Reproductive health firm Suzhou Basecare Medical Co., Ltd will list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on February 8 2021. Founded in 2019 in Jiangsu, Basecare has attracted a lot of interest for its self-developed PGT-A test kit that accurately screens each embryo to detect developmental defects and ensure healthy development, allowing more infertile or at-risk couples in China to deliver healthy babies.
The 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.
WHY IT MATTERS
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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.
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.”
THE LARGER TREND
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.