WuXi AppTec (Shanghai, China) has sold off two US/UK businesses in February and March, it revealed in its annual results on 18 March 2025.
The Chinese contract research, development, and manufacturing organisation (CRDMO) announced in its latest filings that it had completed two divestments first announced at the end of 2024. On 7 March, it completed the sale of the US and UK operations of its WuXi ATU cell therapy business to US investor Altaris. WuXi AppTec stated that the rationale for the divestiture is “to ensure that clients and patients with a pressing need for the WuXi ATU cell therapy services can continue to receive time-critical and life-saving treatments without interruption”. Altaris will rename the cell therapy CDMO and base its headquarters in the US. It has five facilities in the US and UK.
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Last month, WuXi AppTec completed the sale of its US medical device testing operations to the CRO NAMSA (Northwood, US), it also revealed in its March filing. The transaction will enable WuXi to “focus more on its core CRDMO business”, the company said.
The divestitures are taking place against a backdrop of increased tensions and tariffs between China and the US. The Biosecure Act, which failed to pass in the US before the end of last year but could be revived in 2025, would cut off federal funding to pharma companies that outsource to WuXi AppTec. The bill claims “WuXi Apptec presents a national security threat to the United States” through its alleged links to the Chinese government’s “military-civil fusion” strategy “that merges public and private industries to enable the military modernisation” of the army.
In a third-quarter (Q3) 2024 earnings call in October, WuXi AppTec stated that its ATU cell and gene subsidiary had already been impacted by the prospect of the act, as there were “insufficient new business wins due to the proposed US legislation”.
Nevertheless, the impact of geopolitics on WuXi AppTec in 2024 was “very limited”, co-CEO Minzhang Chen claimed at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January 2025.
Chen told the conference that WuXi AppTec plans to focus capacity on Phase III and commercial small molecules, and oligonucleotides and peptides in 2025.
40% of revenue from global pharma
In its annual results to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, WuXi AppTec revealed that its Q4 2024 revenue reached 11.5bn yuan ($1.6bn), up 6.9% year-on-year (YoY). Its annual revenue for 2024 reached 39.2bn yuan, up 5.2% YoY, after excluding a large Covid-19 project in 2023. Its full-year net profit reached 9.5bn yuan, in line with its previous guidance.
The company had 6,000 customers at the end of 2024, of which 1,000 were new in 2024. Revenue from the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies reached 16.64bn yuan.
WuXi AppTec includes the WuXi Chemistry, WuXi Testing, and WuXi Biology segments.
Lab testing revenue was down 8%, which the company attributed to pricing.
WuXi Chemistry’s small molecule contract services added 1,187 new molecules in 2024. The Chemistry segment’s new modalities business for oligonucleotides and peptides, TIDES, grew revenue 70% YoY to 5.8bn yuan. The total reactor volume for solid-phase peptide synthesis reached 41,000 litres by the end of 2024, and WuXi plans to top 100,000 litres by the end of 2025.
The company opened a small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing site in Taixing, China, in 2024, and increased dose capacity in Couvet, Switzerland. It is building a formulation development and manufacturing site in Middletown, Delaware, in the US, which is expected to open by the end of 2026, and a research and development and manufacturing site in Singapore, expected to start some operations in 2027.
WuXi’s presentation to investors stressed a “zero tolerance” attitude to intellectual property violations, clearly a nod to foreign concerns about doing business in China.
