Last year, net profit surged by 33 times, and HeBo Medicine's stock price increased by over 10%. Can the performance driven by BD continue its rapid growth?

This article is sourced from Times Finance, authored by Du Susmin.

On April 1, during the trading session, the share price of Harpoon Therapeutics (02142.HK) rose by more than 10% at one point, and eventually closed at HK$14.19, up 8.32%. This performance resonated with the overall strength of the innovative drug sector. On the same day, innovative drug sector stocks in both A-shares and Hong Kong shares surged collectively. Harpoon Therapeutics (300149.SZ) capped up by limit on an intraday basis with a “17-minute 20CM limit-up,” and more than 10 innovative drug ETFs saw gains exceeding 7%.

Just two days earlier, Harpoon Therapeutics released its 2025 performance report. During the reporting period, the company achieved total revenue of approximately RMB 1.11 billion, up 314.6% year over year; full-year net profit was approximately RMB 648 million, soaring 33-fold year over year.

On March 31, Harpoon Therapeutics held a performance briefing. Times Finance learned from the meeting that in 2025, Harpoon Therapeutics’ total revenue was US$158 million (equivalent to about RMB 1.11 billion). Of that, molecule license fee revenue reached US$141 million, up 375%, which was the primary driver of revenue growth. It mainly came from collaborations with multinational pharmaceutical companies and overseas licensing of innovative products. Research services and technology license fees totaled US$16.577 million, up 98.7%, as the platform value continued to be unlocked.

While revenue and profits grew at a rapid pace, Harpoon Therapeutics continued to step up its R&D investment. In 2025, R&D expenses were US$39.77 million, up 89.4%, mainly used to continuously advance clinical pipelines and to lay out early-stage products.

Pulling the timeline back three years, Harpoon Therapeutics’ situation was completely different from today. Founded in 2016, Harpoon Therapeutics started out with R&D-based innovative drug development and has a globally leading fully human antibody transgenic mouse platform, Harbour Mice®. However, in the first few years after going public in 2020, the company was always unable to escape the loss-making state of “burning cash” on R&D. In 2021 and 2022, its net losses were US$138 million and US$137 million, respectively.

At that time, Harpoon Therapeutics’ share price continued to decline steadily from its IPO high point, and the market had doubts about its pipeline’s clinical progress and its commercialization prospects. Some in the market believed that the company’s pipeline lacked a clearly defined blockbuster product, and that the value of its technology platform was difficult to quantify in the financial statements.

In October 2022, Harpoon Therapeutics made a key strategic adjustment, splitting its business into two major segments: Harbour Therapeutics (product development) and Nonna Bio (platform technology licensing). This move was also seen as a landmark step in the company’s transition from a “R&D-driven” approach to a “platform-driven” approach. After the split, the value of the technology platform could be released independently, and the decision-making efficiency for external collaborations also improved noticeably.

Starting in 2023, Harpoon Therapeutics’ licensing collaborations entered a harvest period. Entering 2025, Harpoon Therapeutics’ BD (business development) collaborations were further densely implemented. At the performance briefing, Wang Jinsong, founder, chairman, and CEO of Harpoon Therapeutics, said that 2025 is a pivotal year in the company’s development history. The company officially entered its 3.0 strategic stage, establishing a clear development blueprint to become a globally leading platform-based biopharmaceutical group by 2028. In the past year, Harpoon Therapeutics has reached global partnership deal volume of more than US$7 billion. In the ranking of overseas outbound transaction amounts by China’s innovative drug companies in 2025, it ranked among the top five.

                      Image source: VCG Photo           

Specifically, Harpoon Therapeutics’ collaboration with AstraZeneca covers areas such as next-generation multispecific antibodies, ADCs, and TCE, among others. The upfront payment and recent milestones total US$175 million, with a potential total of US$4.4 billion; its long-term collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb has a potential total of over US$1.1 billion; and its collaboration with Otsuka on HBM7020 includes an upfront payment of US$47 million, with a potential total of US$670 million. In addition, its subsidiary Nonna Bio also reached a non-exclusive platform licensing agreement with Pfizer.

Harpoon Therapeutics’ explosive growth in performance is undoubtedly impressive, but what the market cares more about is whether this growth can be sustained. From the perspective of revenue structure, the company’s high profitability in 2025 depends to a large extent on milestone payments from external collaborations. Such revenue is phased and uncertain. Whether it can maintain stable revenue growth in the future depends not only on the continued execution of ongoing collaborations and the pace of clinical advancement of the pipeline, but also on whether its technology platform can continue to produce new molecules with differentiated advantages, and whether external recognition of its technology platform and R&D capabilities can remain strong.

Harpoon Therapeutics’ Chief Financial Officer, Chen Youchen, said at the meeting that before 2025, the company’s revenue mainly consisted of two cornerstone segments: product licensing BD and platform collaboration services from Nonna Bio. After 2025, while strengthening its global platform outbound licensing and Nonna Bio service revenue, the company will also expand into more diversified and more varied revenue models. With deeper progress of more collaborations, the group’s revenue mix will be further improved, gradually forming a diversified, high-quality revenue system including product revenue, ecosystem revenue, and authorized collaboration revenue.

Regarding the company’s future financial expectations, Chen Youchen disclosed at the meeting that Harpoon Therapeutics expects the group’s total revenue in 2026 to maintain a growth rate of no less than 40%～50%, targeting US$221 million to US$237 million. In addition, the company is confident in ensuring that its normal business profitability will remain steadily on an upward trend, and in achieving in the future the goal of completing more than two scaled BD deals per year—meaning each deal’s total collaboration amount exceeds US$1 billion, and upfront payments exceed US$50 million—thereby forming stable and predictable BD cash flow to continuously support the company’s R&D capabilities and strategic layout.