Today (January 21), Joinn Laboratories, a leading preclinical CRO, released its 2025 annual performance forecast, projecting a net profit excluding non-recurring items of 250-370 million yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of approximately 945%-1468% .

The performance curve of Joinn Laboratories has been nothing short of dramatic. In 2022, the company reached a historical peak with a net profit of 1.074 billion yuan, but then its fortunes plummeted in the following two years —net profit halved to 397 million yuan in 2023, and then plunged 81% to 74.08 million yuan in 2024. The turning point came in 2025, when the company's net profit attributable to the parent company reached 80.71 million yuan in the first three quarters, achieving a turnaround from loss to profit compared to the same period last year .

It is worth noting that Zhaoyan New Drug's operating revenue will continue to decline in 2025, with an estimated revenue of 1.57-1.74 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 13.9%-22.1%, but net profit will surge against the trend.

This unusual phenomenon of increased volume but not increased revenue reveals that the core of the improved performance is not the recovery of the main business, but the change in the fair value of biological assets such as laboratory monkeys .

The turnaround in Joinn Laboratories' performance is closely related to the price of monkeys used in the experiments. According to the earnings forecast, changes in the fair value of biological assets will contribute approximately 452-499 million yuan to net profit, while laboratory services and other businesses are actually operating at a loss (net loss of approximately 130-206 million yuan). This means that without the contribution from the experimental monkeys, the company's main business would still be struggling.

During the innovative drug boom of 2022, the price of laboratory monkeys soared to 150,000 yuan per monkey, prompting CRO companies such as Joinn Laboratories to rush in and compete for monkeys. However, the industry subsequently entered a downturn, and monkey prices plummeted. Joinn Laboratories recorded a loss of 267 million yuan in fair value changes in biological assets in 2023, which became the culprit for its financial distress.

The turning point occurred in the second half of 2025. With the recovery of innovative drug research and development, the supply and demand relationship for laboratory monkeys reversed dramatically. A survey conducted by Red Star Capital Bureau in early December showed that the price of 3-5 year old crab-eating macaques had risen to 120,000-130,000 yuan per monkey, and some monkey farms had already sold out of monkeys for the first half of 2026.

More importantly, in 2020, Joinn Laboratories changed its accounting method for experimental monkeys from the cost method to the fair value method. This policy change means that when monkey prices rise, unrealized gains are directly reflected in the current period's profit and loss statement without waiting for the monkeys to be sold; conversely, when prices fall, profits are directly impacted. It is this accounting treatment that allowed the company to earn approximately 370 million yuan in 2025 .

The predicament of Joinn Laboratories is not an isolated case, but a microcosm of the entire CRO industry. In 2023-2024, affected by the cooling of investment and financing in the pharmaceutical industry and the slowdown in innovative drug development, the CRO industry faced the dual pressures of shrinking orders and price competition. Even leading CROs experienced the pain of slowing revenue growth.

Since the second half of 2025, the industry has shown clear signs of recovery.

Joinn Laboratories' new orders reached 1.64 billion yuan in the first three quarters, a year-on-year increase of 17.1%, with a growth rate of 24% in Q3; its order backlog is approximately 2.3 billion yuan, indicating stabilizing demand. On the policy front, the government continues to encourage innovative drug research and development, and medical insurance negotiations favor domestically produced innovative drugs, leading to a steady recovery in the industry's prosperity.

Based on the cyclical patterns of monkey production, experimental monkeys take 4-5 years from pregnancy to being ready for experimentation, resulting in extremely low supply elasticity and drastic price fluctuations. This means that Joinn Laboratories' performance will be deeply tied to monkey prices, and the company will continue to face significant volatility risks in the future. The good news is that the company stockpiled a large number of monkeys during the peak period in 2022, and is currently in the process of realizing these reserves.

In conclusion , the case of Joinn Laboratories is both a realization of the benefits of a company's strategic reserves and an extreme manifestation of the cyclical fluctuations in the CRO industry. Behind the 1468% increase in net profit lies the resonance of accounting policy changes and a surge in biological asset prices. For investors, this presents both opportunities and risks —the opportunity lies in the short-term support for monkey prices, while the risk lies in the company's core business still struggling and the eventual peak in monkey prices.

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