approval as well. That's why global companies trust WuXi on not only in the R&D phase, but now also more and more in manufacturing. I think, we, Ming already mentioned that we have a WBS effort, and digital is another effort. Through WBS and digital, WuXi Biologics will continue to innovate, continue to improve our efficiency. You will see our efficiency improvement year over year. As the business grow, we are also investing more and more in the global. We are investing in U.S., investing in Singapore, we're finishing investment in Ireland.
We're also looking at Qatar, but not because of the war. We will reevaluate after the war. Qatar right now is on hold. We will reevaluate after the war. The U.S. investment is in two locations. One is Cranbury, New Jersey, right by Princeton. We converted a small clinical facility into a commercial facility because of demand. We're building a much bigger commercial manufacturing facility in Worcester, Massachusetts. When all those facilities are online, we can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in the U.S. I think every time when I meet investors, I really want to share with you what's exciting about WuXi Biologics on the technology side. We have very strong execution track record. We have very high quality.
We have faster speed, but we also have, you know, one of the best technology platforms. I already mentioned over and over again, the biosourcing platform, the CEC platform, right? We also have a nanobody platform called SDarBody. Today, I wanna highlight a few, ADC-related technologies that, WuXi Biologics are working with WuXi XDC to develop for the global community. The first program is actually called, WuXiDAR4. This is a site-specific conjugation technology using elegant chemistry. If you look at the global community, a lot of people are doing conjugation using very sophisticated tools, a lot of very complex enzymes, very you know, you have to engineer the antibody to create a mutation for the antibody, and that will change the antibody properties as well.
We actually only use elegant chemistry. We're able to do site-specific conjugation using elegant chemistry. Not only this technology can be used for traditional ADC, we can actually use it for dual payload ADC. We can put 4 payload 1 first, and then put another 4 payload 2. Or we can put, you know, on the right side, we can put 4 payload 1, 2 payload 2. 6 payload 1, 2 payload 2. I think this give global community a lot of options on developing next generation dual payload ADCs. We believe this will be a start of earning milestone and royalties for WuXi XDC.
Similarly, WuXi XDC has developed a proprietary linker technology and also proprietary payload as well. I think, you know, between the conjugation and the payload and linker, and then with all the WuXi's mAb, we can create next generation ADCs for the global community. That's why I said, you know, 15 years ago, we started working on mAbs for the global community on R. Then 10 years ago, we started working on bispecifics, multispecifics. Five years ago, we started working on ADCs. We will see more and more milestone payment and the royalties, upfront payment, milestone royalties from the ADC technology as well. That's a new offering on the R side. On the D side, you know, where D is the workhorse of the company. More than 50% of the revenue come from D.
The evolution of technology from D is also very, very obvious. 15 years ago, when the company started, we used what they call random integration technology. Random integration means because it's random, it's lower productivity. 15 years ago, we have to look at 3,000 cells. It take us 6 months, and in the end, we can produce 2 g/L. The technology we have right now, we just launched last September, is called targeted integration. You may not know the details, but it doesn't matter. Look at the results. We only look at the 1% of the cell comparing to 15 years ago, less than 30 cells. With the timeline reduced by more than half, you know, instead of 6 months, now it's 2.5 months. We get 4 times more productivity.
This technology can help our industry reduce the cost of goods by 30% with this technology. We have, you know, this technology was only launched last September. Now we already have 50 projects using this. Our first IND filing with FDA the next couple of months. Once FDA approves this, I think we're gonna use it for every project from WuXi Biologics. Again, you know, this will help our clients save 30% of the cost of goods eventually down the road. I think this again shows how WuXi Biologics, we are working on. We're innovating every step, trying to make the drug manufacturing process, the biologic manufacturing process more efficient, lower cost. I think this is really beneficial for the industry.
With this technology, we can, as I said earlier, last year, we delivered 38 INDs in six months. With this technology, we may be able to deliver 100 INDs in six months because every project will be saved by at least a month in there. Again, I can make industry faster and faster and better and better and, you know, cost of good cheaper and cheaper. Another aspect of this technology is we will be using this technology to make a lot more biosimilars. You know, biosimilars cost of good is hugely important. As I said, with this technology, I can save the industry by 30%. Why not work on biosimilars? We have already many biosimilar company come to WuXi, want to use this technology and eventually help them reduce cost of good, help them improve the sales.
From the get-go, WuXi Biologics, our manufacturing platform is disposable. You know, in ten years ago, the single disposable reactor is 2K. Now we have gone to 4K, gone to 5K. In our Worcester site, it will be 6K. Reactor getting bigger and bigger. People are always challenging me, you know, if I have a mega block faster, how can you do it? We have already proven 352 times I can do it for you. As I mentioned, each reactor is getting bigger and bigger. We can also multiplex. The largest scale we run in China now is 16,000-liter scale. That's bigger than most of the stainless steel facility out there, right? Most of the stainless steel tanks are 10, 12K, even 15K.
