SK acquires French drug manufacturer Yposkesi

By Baek Byung-yeul

SK Group's headquarters in Seoul / Korea Times file

SK Inc. has acquired French drug manufacturer Yposkesi to expand into the rapidly growing contract manufacturing organization (CMO) business, the newly renamed holding company of SK Group said Wednesday.

The company said it acquired a 70 percent stake including management rights in Yposkesi, a gene therapy contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), and held a deal-closing ceremony that day.

The acquisition deal came four months after SK revealed it was in negotiations to buy the French firm. SK Inc. hasn't disclosed the specific amount of the deal. Yposkesi will be operated by SK Pharmteco, a wholly owned CMO subsidiary of SK Inc.

“We are glad to advance into the gene therapy CMO business by investing in Yposkesi which has great capability and potential,” SK Inc. CEO Jang Dong-hyun said. “We will spare no efforts to help Yposkesi grow fast in the global market.”

Established in 2016, Yposkesi was French biotech company Genethon. “With SK Inc. joining us, Yposkesi is expected to commercialize gene therapy, which is a major task of the company,” Genethon CEO Frederic Revah said in a press release by SK Inc.

The deal is SK Inc.'s third acquisition in the global CMO sector. The company has tried to establish itself as a rising player in the biotechnology industry, acquiring global companies such as Bristol Myers Squibb in 2017 and AMPAC in 2018.

SK Inc. changed its official corporate name from SK Holdings to SK Inc. at its March 29 shareholders' meeting in a bid to strengthen its identity as an investment-focused company.

Under the new corporation name, SK Inc. CEO Jang told shareholders, “This will be the inaugural year for the company to grow into a professional value investor that kicks off our four core businesses ― high-tech materials, green, bio and digital.”

With the acquisition, SK is now able to strengthen its CMO business ranging from chemical synthetic drugs to gene therapy drugs. Currently, the group has been doing vaccine development and manufacturing business through SK Bioscience and developing new drugs through SK Biopharm.

“The gene and cell therapy sector is a rapidly growing business in the biotech industry in which global pharmaceutical companies are actively investing. It accounts for over 50 percent of a total of 1,800 biologics pipelines under clinical development in advanced countries,” the company said.

“SK plans to complete the value chain of its synthetic and biopharmaceutical CMO business in the U.S., Europe and Asia by 2025,” said Lee Dong-hoon, head of SK Inc.'s bio investment center. “We will foster SK Pharmteco as a global leading CMO that can supply synthetic, gene and cell therapy drugs to the global pharmaceutical market.”