CRO Segment Leader with 20,000 Laboratory Monkeys Seeks HK IPO at a Valuation of RMB 7 Billion

On June 15, TriApex Laboratories Co., Ltd. refiled its Main Board listing application with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with Citi Global Markets Asia and Haitong International acting as joint sponsors.

According to Frost & Sullivan data measured by 2025 revenue, founded in 2008, TriApex Laboratories ranks first in China's non-clinical research sector for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and third among domestic CROs specializing in drug efficacy research. Meanwhile, the company owns around 20,000 non-human primates (NHPs, laboratory monkeys), establishing a distinctive resource moat.

When its "NHP moat" collides with waves of industrial transformation, and this niche leader faces off against top rivals including WuXi AppTec and Joinn Laboratories, TriApex Laboratories' Hong Kong IPO journey concerns not only its own capitalization process but also serves as a true microcosm of the development landscape for novel vertical CROs in China.

Founded in 2008 by Jiangsu Provincial Institute of Materia Medica and Chen Mailin, a Nanjing real estate developer, TriApex Laboratories entered the field of non-clinical drug research in its early days, drawing on the technical expertise of the scientific research institute and financial backing from private capital.

This landscape underwent a turning point in 2010 when Dr. Zhang Xuefeng, a pharmacology specialist, officially joined TriApex Laboratories. A seasoned industry veteran with work experience at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, he initially took charge of the Toxicology Department before gradually taking over core management responsibilities. The arrival of this talented professional reshaped the fundamental development trajectory of the enterprise step by step.

In 2011, Chen Mailin and his wife completed equity consolidation to hold 100% of the shares, placing TriApex Laboratories fully under the control of real estate capital. Nevertheless, the technical team gained growing decision-making power, kicking off a gradual period of coordination between capital and technology.

In 2016, TriApex Laboratories took its first step in capital market development by listing on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ) to raise funds for business expansion. During its listing period, the company steadily expanded its business layout, upgraded laboratory accreditations and accumulated client resources.

In 2021, the company made two pivotal strategic moves. First, it delisted from the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ), citing insufficient trading liquidity and limited financing capacity, with plans to pursue a higher-tier capital market. Second, founder Chen Mailin stepped down from management, and Zhang Xuefeng took full charge, completing the transformation from real estate developer control to scientist-led operation.

This leadership transition marked a pivotal watershed in the development history of TriApex Laboratories, directly driving a comprehensive upgrade of the company's strategy. Under the leadership of Zhang Xuefeng, TriApex transformed into a proactive, enabling strategic partner, establishing a new CRO development path oriented toward disease biology.

Strategic upgrades concurrently drove a surge in valuation. In just two years from 2021 to 2023, the valuation of TriApex Laboratories skyrocketed from approximately RMB 517 million to RMB 7.024 billion. Prominent institutions such as Hillhouse Capital, Legend Capital, and Tigermed sequentially invested, completing six rounds of financing in total. This influx of capital enabled TriApex Laboratories to significantly expand its colony of experimental macaques, enlarge laboratory facilities, and establish bases both domestically and internationally.

At present, aside from Zhang Xuefeng, Chairman and General Manager, all core management members of TriApex Laboratories are seasoned industry professionals. Wang Xiangjian, Executive Director and Deputy General Manager, boasts 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical sector and leads the non-clinical and preclinical research division. Gong Xinjiang, Executive Director and Chief Scientist, has devoted 20 years to drug R&D. Yang Lichuan, Deputy General Manager, is an expert in central nervous system disorders. Over 250 employees across the team hold master’s degrees or higher.

As the domestic CRO sector experiences intensifying divergence, two major camps have emerged: comprehensive giants and vertically specialized players. Companies such as WuXi AppTec and Pharmaron dominate the mainstream market by leveraging their full-industry-chain capabilities and global footprint.

By contrast, TriApex Laboratories has taken a differentiated path. Centering its business on non-clinical research for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, it has built a unique competitive moat supported by its large colony of non-human primates.

With more than a decade of deep cultivation in its core track, TriApex Laboratories has built three major business lines: non-clinical research, clinical trials, and laboratory animal sales. Its services cover the full lifecycle of drug R&D, with business presence both domestically and overseas.