We can actually run 16K by multiplexing four 4K reactors. In Worcester, Massachusetts, or in Singapore, our single reactor is already 6K. I can do three 6K, become 18,000-liter reactors. I think, as I mentioned earlier, our cell line productivity is higher, so we may not need to go to that scale. If I need to, I can do, you know, very large scale manufacturing. The cost of goods is very comparable to traditional stainless steel. We have already proven this 352 times. As our industry moves to more and more patient convenience, a new technology is needed, what they call high dose delivery. You know, traditionally with a sub-Q injector, you can only do 1 mL. How do you pack more product into that 1 mL?
We use a technology called a WuXiHigh. I can put as much as 240 mg of materials into that one mL. If you are interested in biologics, most of the biologics are 30, 50 mg per mL. So basically, I can pack 8-10 times more into that one mL. That's why patients can do the injection themselves, or nurse can do it in a few minutes instead of a few hours IV. That's a WuXiHigh. This is also a technology that we collect milestone payment and potentially royalties from global community. The other one is called HyPhase. Essentially, it's an enzyme that can dissolve some tissue and help you get to a large volume.
It can be as big as 20 mil. I think this is technology readily available in the industry, but now we are doing a biosimilar version of it. I think we already have many projects that's working on that. I think WuXi, from WuXi perspective, I wanna make sure we help our clients. Whatever they need, I have them for you. That's the technology development that we have. That's the two technology I wanna highlight. I think what, I mean, I already mentioned that WuXi Business System is our way of continuous improvement. Every year, we look at how can we save costs there. How can we be more efficient in labor. How can we save materials. How can we save expenses. How can we optimize ESG.
How can we, over the past couple years, increase our revenue? I think all those are the WuXi Business System. Last year, we did 400 projects, more than 400 Kaizen projects. Overall, the business results is actually impressive, right? We achieved 150 basis points improvement in margin. I think this is a continuous effort. You know, this is already year 5 of us implementing WBS. We'll continue to do that. I'm also very proud of our ESG results. Every year, we get now, again, the highest rating almost from every agency. We're on top 1% on quite a few of them. AAA in remaining rating agencies. I think that's the high-level summary that I wanted to share with the global community.
I think in the end, I still wanna share with you that I truly believe our business model is very unique. With the revenue, with the royalty and calculation, slide that you can see our revenue model, our profit model is very different. Our business model is very different. RDM, we strongly believe R will lead to D will lead to M. Essentially, everything coming to our funnel will stay there, right? Almost everything will come into the funnel will stay there. Our R is very unique, give us not only very high margin business, but also will lead to D and lead to M, right? I think, for R, 15 years ago, working on mAbs, 10 years ago, working on bispecifics, now we're working on ADCs.
We are answering to the need of a global biotech community. R&D is the working horse of the company, right? We have delivered 38 projects at the record 6-month timeline. You know, this year we'll probably deliver a lot more. We help companies save money by, you know, doing 100% success in delivering project in the fastest manner. In Manufacturing, I think, we already have near a decade of large-scale manufacturing experience, right? We can really cater to the client's need. In our portfolio, now we counted many, many blockbusters. About more than 10 programs with $5 billion of sales potential and more than 20 program with a $1 billion sales potential. That will drive our Manufacturing. I shared this slide during J.P. Morgan conference already.
I think, you know, WuXi Biologics in the next couple of years will benefit from the three high-growth modalities. I already mentioned bi and multi-specifics, right? We mentioned in the other previous slide. You know, bi and multi-specific grow actually 120% revenue for us last year. Now it's almost 20% of our group revenue. It's getting close to the 30% ADC contribute. There are two type of bispecifics. One is CD3 enabled and, you know, CD3 19, 20, PSMA 19, 20 or 19, BCMA. All those programs could potentially generate, you know, each one of the drug could be $5 billion, sometimes even $10 billion dollars sales. Certainly, our industry is very, very hot chasing after the PD-1 VEGF.
There are many other dual target bispecifics. WuXi will benefit from all of those. Some of those are very high volume, multi-metric ton scale manufacturing that WuXi will benefit. ADCs, you have, I'm sure you have heard about from WuXi XDC talk, right? It's 30% of revenue, and we have quite a few programs pending approval. With all the emerging ADCs, the B7H3, DLL3, FOLR1, Claudin 18.2, Claudin 6. If tomorrow you hear good news on a bispecific or ADC, 50% chance WuXi Biologics is behind them. Five years from now, 70% chance WuXi Biologics is behind them. That's how much contribution we made to the global community on bispecific and ADCs. We have been already working on mAbs for 10 years.
