[Click eStock] "Huons, Growing with Health Functional Foods and Medical Devices Even Without Vaccines"

Reduced Impact of COVID-19... New and Existing Businesses Expected to Grow Together

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] As health functional foods and medical devices emerge as new growth engines, Huons is expected to continue steady growth this year as well.

On the 26th, Korea Investment & Securities newly issued a 'Buy' investment opinion and a target price of 74,000 KRW for Huons. The closing price the previous day was 62,900 KRW. This is based on the judgment that both new growth drivers and existing main revenue sources will grow steadily.

First, health functional foods and medical devices have emerged as new growth engines. Sales in these sectors are expected to increase by 63% and 89% respectively compared to the previous year. This is because the sales volume of the menopause symptom improvement health functional food 'Eluvi' is expected to steadily increase. Sales of diabetes medical devices are also estimated to grow at an average annual rate of 75% until 2023 with the launch of the continuous glucose monitor 'G6' and the patch-type insulin pump 'Eopatch'.

Existing prescription drug sales are also expected to rebound. Although they decreased last year due to the impact of COVID-19, sales are expected to increase by about 4% compared to the previous year this year due to increased sales of chronic disease drugs and a slowdown in the decline of antibiotics and respiratory system drugs sales. The contract manufacturing division is expected to improve performance starting next year. From 2023, the effect of capacity expansion is analyzed to accelerate the favorable trend.

Against this backdrop, Korea Investment & Securities forecast Huons' operating profit for this year and next year to reach 59.6 billion KRW and 67.4 billion KRW, respectively, up 10% and 13% from the previous year. Songhoon Jeong, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, explained, "Continuous sales growth and profitability improvement are expected due to steady growth of new growth drivers and rebound of existing businesses," adding, "Health functional foods and medical devices will grow, and the impact of COVID-19 will decrease."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.