The Zhitong Finance App learned that recently, with the active development of new drugs, experimental monkey resources have once again become scarce, and the value once soared to 200,000 yuan each. According to some data, the overall market demand for experimental monkeys in 2026 may exceed 60,000, which is significantly higher than the current number of experimental monkeys released. Judging from the difference between supply and demand, the annual domestic supply gap for experimental monkeys is expected to be about 10,000. According to several brokerage firm estimates, from 2026 to 2028, the average annual supply and demand gap for domestic experimental monkeys will widen to 15,000 to 20,000.
According to some industry sources, the overall price of experimental monkeys on the market is currently rising. The price of a single crab-eating monkey between the ages of 3-5 is generally in the range of 150,000 to 200,000, while the price of a single rhesus monkey is around 120,000 yuan. The head of R&D at a biopharmaceutical company said, “Not only are monkeys very expensive now, but more importantly, they are still not available.”
Analysts believe that this round of experimental monkey price increases was not a simple cyclical rebound, but rather the result of a combination of supply-side “old accounts” and demand-side “new flames”.
From a supply-side perspective, crab-eating monkeys take 6 to 7 years from weaning until they can enter the laboratory. Female monkeys only reach maturity at age 4, and they give birth once a year. Basically, they are single, and production capacity elasticity is extremely poor. In particular, during the high price period a few years ago, many monkey farms sold large numbers of age-appropriate monkeys as commercial monkeys for cash flow. As a result, the proportion of elderly female monkeys in the industry is now relatively high, and the breeding rate has dropped dramatically.
Looking at the demand side, according to the 2025 “Annual Report on the Progress of Clinical Trials in China's New Drug Registration” recently released by the State Drug Administration, in 2025, the total number of clinical trials surpassed 5,000 for the first time, a record high. Research and development of complex molecular solid biopharmaceuticals such as polyantibodies, ADCs, polypeptides, micronucleic acids, and CGT continues to accelerate. In particular, cutting-edge racetracks such as micronucleic acid are in the early stages of an outbreak of concentrated IND applications. The focus of industry research and development is gradually shifting from traditional small molecule drugs to large molecules and complex innovative molecular entities. Pre-clinical evaluations of such new drugs are more dependent on non-human primate models, further amplifying the rigid requirements of experimental monkeys.
A relevant person in charge of a listed pharmaceutical company said that rising monkey prices also mean differentiation for CRO: companies with their own monkey farms or stable monkey sources gain scheduling ability and bargaining power; companies that rely on external procurement face cost and profit pressure. If there are monkeys, they sell scarce production capacity; without monkeys, they bear uncontrolled costs.
According to reports, Zhaoyan New Pharmaceutical is the first CRO safety assessment leader in China to lay out experimental monkeys and has the largest reserves. It continues to cultivate deeply through large-scale mergers and acquisitions and the construction of its own monkey farm. Currently, it has more than 50,000 crab-eating monkeys, 90% of which are self-raised and bred. The company expects to achieve net profit of about 600 million yuan to 900 million yuan in the first half of 2026, an increase of about 884.9% to 1377.4% over the previous year, net profit after deduction of about 561 million yuan to 842 million yuan, and an increase of about 2334.2% to 3551.3% over the previous year.
According to Zhaoyan Pharmaceutical, the increase in current performance is mainly due to rising biological asset market prices and the added value of natural biological asset growth. Together, the two have brought about positive changes in the fair value of biological assets, which have significantly boosted the company's performance.
Currently, the entire CRO industry is in an upward period of full recovery in orders. A number of leading CRO companies, such as Yao Ming Kangde, Kanglong Chemical, Innox, and Zhaoyan New Pharmaceutical, generally achieved a significant increase in new orders in the first quarter of 2026. Pharmaceutical Kangde's current orders increased by 23.6% in the first quarter, and Kanglong Chemical's new orders increased by more than 30% in the first half of the year. Since the third quarter of 2025, the year-on-year growth rate of new orders for Zhaoyan Pharmaceutical has been +24%, +118%, and +112%, respectively.
Huafu Securities said that with the rapid recovery of financing amount and number of projects, the growth rate of new pre-clinical CRO orders in 2025 all increased sharply to about 40%. With the gradual digestion of low price orders in the early stages, the strong growth in new orders will turn into a clear inflection point for both revenue and profit for the sector in 2026.
Zhou Sicong, fund manager of Ping An Fund, said that overseas pharmaceutical giants are under pressure to expire a large number of core drug patents. Domestic pharmaceutical companies have both R&D efficiency and cost advantages in the fields of ADC, small-molecule targeted drugs, and self-immune antibodies. The gap between domestic and foreign supply and demand continues to widen, and the innovative drug sector is expected to usher in a stage of increased performance and valuation in 2026.
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Zhaoyan New Pharmaceutical (06127): The company's precision card pharmaceutical research and development is booming, and its technological leadership continues to stand out. The company completed the technical layout ahead of schedule in cutting-edge fields such as ADC, antibodies, and small nucleic acids. Zhaoyan Pharmaceutical revealed in its quarterly report that the company signed new orders of about 910 million yuan in the first quarter, an increase of 111.6% over the previous year. By the end of the first quarter, orders in hand were about 3.1 billion yuan, an increase of 40.9% over the previous year.
Pharmaceutical Biotech (02269): In 2025, Yao Ming Biotech achieved revenue of 21.79 billion yuan, an increase of 16.7% over the previous year. The number of newly signed projects reached 209, a record high. About half of them came from the US, and about 2/3 were double polyantibody and XDC projects; 945 projects are in progress, including 74 phase III clinical trials and 25 commercial production projects, laying a solid foundation for the continued growth of commercial production revenue in the future. Yao Ming Biotech recently announced that on July 7, 2,716,500 shares were repurchased at a price of HK$36.560 to HK$36.880 per share, with a repurchase amount of HK$998.23,300.
Yao Ming Kangde (02359): In the first quarter of 2026, Yao Ming Kangde achieved operating income of 12.44 billion yuan, an increase of 28.8% year on year; continuous operating revenue increased 39.4% year on year; adjusted net profit from NonIFRS to mother reached 4.6 billion yuan, an increase of 71.7% year on year. By the end of the first quarter, the company's ongoing business orders reached 59.77 billion yuan, up 23.6% year on year, and adjusted operating cash flow increased 21.7% year on year. For 2026, Yao Ming Kangde previously estimated overall revenue of 51.3 billion yuan to 53 billion yuan for the full year of 2026; revenue from continuing operations increased 18% to 22% year-on-year.
Kanglong Chemical (03759): The company expects to achieve operating income of 7.47 billion yuan to 7.66 billion yuan in the 2026 semi-year, an increase of 16% to 19% over the same period of the previous year; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 729 million yuan to 772 million yuan, an increase of 4% to 10% over the same period last year. The change in performance is mainly due to the company's deepening global layout. New orders increased by more than 30% year over year, with new orders for small-molecule CDMO services increasing by more than 50% year over year.