Contracting powerhouse WuXi AppTec expects to hit sales growth between 10% and 15%, or roughly 41.5 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) to 43 billion yuan ($5.9 billion), in 2025.
With the fate of the BIOSECURE Act currently in limbo, WuXi AppTec is looking on the brighter side for 2025. Still, geopolitical uncertainties under the second Trump administration loom large over the Chinese contract research and manufacturing giant’s future.After reporting full-year 2024 sales of 39.24 billion Chinese yuan ($5.4 billion) this week, WuXi AppTec said it expects to hit sales growth between 10% and 15%, or roughly 41.5 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) to 43 billion yuan ($5.9 billion), for the coming year.The CRDMO’s total 2024 revenue was down slightly from the 40.34 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) haul the company took home in 2023, WuXi said in a March 17 press release. Nevertheless, sales in the U.S., where the bulk of WuXi’s business is concentrated, grew 7.7% for the entire year.WuXi credited its resilience to its small-molecule unit, WuXi Chemistry, as well as manufacturing expansion efforts across multiple countries.On the production front, WuXi kicked off operations last year at its Taixing active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing site in China and steadily increased capacity at the plant—plus another in the city of Changzhou—throughout 2024.Over the course of the year, WuXi also plugged investments into oral dose production capacity in Switzerland, worked on the build-out of an upcoming manufacturing site in Delaware and started construction on an R&D and production facility in Singapore, which is expected to commence early operations in 2027. WuXi AppTec’s business is heavily focused on the U.S., which accounted for 64% of the contractor’s revenue in 2024, according to a company earnings presentation (PDF). Still, the year proved tumultuous for WuXi following the introduction of the BIOSECURE Act in January.The proposed legislation, which ultimately failed to make the cut in a key defense spending bill late last year, sought to block federal contracts with five China-based life sciences companies—WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, BGI Group, MGI and Complete Genomics—over alleged national security concerns.The bill garnered support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, though many within the biopharma industry—from contract manufacturers to branded pharma majors—were more skeptical.Despite the turbulent atmosphere in 2024, WuXi AppTec said Monday that it continues to grow its customer base and boasted roughly 6,000 active clients by the end of the year. Over the period, revenue from top global pharmaceutical companies reached 16.64 billion yuan ($2.3 billion), signaling 24.1% year-over-year growth after taking commercial COVID sales out of the mix, WuXi said. BIOSECURE’s fate remains uncertain for now, though a flurry of recent actions by the new Trump administration could present another potential hindrance to WuXi’s business moving forward.Notably, President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration said he would install a 10% levy on imports from China, alongside even higher tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico. In the wake of those China tariffs taking effect, the country in February riposted by issuing levies of its own against a range of U.S. trade sectors and placing DNA sequencing bigwig Illumina on a government watchlist.Meanwhile, Trump last month issued a memorandum dubbed the America First Investment Policy that seeks, if put into effect, to bolster national security by restricting inbound and outbound investments tied to “foreign adversaries” in certain strategic industries.China was featured prominently in the memorandum, and both healthcare and biotechnology were singled out as sectors the president aims to regulate.The policy’s implications add yet another layer of uncertainty to the life sciences world, which has been in the doldrums for the past three years, Morgan Lewis partner Laurie Burlingame said in a recent interview with Fierce Pharma about the proposed policy. Still, despite those concerns, more drastic outcomes, such as an outright ban on licensing drugs from China, appear unlikely, according to Burlingame and Stifel analyst Tim Opler. Regardless of what comes in 2025, WuXi AppTec has already had to adjust given the unexpected turn the previous year took.After reports surfaced in early October that WuXi planned to put its cell and gene therapy manufacturing unit, WuXi Advanced Therapies, on the market, the company confirmed the rumors in December, striking a deal to sell the U.S. and U.K. cell and gene therapy unit to New York-based investment firm Altaris for an undisclosed amount.WuXi subsequently sold its U.S. medical device testing business to Ohio-based regulatory consulting firm NAMSA in January.Editor’s note: This story was updated to remove mention of a manufacturing facility sale that was incorrectly attributed to WuXi AppTec.