Now we have many programs that are getting close to commercial stage. The FcRn antibody, IGF-1R antibody, CD19 antibody, C5 antibody, program for eye disease, program for autoimmune allergic reaction. In those portfolio, we can count on many programs will require multiple metric ton of manufacturing. That correspond to RMB 100 million, RMB 200 million, RMB 300 million, RMB 300 million of revenue for WuXi Biologics. That's why I believe you know our business model work our business will continue to grow. Oftentimes the investor ask me, "What's your near-term potential? What's your margin look like in 2028, 2029?" Which is 2 to 3 years from now. Now you know I'm very happy.
Actually, second half of last year, we already delivered the 2028, 2029 like margin profile, right? If you see, the second half of last year, our R is incredibly strong, our D is incredibly strong. Our M the strongest also, in the past five years, in the past three years. That's why we are able to deliver a gross margin of about 48%, adjusted gross profit margin almost 52%, and adjusted net profit margin of 32%. That's really the sort of the near-term margin potential of the company. With that, I want to summarize 2025. Again, we have an incredible 2025. You see bispecific and multi-specific growth. You see ADC growth, right? You continue to see our investing in new technology.
I mentioned the cell line and the high-concentration formulation. R, D, and M all shine last year. The momentum continue to shine. I think 2026, momentum will continue to shine. We'll continue to see RDMM, where R is, you know, our CD3 even more proven. You know, we're signing 209 projects. Most of them will be translating to revenue in D this year. I mentioned we have 10 programs with a $5 billion of potential, with another 10 program with at least a $1 billion potential. We have plenty blockbusters waiting for us to manufacture. We have 35 PPQs based on the January data. You know, hopefully by this time next year, we'll report to you exactly more than 34 PPQ.
The business momentum, the Q1 of this year is continuing to be very, very strong. If you look inside, actually our business is growing very, very well. Outside, you know, there are two wars going on. We're not sure how the Fed is gonna do on interest rate. Also the RMB versus the U.S. exchange rate give us some volatility. Because of that, we wanna be conservative. We wanna guide a revenue growth of 13%-17%, taking into account the FX or RMB to U.S. dollar fluctuation, taking into account some potential challenges in biotech funding because of the war, because of the funding situation. I think, you know, this is still a decent growth. We certainly wanted to underpromise, overdeliver.
I think that, you know, it will be another great year in 2026. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dr. Chen and Mr. Tu, for a wonderful presentation. Once again, congrats on a strong 2025. We will now move to the Q&A session. For sell-side analysts and investors to ask a question, please type into the Q&A box at the bottom of your Zoom screen. You can also send me your questions at laurence.tam@morganstanley.com. We have two questions coming from Alessandra Daverio from the Ashmore Group in the U.S. Let me go one by one. Chris, you sort of alluded to it on the guidance slide, but at the J.P. Morgan conference, you guided for soft acceleration year on year, and it was later confirmed to be 13%-17% year-over-year. Can you comment on the reason for the change?
Yeah. It's mostly the currency. Mostly the currency, right? Because I think, because this year, we already seen very volatile RMB to US dollar currency exchange, that's why I wanna be conservative. We're making quite some room for those.
The volatility in biotech funding you mentioned, right? Two reasons.
That's secondary. Yeah.
So far, biotech funding has been strong. I mean, we only saw two months of data, right? Like, you know, like, there's a lot of uncertainty this year, in the macro background, so we want to be conservative.
Okay. Thanks, Chris and Lina. His second question is, there's a slowdown in China revenue or flat when you strip out the out licensing deals. Can you comment on the onshore biotech funding environment?
Yeah. I think overall, China, I think biotech funding may not be that strong, but there are a lot of deal activities and some IPO. Because of that, I think funding in China is okay. Yeah. Funding in China so far is okay.
Next we have two questions coming from Chris Pan representing Ziyi Chen team at Goldman Sachs. Firstly, can you comment on the ramp, the capacity ramp in China versus overseas?
We don't because our manufacturing is already so big, we don't comment on specific site. Overall, manufacturing utilization improved by a few %. That's why last year margin was expanding. That's why second half of last year, I mentioned margin was almost. You can see the margin at 20-28% because when every year we improve our efficiency, second half of last year is very evident. Yeah.
Okay. Next we have a question coming from Linda Xu at HSBC. With increasing proportion of new modalities and the progress of clinical trials and commercialization, could you give us the outlook of the IP-based revenue growth in this year and next year?
That's great. I think the IP-based sort of the upfront payment, right, milestone payment kind of income is actually very hard to predict. That's why last year was almost about 15% of profit as well. I think as a rule of thumb, we wanna guide you is basically saying we see a 30% CAGR, right? But last year we see a very strong growth. It's almost like a 50%. Overall, because it's so unpredictable, we still wanna guide you at a 30% CAGR in five years. This was still a very strong revenue and profit component. Any other question?
