Formerly known as the “King of Vaccines,” Chongqing Zhifei Biological is currently facing unprecedented difficulties. In the first quarter of 2025, the company reported a net loss of 305 million Chinese yuan, marking the third consecutive quarter of losses and its worst performance in the past eight years. This challenging situation began in 2024, as reported by Shenlan Finance on May 28th. Last year, the company’s net profit plummeted by 28% in the first quarter, followed by a single-quarter loss of 83.69 million yuan in the third quarter and an expanded loss of 132 million yuan in the fourth quarter. As a result of the plummeting performance, the company’s stock price dropped from a high of 231 yuan in 2021 to less than 20 yuan currently, representing an 87% decrease and a market value loss exceeding 300 billion yuan.
The founder of the company, Jiang Rensheng, saw a significant reduction in his family’s wealth due to these setbacks. Born in 1953 in the mountainous region of Guangxi, Jiang started his career as a public health officer and eventually acquired the struggling Chongqing Jinxin Biological for 500,000 yuan in 2002, renaming it Zhifei Biological. After obtaining the exclusive distribution rights for Merck’s quadrivalent and nonavalent HPV vaccines in China in 2017, the company’s performance surged. At its peak in 2021, Jiang Rensheng’s family wealth reached 170 billion yuan, making him the richest man in Chongqing. However, in the 2025 Hurun Global Rich List, his wealth had shrunk to 43 billion yuan.
In 2023, Zhifei Biological’s agency income reached 51.885 billion yuan, accounting for over 98% of its total revenue. Nonetheless, in 2024, the vaccine industry faced a harsh winter with a 37% decrease in the issuance of second-class vaccines and a 42% shrinkage in the HPV vaccine market. More critically, domestic vaccine companies such as Wantai Biological and Walvax Biotechnology were encroaching on their territory, causing the price of bivalent HPV vaccines to drop below 100 yuan, with Walvax even lowering it to 27.5 yuan per dose.
Data reveals that in 2024, Zhifei Biological’s quadrivalent HPV vaccine issuance plummeted by 95.49%, while its inventory surged to 22 billion yuan. Despite diminishing market demand, the company is obligated to procure over a hundred billion yuan worth of vaccines from Merck between 2024 and 2026, as per their contract.
During the performance exchange meeting in May this year, the management at Zhifei Biological acknowledged their misjudgments in anticipating market changes and proposed their core focus for 2025 as “clearing inventory, recovering payments, and reducing debts.” Despite promoting “15 vaccines in research,” the company’s independent product revenue in 2024 was only 1.182 billion yuan, accounting for less than 5%. Over the past five years, their research and development expenditures as a proportion of revenue have consistently remained below 3.7%, significantly lower than industry standards.