Among its three core businesses, non-clinical research serves as TriApex Laboratories' primary revenue driver. This segment accounted for 77.4%, 74.4% and 72.0% of total revenue in 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively, covering services including drug safety evaluation, pharmacodynamic studies, and drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK).

Clinical trial services represent its second-largest business segment. Its revenue share rose from 18.8% to 25.6% over the same period, and the expansion of this division has dragged down the overall gross profit margin. The business provides integrated clinical trial services spanning from proof-of-concept to pivotal trials, covering five core therapeutic areas.

Sales of laboratory animals account for a small proportion of total revenue, making up 3.5%, 1.8% and 2.3% in 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively. As an auxiliary business line, it is not a major profit driver for the company.

Operationally, TriApex Laboratories maintains a highly focused layout. It has built deep expertise across five therapeutic areas: cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, central nervous system disorders, ophthalmology, autoimmune diseases and oncology. Keeping pace with cutting-edge global therapeutics, the company has accumulated extensive hands-on experience in innovative pipeline programs including oligonucleotides, mono/bispecific antibodies and ADCs. It has also established an innovative NAMs (New Approach Methodologies) platform to explore alternative technologies to animal testing, aligning with the latest global trends in pharmaceutical R&D.

To date, TriApex Laboratories has provided non-clinical services to over 750 clients and conducted clinical trials for more than 130 clients. It has assisted its clients in securing over 240 domestic drug regulatory approvals and more than 50 overseas approvals. In addition, the company boasts a well-diversified client base. From 2023 to 2025, sales generated from the top five clients never exceeded 30% of total revenue, resulting in low reliance on any single customer and strong risk resistance.

According to Frost & Sullivan data based on 2025 revenue, TriApex Laboratories ranks first in China’s non-clinical research for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and third among domestic CROs focusing on drug efficacy studies, holding a solid leading position in its niche track.

Non-human primates (NHPs, laboratory monkeys) are TriApex Laboratories' core strategic resource and widely recognized scarce assets across the industry.

Due to the high physiological and genetic similarity between experimental monkeys and humans, they serve as core models for non-clinical studies of cardiovascular metabolic and neurological drugs. The quantity and quality of their population directly determine the service capabilities of CRO companies.

Nevertheless, the laboratory monkey industry is strongly cyclical, and price fluctuations exert a direct impact on corporate operations. As disclosed in the prospectus, the unit price of mainstream 3–5 year-old cynomolgus monkeys in the industry stood at approximately RMB 112,500, RMB 81,500 and RMB 102,000 respectively from 2023 to 2025, showing a trend of falling first and then rebounding.

Driven by both population scale and market prices, TriApex Laboratories' biological assets have maintained a continuous upward trajectory: reaching RMB 496 million in 2023, RMB 829 million in 2024 and RMB 1.35 billion in 2025. These biological assets are categorized into current animals for research trials and non-current breeding animals. Their fair value requires reassessment every year, which constitutes the core factor driving volatility in the company's financial performance.

From the perspective of the industry's competitive landscape, domestic laboratory monkey resources are highly concentrated. The two leading companies in the industry each maintain an inventory of approximately 30,000 monkeys, while TriApex Laboratories ranks third with over 20,000 monkeys. The next closest competitors hold inventories of only around 5,000 monkeys.

In terms of qualifications, multiple laboratories of TriApex Laboratories have obtained GLP certification issued by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) and accreditation from the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC). Its Nanjing safety laboratory has even passed on-site inspections by the US FDA, enabling the company to undertake multi-center R&D projects both domestically and overseas — a key underpinning for the steady growth of its overseas revenue share. Between 2023 and the first half of 2025, overseas revenue as a percentage of total revenue climbed from 13.3% to 30.2%, marking initial fruitful results from its international expansion strategy.

Furthermore, in terms of intellectual property, TriApex Laboratories holds a cumulative total of 90 patents, including 7 invention patents and 41 software copyrights.

Its intellectual property portfolio spans multiple domains, including animal model development, intelligent pathological recognition, and drug testing. Representative patents include methods for constructing animal models of dry age-related macular degeneration and deep learning-based intelligent systems for recognizing single-cell hepatic necrosis, with a focus on technological upgrades and efficiency improvements in its core business.

