With the 2026 interim-results season now wrapped up, China's peptide CDMOs have, for the first time, stepped up to the core supply side of global Big Pharma as a "cluster."
With Novo Nordisk's and Eli Lilly's GLP-1 blockbusters collectively selling more than RMB 300 billion worldwide in the first half of 2026, the midstream of the peptide industry chain - contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) - has entered a genuine "dividend-harvest period." From the reshaping of a "one leader, many strong contenders" landscape, to second-tier players unexpectedly landing commercial mega-orders, to a cohort of niche specialists posting surging results, China's peptide CDMO sector displayed an exceptionally rare "synchronized resonance" during the 2026 interim reporting season.
One repeatedly validated fact stands out: overseas peptide CDMO capacity remains persistently tight, while China's leading players - with short construction cycles, well-established compliance systems, and clear cost advantages - have become the pole that benefits "most directly" from this round of global capacity expansion.
The One Leader: WuXi AppTec - A Platform Giant Cashing In Its "Capacity Dividend"
WuXi AppTec is the most direct "barometer" of this boom cycle.
In H1 2026, the company posted revenue of RMB 28.897 billion, up 38.93% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 11.080 billion, up 29.43%; and adjusted non-recurring net profit attributable to shareholders up a hefty 89.39% to RMB 10.572 billion - the first time in the company's history that it crossed the RMB 10 billion mark on a half-year income statement. Revenue from TIDES (oligonucleotides and peptides), the business most closely tied to peptides, reached RMB 7.26 billion, up 44.3% year-on-year - markedly faster than overall revenue growth. The company expects TIDES growth to hold at around 45% for the full year.
Behind these numbers lies a dual lock-in of capacity and orders. As early as September 2025, WuXi AppTec completed construction of its Taixing peptide production base ahead of schedule; by H1 2026, the total volume of its peptide solid-phase synthesis reactors had exceeded 100,000 liters, with plans to expand further to more than 130,000 liters within the year. Bernstein's latest peptide CDMO primer offered an even more telling metric: measured in "tons of annual output," WuXi AppTec's estimated 2025 peptide output of roughly 58 tons leads global peers by a wide margin.
Even more noteworthy is profitability. Bernstein data show WuXi AppTec's 2025 gross margin at about 47% and EBIT margin at about 37% - the latter even higher than those of traditional European peptide CDMOs such as Bachem, PolyPeptide, and EuroAPI. This combination of "high scale and high margin" is almost without parallel in the global peptide outsourcing industry.
Meanwhile, the company raised its full-year 2026 guidance: total revenue from RMB 51.3–53.0 billion up to RMB 58.5–60.5 billion, and capital expenditure from RMB 6.5–7.5 billion up to RMB 7.5–8.5 billion, with construction of a new Changzhou base brought forward. The order-side signals are equally clear: backlog of RMB 66.43 billion, up 25.2% year-on-year, with customer count and molecule count up 25% and 45% respectively - the "funnel effect" of the CRDMO closed loop is accelerating into back-end realization.
Among the Strong Contenders: Asymchem - Backlog Building, Gross Margin Awaiting Repair
If WuXi AppTec is "harvesting," Asymchem is closer to "sowing."
In H1 2026, Asymchem reported revenue of RMB 3.607 billion, up 13.13% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 520 million, down 15.71% year-on-year. On the surface this reads as income-statement pressure - but the deeper signal sits in the order book: backlog of USD 1.673 billion, up 53.77% year-on-year, and an order-to-revenue multiple of roughly 3.2x, clearly higher than WuXi AppTec's.
Two special distortions magnified the book-profit decline: first, FX losses from RMB appreciation (finance costs rose from roughly RMB −23 million a year earlier to RMB 131 million); second, new capacity coming online in emerging businesses, with depreciation front-loaded while capacity utilization is still ramping. On a constant-currency basis, revenue grew 16.20% and gross profit 17.02% - markedly better than the headline numbers suggest.
By business line, Asymchem's steepest H1 growth curve came from chemical macromolecules (peptides/oligonucleotides/ADC toxin-linkers): revenue of RMB 736 million, up 94.14% year-on-year, with backlog up 163.47%; biologics macromolecule revenue of RMB 200 million, up 122.82%; and formulation CDMO revenue of RMB 178 million, up 50.93%. During the period the company served 60 peptide drug projects, including 25 in weight-loss-related fields, and one peptide project has been approved for market launch with commercial supply underway.
On capacity, Asymchem had 45,000 liters of total peptide solid-phase synthesis capacity at end-2025, expected to expand to 69,000 liters by end-2026. According to Bernstein's report, Asymchem is - after WuXi AppTec - the Chinese CDMO with the most complete positioning in frontier technologies such as cyclic peptides, hydrocarbon-stapled peptides, oligonucleotides, and radionuclide conjugates; its peptide delivery cadence from IND to NDA leads Western peers, and the report views it as "one of the competitors most likely to keep seizing market share."