Okay. Next we have a question coming from Vicky Zhu on the buy side. Can you comment on the contract pricing trend?
I think overall the contract pricing is very stable. In the beginning of the year, we actually raised the price by about 5%-10%. Because I think we see the global demand, I think through a CPI adjustment is actually very reasonable in our community.
Okay. In line with inflation.
Yeah.
-basically.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay, next we have a question coming from Yang Huang at J.P. Morgan. Chris, you mentioned there are a number of mAb programs with peak sales potential of $5 billion. Can you let us know how long those drugs have been on the market? We would also like to get a sense of when we can see those drugs reach peak sales.
Yeah. That's a great question. So far we have, you know, among the 25, we see two of them. Among the 25 approved, we see two of them. The other program that are still in phase III, so they're not approved yet. For two of them. One of them hopefully achieving $5 billion of sales very soon. The other one, hopefully in the next couple years. That's our business model. Our business model, basically, you know, we work with a client, and their program need to go from $1 sales to $1 billion to $5 billion. It takes some time. That's our business model is not as straightforward as a straight CMO where you can do 50, $100 million revenue per project, you know, right away.
I think that's a business. That's our business model. We grow with our client. The good thing is our revenue, you know, our M revenue will continue to grow, right? If you, as a straight CMO, you know, year after year, at some point your revenue will decline. For us, our M revenue for every program will increase, and then we'll reach a peak, and then we'll decline. That cycle is actually 10, 15 years, or even 15, 20 years. We are at the beginning of that 15, 20-year ramp-up. That's why I said our M revenue will continue to grow. For the multiple $5 billion drug, 2 of them are already approved, and one of them is only on the market a couple of years.
One of them is only two years.
Okay. The next question comes from Hugh Sloane on the buy side. Would the company do more buybacks?
We have very strong cash situation. We are looking at, as you look at our CapEx, we are investing heavily. We are also potentially doing more MNAs. You already see one MNA from XDC. We're looking at all the options, and then buyback is certainly one of the ways to reward investors.
Okay. The next question comes from Zhang Jialin at Nomura. What is the rate of the company retaining Chinese firms' projects if they were out-licensed to MNCs? What is their current market share based on your knowledge?
For the program, the Chinese company partner with the global, essentially Chinese company out-license the global. If they use CMO, we have 70% market share. Then every company who acquires asset actually keep the product with us, so we have 100% retention of the program. As I said in the earlier slide, this is. When I mentioned, 90 program was acquired and then, they add 30 program, that includes Chinese company program being acquired by global company. Instead of moving all them away from WuXi, actually, they always, so far, 100% project get kept out of WuXi. In the meantime, they actually give us more projects. It's a net, it's actually net even surplus.
Not only there is no project transfer out of WuXi, instead they actually give us more projects.
Okay. The next question comes from Jason Lai. There's been an increased focus on AI and how it could impact pharma R&D outsourcing as AI gets more advanced. What is your view on the impact of AI and if it could decrease pharma R&D outsourcing?
Yeah. I think it's actually probably the other way around. AI will make it more and more outsourcing, right? Our business model is very complex, so I wanna use, explain R&D and M. For R, AI can make R more efficient. If that's the case, if R is more efficient, that basically means there will be more and more D and M. WuXi Biologics will benefit from that AI, right? 'Cause, you know, if again, if R&D is so, if the R is easier, every company can create 50 projects. Who can handle that 50 new projects? Only WuXi Biologics have the capacity and bandwidth to handle that. Our D and M will benefit from that.
On the R side, so far I don't see a disruption of AI in disrupting R yet, so R will continue to benefit. But behind the scenes, we actually use AI in every part of our business already. The reason we are so fast in D and M and the reason we're so good in M is because AI is already part of our process. In the R side, we already developed quite a few molecules that the traditional technology cannot develop. Basically, in a wet lab, you know, you cannot create a drug. But with AI, we're able to create that drug. But it's not from first principles. It's not from in silico. It's basically we use wet lab to create a molecule.
They're not non-ideal, and then we use AI to fine-tune the molecule, make it ideal.
Okay. We're actually almost at the time limit now, so I will turn it back to Chris to do concluding remarks. Chris?
Yeah. Thank you, Lawrence. Again, right, if you look at 2025, like almost every metric we're at a record high. Revenue, profit, free cash flow. I think in 2026 we hope to see similar, everything will be record high. The growth, we wanna be confident we can deliver the revenue growth. That's why we factor in some variances of currency variability. That's why we, you know, give you a range of growth of 13%-17%. We hope we can do better than this. Thanks to global investors' support. Thank you.
Thanks again, Chris. This will conclude the call for WuXi Biologics 2025 results. Thank you all.