Overall, TriApex Laboratories has built differentiated competitive moats based on its NHP resources, deep expertise in niche therapeutic areas and globally recognized accreditations. Instead of engaging in head-on competition with integrated industry giants such as WuXi AppTec and Tigermed, it has chosen to break through in the high-growth niche of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

Financial data from 2023–2025 shows that TriApex Laboratories' revenue remained generally stable, while its profits exhibited fluctuations.

From 2023 to 2025, TriApex Laboratories reported revenues of RMB 767 million, RMB 713 million, and RMB 750 million, respectively. The limited fluctuation over this three-year period underscores the stability of its core business. The slight decline in revenue was primarily driven by short-term pressures on its non-clinical business segment in 2024. In 2025, revenue rebounded to RMB 750 million, fueled by the expansion of overseas clients and the recovery of domestic orders.

In terms of gross profit margin, TriApex Laboratories' overall gross margin exceeded the industry average, reaching 46.9% in 2023. It declined to 30.0% in 2024, primarily due to an increased proportion of low-margin clinical trial services, before slightly recovering to 34.5% in 2025.

TriApex Laboratories posted net losses in both 2023 and 2024, with losses widening significantly in 2024. The company returned to overall profitability in 2025; however, this turnaround was not driven by improved core operational performance, but by a RMB 288 million fair value gain on biological assets.

TriApex Laboratories' positive financial indicator lies in its order backlog. As of the end of 2025, future revenue from its existing contracts stood at RMB 979.6 million, nearly 1.3 times its revenue for the same year. The ample order reserve will provide solid support for its subsequent revenue growth.

According to the prospectus, the funds raised by TriApex Laboratories through this Hong Kong IPO will be used for six major sectors: capacity expansion and facility upgrading, construction and technical enhancement of the NAMs platform, establishment of a translational science and innovation center, building international teams and talent systems, domestic and overseas M&A integration, and replenishment of working capital.

It can be easily seen from the fundraising plan that TriApex Laboratories has a clear transformation logic. In the short term, it will consolidate its leading position in the existing niche through capacity expansion. In the medium term, it will hedge against risks brought by industrial transformation via layout of NAMs technologies. In the long term, it will achieve integrated and global development relying on talent cultivation and mergers & acquisitions. Ultimately, the company will complete the shift from a resource-driven enterprise relying on laboratory monkeys to an innovative CRO supported by technical services.

In addition to its fundraising plans, TriApex Laboratories has recently shown positive operational signals: in the first five months of 2026, its revenue increased by more than 15% year-on-year, the number of new customers continued to grow, and it had sufficient orders on hand, indicating a robust short-term operational foundation.

However, it will take time to bring the blueprint to fruition, and TriApex Laboratories still faces certain challenges after its listing.

On the one hand, TriApex Laboratories needs to reduce its reliance on NHPs in performance and achieve steady profits from core businesses.

At present, TriApex Laboratories' profits are highly correlated with the price of laboratory monkeys, and its profitability in 2025 lacks sustainability. Going forward, the company must break through via two major approaches. First, optimize its business mix, steadily raise the proportion of high-margin non-clinical businesses, and control the expansion pace of low-margin clinical services. Second, accelerate the rollout of alternative technologies such as NAMs to cut reliance on laboratory monkeys and mitigate the impact of fair value changes in biological assets on profits.

On the other hand, TriApex Laboratories needs to achieve differentiated competition to resist the squeeze from industry giants.

Amid a landscape where leading CROs hold comprehensive advantages in scale, brand, and capital, TriApex Laboratories must remain steadfast in its core niche of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, continuously deepening its technological expertise and customer relationships. Simultaneously, by leveraging mergers and acquisitions to address weaknesses and expanding into overseas markets, the company aims to establish itself as an “absolute leader in its niche with globalized services,” thereby avoiding homogeneous price wars with domestic giants.

From its inception in 2008, to listing on the New Third Board in 2016, delisting and transforming in 2021, filing for an IPO for the first time in 2025, and making a second bid for the Hong Kong stock market in 2026.

Over the past decade, TriApex Laboratories has transformed from a real estate affiliate into a leading niche CRO, carving out a distinctive development path.

Against the backdrop of China's CRO industry featuring dominance by large integrated players and breakthrough opportunities for niche specialists, TriApex Laboratories has secured a solid foothold in its vertical track with technological strengths in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases as well as abundant NHP resources. Its Hong Kong IPO marks not merely the completion of its capitalization process, but more importantly, the starting point of its comprehensive transformation.