Second-Tier Breakout: Langhua Pharmaceutical's "Unexpected Boarding"
If the two leaders validate the sector's boom, the surge of Langhua Pharmaceutical - a subsidiary of Viva Biotech (01873.HK) - adds a second-tier data point to the story of "China's peptide CDMOs entering the Big Pharma supply chain as a cluster."
In H1 2026, Viva Biotech recorded total group revenue of RMB 1.0065 billion, up 21% year-on-year; within it, subsidiary Langhua Pharmaceutical posted revenue of RMB 601.4 million, up 47.0% (52.2% at constant currency), and adjusted gross profit of RMB 175.1 million, up 12.9% (26.5% at constant currency). The Langhua CDMO segment grew even more steeply - H1 revenue of approximately RMB 435 million, up 75.4% year-on-year.
The core driver of Langhua's leap is the landing of two new commercial projects:
- First, a peptide project has entered the commercial-production stockpiling stage with revenue scaling rapidly - the market speculates it is a potential blockbuster;
- Second, a small-molecule project is in the PPQ (Process Performance Qualification) production stage, with commercial launch expected in 2027.
This means Langhua has formally crossed over from a pure "R&D outsourcing provider" into the tier of "suppliers" with commercial delivery capability for blockbuster drugs. Bernstein notes that peptide CDMO capacity overseas is broadly tight, and this supply gap has opened a window of opportunity for Chinese CDMOs that possess commercial-scale production capability and whose compliance systems have already passed international audits - Langhua is precisely the representative that seized this window.
On capacity, Langhua currently has 860 cubic meters of usable total capacity, with another 400 cubic meters under construction to absorb the subsequent volume ramp. At end-2025 the company set up a new PPO (Peptides, Proteins and Oligo Nucleotides) business unit, and its Taizhou plant has completed the design of a GMP peptide solid-phase synthesis line. The group CFO said explicitly at the results briefing: "The two commercial products will ramp up one after another over the coming years and together become the core engine driving sustained CDMO growth."
For Viva Biotech, with a market cap of roughly HKD 3 billion, Langhua's surge is not just an earnings improvement - it could also amount to a re-rating: once the CDMO segment keeps delivering commercial products, the upside is considerable.
Specialized Niches: The "Industry-Beneficiary" Cohort of Niche CDMOs
If WuXi AppTec and Asymchem are the "front-runners" directly embedded in the core supply chains of global Big Pharma pipelines, then peptide-focused CDMOs such as Chengdu Sheng Nuo Biotec, Hybio Pharmaceutical, Sinopep-Allsino Bio Pharmaceutical, and Medtide are more like the players "first to feel the water warming" in this wave. Their interim results verify the "dividend spillover" of the peptide boom.
- Chengdu Sheng Nuo Biotec: H1 2026 revenue of RMB 507 million and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 135 million, both up more than 50% year-on-year. The core engine was the peptide API segment, with revenue of RMB 345 million, up a steep 82.7%. The company attributes the growth mainly to increased overseas sales of GLP-1-related APIs; semaglutide, liraglutide, and other products have completed US DMF filings, giving it the capability to deliver compliant APIs to global Big Pharma and generic-drug makers alike.
- Hybio Pharmaceutical: H1 revenue of RMB 688 million and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 237 million, up 62.72% year-on-year, with API segment revenue up a hefty 217.67%. Its liraglutide injection won FDA first-generic approval and went on sale in 2024, and the company recently entered into a partnership with Sunshine Mandi (a 3SBio subsidiary) on a semaglutide injection - it is transitioning from API internationalization to formulation internationalization.
- Sinopep-Allsino Bio Pharmaceutical: customized-product (CDMO) revenue grew 62.63%, and oligonucleotide capacity jumped to ton scale. Net profit growth, however, came under pressure, mainly due to price cuts traded for volume and continued investment in proprietary pipelines (such as an oral semaglutide tablet).
- Medtide: H1 was hit by timing gaps in order-revenue recognition and FX losses from RMB appreciation - revenue fell 7.6% year-on-year to RMB 235 million, and net profit dropped 47.4% year-on-year to RMB 53.677 million. In July, however, the company successfully secured a major order from an overseas client, bolstering its order backlog.
- Sichuan Hexie Shuangma: according to its 2026 interim report, the Hubei Jianxiang API production base under its controlling subsidiary JYMed (Shenzhen JYMed Technology) smoothly passed a quality audit by a leading global multinational pharmaceutical company, officially becoming a qualified peptide API supplier to that company - evidence that its quality system, production management, and compliance capabilities now meet the entry standards of mainstream international pharma. In H1, the company's peptide business segment generated revenue of RMB 166 million, 31.17% of total revenue, at a gross margin of 45.73%, up 22.15 percentage points year-on-year.
It is clear that most companies in this cohort are closer to the logic of "benefiting from an industry demand explosion" and "entering generic supply chains for stable orders," rather than winning exclusive commercial mega-orders from multinational Big Pharma - a fundamentally different position from that of WuXi AppTec, Asymchem, and Langhua.
