HONG KONG, Aug. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On 28th August, Fosun International (Stock code: 00656.HK) announced its 2018 interim results. During the reporting period, the company achieved steady growth and reported revenue of RMB43.51 billion, increased by 20% year-on-year; the company's profitability continued to increase, with a profit attributable to the owners of the parent of RMB6.86 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 17%, and recorded growth for the sixth consecutive year. Earnings per share was HK$0.98 (RMB 0.80), reached a new high and represented an increase of 18% over the same period of last year. It is noteworthy that Fosun invested a total of RMB4 billion in research and development, investment and incubation in the first half of the year.
Of which 32% of the funds were spent on research and development. Core subsidiaries, including Fosun Pharma, Henlius, Nanjing Nangang and others have put more emphasis on technology. 68% of the funds were invested in the technology industry and incubation, including artificial intelligence medical imaging company, Proxima etc. Mr. Guo Guangchang, Chairman of Fosun International, said, "Fosun will continue to strengthen its strategy to consolidate industrial operations and continue to increase its investment in technology, research and innovation."
In specific, Fosun Pharma invested RMB1,188 million in total in research and development, up by 89.8% over the same period of last year. Fosun joined-hands with Kite Pharma, a well-known company in the anti-cancer industry, forming a joint-venture "Fosun Kite". Its CAR-T Cell immunotherapy will provide a new approach to the treatment of cancer, signifying Fosun's entrance to the world's first echelon of cellular immunotherapy. Fosun's subsidiary and biosimilar unicorn, Henlius has completed its first phase III study of HLX01. It is expected to be the first China biosimilar drug to be listed.
In addition, Fosun's subsidiary, Yuyuan cooperated with Ant Financial Services Group in Alipay to attract online customers to Yuyuan's offline scenarios through Alipay, thus realising superior shopping experience of new retail mechanism. Nanjing Nangang and its affiliated enterprise made a total investment of over RMB700 million in scientific and technology innovation with a focus on the industries, such as intelligent manufacturing, energy conservation and environment protection, Internet of Things, new materials and aerospace technology.
In terms of investment, Fosun is dedicated to investing in telecommunications, media and technology (TMT), healthcare and fintech through venture capital platforms such as Fosun RZ, InnoStar Capital and Fosun Capital. Fosun has increased its investment in its key internal patent technology projects, including Henlius, a leading biosimilar company invested by Fosun Pharma, and Proxima, the first internally incubated artificial intelligence company of Fosun. In June, Fosun established the Insurance Technology Group which will strengthen its development in the fields of insurance technology and innovation through investment, collaboration and incubation.
Fosun, often regarded as an investment expert, is now being redefined. Fosun is on the road to develop as a technology-driven enterprise and is ready to benchmark against global high-tech giants.
Fosun announced that it has established a technology innovation center in February, with main investment direction surrounding core industry of health, happiness and wealth, while integrating the application of family scenarios and focusing on advanced technology, including Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, block chain, robotics, new material and new energy.
Prolific industry scenario is a big advantage of Fosun. When Fosun started cultivating new technology, namely big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, "industry + scenario + technology" have contributed to great success. In recent years, Fosun has incubated many technology enterprises and advanced technological products, for examples, Fonova as Fosun's incubation of industry big data technology and application platform, has a comprehensive offline scenario data resources, develops comprehensive online data coverage through multi-channels. Cloudjet as Fosun's incubation of data-driven cloud platform service provider, it gathers enterprises' industrial capability and service resources on the cloud so as to enhance enterprises' operation management efficiency through improving corporate credits, financial services, procurement collaborations and supply chain management.
On 23 August, Fosun led several medical technology innovation subsidiaries to join the Chongqing Smart China Expo, mainly showcasing its research on healthcare technology. In particular, Proxima, which has deeply cultivated AI medical imaging technology, attracted enormous attention. Proxima is the independent incubated start-up team of Fosun in 2017, which is also one of the pillars of Fosun's technological innovation leading strategy. Its showpiece is an AI-based diagnostic software for medical diagnosis. Through the cross-segment collaboration between deep learning and evidence-based medicine, this could assist doctor to recognize pathological changes promptly, read the medical image rapidly, hence, greatly enhanced the efficiency and accuracy of clinical diagnosis.