Sinopharm, China's large state-owned pharma, will transfer six of its vaccine companies to Beijing Tiantan Biological Products (SHA: 600161), a Shanghai-listed biopharma that is 50% owned by Sinopharm. Two of the transferring companies have approved COVID-19 vaccines, and Sinopharma said a public listing will facilitate additional sources of funding for all of the assets. Sinopharm put a $4.6 billion valuation on the six companies. Tiantan is a biologics company with a current market capitalization of $7 billion that offers blood-based products and vaccines.

All six of the to-be-transferred companies are either wholly owned or controlled by Sinopharm subsidiary China National Biotec Group Co (CNBG). With the rise in value of vaccine-based companies, Sinopharm has decided to include these companies in a listed entity.

Besides the COVID-19 products, the six companies also offer vaccines for other diseases as well as other products.

One of the two COVID-19 vaccines from CNBG companies was the first approved for general public use in China in December, and has launched under emergency use rules in Iraq and Morocco. The unit can produce 1 billion doses annually. The second, developed in Wuhan where capacity is 100 million does a year, was approved for China use in February. Sinopharm has said it aims to expand its overall annual COVID-19 vaccine capacity to 3 billion doses.

The other four Sinopharm units included in the deal are based in Shanghai, Lanzhou, Changchun and Chengdu. 

See our other articles on Sinopharm and CNBG.

Disclosure: none.