An Industry Inflection Point: From "Capacity Race" to "Comprehensive-Strength Race"
Zooming out, what truly deserves attention behind this results season is a systematic switch in the dimensions of industry competition.
Bernstein's latest research series points out that over the past five years, total revenue of the global peptide CDMO industry grew from roughly USD 1 billion to USD 3 billion, but the core growth driver has shifted from "process expertise" to "capital deployment capability and scaled manufacturing." WuXi AppTec's TIDES revenue jumped from USD 120 million in 2021 to USD 1.7 billion in 2025, with global market share expanding from 11% to 54%; Asymchem's peptide business grew 124% in 2025, while traditional European peptide specialists such as Bachem and PolyPeptide grew only in the single digits to low double digits over the same period.
But "capacity expansion is not victory." After semaglutide's compound patent expired in China in March 2026, at least 10 domestic drugmakers filed generic marketing applications; Indian pharma companies are pushing in parallel, and the demand structure is switching from "originator monopoly" to multi-source volume from "the originator plus dozens of generics." Meanwhile, China's planned semaglutide API capacity already totals more than 20 tons per year, against global actual demand in 2023 of only 2–5 tons. API prices have already given the answer: over the past three years or so, semaglutide API has fallen from about USD 900 per gram to USD 90–160 per gram, and the industry expects a further 20%–30% decline.
Another pressure on the supply side comes from the rise of "small-molecule GLP-1." Eli Lilly's Orforglipron, approved as the world's first oral non-peptide GLP-1 weight-loss drug, has turned GLP-1 from a "biologic" into a "chemical drug" - the solid-phase synthesis, expensive reactors, and long construction cycles that peptides depend on are no longer the decisive factors in the cost curve. More sobering still: in March 2026, Johnson & Johnson's oral IL-23 receptor-targeted peptide Icotyde was approved, and in July 2026, Merck's oral PCSK9 macrocyclic peptide inhibitor Lipfendra was approved - the oralization wave has already propagated upstream along the industry chain.
From a medium-term perspective, competition in the peptide CDMO industry will shift toward a comprehensive-strength contest of "capacity scale + technology platforms + quality compliance": conventional short peptides will face some price competition, but compliant capacity for long-chain complex peptides and high-end modified peptides remains in short supply; companies with complex process development capability and global compliant delivery capability will continue to lock in the high-end market.
Concerns and Variables: Four Risks That Cannot Be Ignored
Beyond the upbeat numbers, the peptide CDMO sector still needs to face several unavoidable variables:
- First, geopolitical and litigation risks. Although a preliminary injunction in WuXi AppTec's related litigation has been approved by the court, the case is still ongoing, and its impact on customer structure and supply-chain layout has not been fully eliminated.
- Second, the pace of capacity ramp-up and gross-margin repair. The current gross margin of Asymchem's emerging businesses is only 32.50%, mainly because utilization of newly added capacity remains low; if order conversion falls short of expectations, profit elasticity will be released later.
- Third, order backlog does not equal 100% recognized revenue. CDMO projects are highly tied to clients' clinical progress and can be terminated, delayed, or scaled back - and clinical failures in innovative drugs are by no means isolated cases.
- Fourth, involution and substitution risk in the GLP-1 space itself. The core pipelines of oral small-molecule GLP-1 are mostly locked up by leading CDMOs under long-term agreements (e.g., CordenPharma's agreement with Viking for annual capacity of over 1 billion oral tablets of VK2735), and the positioning window for latecomers is closing fast.
Conclusion: The Second Growth Curve Has Just Begun
Standing at the mid-2026 vantage point, the "cluster rise" of China's peptide CDMOs is neither a temporary phenomenon of individual companies nor a chance outbreak in a single niche - it is the joint product of four forces: the phenomenal GLP-1 volume ramp, persistently tight overseas capacity, resonating compliance and cost advantages, and gradually maturing technology platforms.
WuXi AppTec and Asymchem are using scale and margins to validate the moat of the "super-leaders"; Langhua Pharmaceutical, JYMed, and other second-tier players are using commercial mega-orders and compliance audits to prove that the "positioning window" is open to everyone; Sheng Nuo Biotec, Hybio, Sinopep-Allsino, Medtide, and other specialized players are capturing the spillover of industry dividends with differentiated portfolios and cost capability.
But the core of the next round of competition is no longer "who has the bigger capacity."
Bernstein's report offers this judgment: over the next five years, the global peptide API industry will maintain a supply-demand pattern of "tight overall balance with structural divergence." High-barrier directions - cyclic peptides, peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs), bicyclic peptides, and non-natural amino acid modifications - feature demanding process development, high barriers to imitation, and scarce commercial capacity supply: what counts is core technology capability and process know-how, not simple capacity stacking.
For CDMOs of every stripe, only by positioning early in high-barrier technology niches and building genuinely "end-to-end" compliant delivery capability can they hold the initiative in the next industry cycle.
The "cluster moment" of China's peptide CDMOs has only just begun.