Suzhou Basecare Medical Co., Ltd. has listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is the newest unicorn in the field of assisted reproduction. The planned IPO comes after a very successful and profitable 2020, favorable regulation of industry, and massive growing demand for IVF services in mainland China. Basecare Medical, founded in 2019 in Jiangsu, China, has attracted a lot of interest for its self-developed PGT-A test kit. The test kit can accurately screen each embryo to detect developmental defects and ensure healthy development, allowing more infertile or at-risk couples in China to deliver healthy babies. This is the country’s first and only third-generation IVF product registered with the National Medical Products Administration to be sold in China. This also marks the start of China’s regulated third-generation IVF market and a huge market in reproductive genetics technology.
Who are Suzhou Basecare Medical Co?
Speaking at the pre-IPO press conference, Basecare Medical founder and chairman, Liang Bo, said: “China, unfortunately, is a country with a large number of birth defects. Currently at a rate of about 5%, I hope that over the next 5 to 10 years, our company can promote the use of third-generation IVF solutions to reduce this number. With incredible developments in testing services, making this technology cheaper, more efficient, more accurate, and more accessible, our mission is to help more couples deliver healthy babies.”
In China, the market for IVF technology is both enormous and growing. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, demand grew from CNY300 million in 2015 to CNY2.5 billion in 2019 (Calculated by sales revenue based on ex-factory prices), a compounding annual growth rate of 70.8%. In the future, this exponential trend is expected to continue with a predicted CNY25.5 billion demand in 2024.
The Market Demand
For Basecare Medical, market demand for PGT-A products used for limited scientific research purposes increased by 126.8% from the previous year to almost CNY18 million in 2019. Even despite the COVID-19 pandemic, revenue growth climbed by 35.48% in the first 9 months of 2020 to reach CNY15.61 million; for the company, these products yield a very high profit margin which reached 48.2% during the same timeframe.
Moving past the IPO, Basecare Medical has also announced two new pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT) products: PGT-M and PGT-SR kits, which together with the PGT-A kits, will form a complete series of test kits. The PGT-M and PGT-SR kits are expected to be registered and approved by the National Medical Products Administration in 2022 and 2024 respectively, which will further consolidate Basecare Medical’s leading position in China’s third-generation IVF genetic testing kit market.
With positive cash flow, Basecare Medical are committing to pouring 20% of the profit from product sales back into the commercialization of PGT-A test kits. The intention is to respond to strong market demand with an effective and accessible solution, allowing more couples to be aware of Basecare Medical’s PGT-A test kits and therefore grow company profits exponentially. Following this method, the company’s other products of PGT-M kits, PGT-SR, CNV, and WES will also begin commercialization from 2022 to 2025. As the company expands to cover more product areas, Basecare Medical also seeks to focus on the application and research of genetic technologies in the field of fertility.
