Celltrion Holdings to Acquire Additional 338.2 Billion Won in Celltrion Shares

Total Share Purchases Reach 874.1 Billion Won
Full Commitment to Enhancing Shareholder Value

Celltrion Holdings, the holding company of Celltrion Group, announced on November 10 that it will conduct an additional large-scale purchase of Celltrion shares worth approximately 338.2 billion won.

In July, Celltrion Holdings unveiled a plan to purchase a significant amount of Celltrion shares in order to improve profitability and enhance the corporate value of its subsidiaries. In fact, the total value of Celltrion shares acquired by the holding company from the beginning of this year through last month amounts to about 535.9 billion won.

On October 28, Celltrion Holdings announced an additional share purchase plan worth approximately 288 billion won. Now, the company has decided to increase this amount by more than 50 billion won, bringing the total to around 338.2 billion won. Including this newly announced purchase, Celltrion Holdings' total Celltrion share acquisitions for the year will reach 874.1 billion won.

This additional share purchase decision by Celltrion Holdings reflects an investment judgment based on a strong assessment of Celltrion's growth potential. In particular, the company plans to actively enhance shareholder value and secure profitability, such as through anticipated dividend increases, by making bold investments in subsidiaries that are excessively undervalued relative to their intrinsic value and by expanding its equity stake.

Efforts to enhance shareholder value at Celltrion are being pursued across the entire group, including the largest shareholders. The subsidiary, Celltrion, has purchased its own shares nine times this year, totaling approximately 850 billion won, and has canceled about 900 billion won worth of treasury shares.

Seo Jungjin, Chairman of Celltrion Group, purchased Celltrion shares worth about 50 billion won in July, while the affiliate Celltrion Skincure acquired shares worth approximately 50 billion won. Celltrion employees also participated by purchasing about 40 billion won worth of employee stock. Once the newly announced share acquisition is completed, the group as a whole will have purchased about 1.85 trillion won worth of Celltrion shares this year alone.

Celltrion explained that these moves are based on confidence in future growth. In the third quarter, on a consolidated basis, Celltrion posted sales of 1.029 trillion won and operating profit of 301.4 billion won. Notably, operating profit exceeded 300 billion won for the first time in a quarter, driven by high-margin new product sales, which increased by 52.1% compared to the same period last year.

The cost of sales ratio, which stood at around 63% immediately after the merger with Celltrion Healthcare (the dissolved entity) in December 2023, has steadily improved, entering the 30% range in the third quarter of this year. This indicates that the impact of the merger, such as the disposal of high-cost inventory, has been fully resolved, and performance improvements are expected to accelerate further. The continued growth of high-margin new products, successful market entry of recently launched products such as Stoboclo, Ocenbelt, and Omriclo, as well as the upcoming launches of key products like Idengelt and Aptozma in major markets, are expected to drive even steeper growth going forward.

Given Celltrion’s clear performance growth, Celltrion Holdings believes the company will soon be properly valued by the market. Once the market stabilizes, the holding company plans to determine the timing of selling the newly acquired shares in the second half of the year in a way that minimizes market impact, as part of efforts to restructure its business and improve capital efficiency.

A Celltrion Group representative stated, "Temporary profit pressure factors arising from the merger process are expected to be mostly resolved by the third quarter of 2025, so this acquisition is likely to be the final stage." The representative added, "If market volatility becomes excessively high or abnormal short-selling trends persist, we are open to the possibility of additional acquisitions and will review such options flexibly."

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