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Text / Ren Xueyun
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In mid-2021, Yin Ye, who was born in 1979, replaced Xu Xun, who was born in 1984, as the CEO of Huada Group. At that time, he was already quite popular. He was regarded as a traffic star in both science and business circles. On Douyin, Yin Ye’s followers exceeded 2.6 million.
Around April of the following year, the star began to bring goods for Huada’s probiotics on his Douyin account. You can say that this is a traffic realization. His record is also remarkable. In just a few months, Yin Ye’s Douyin window sales exceeded 20 million yuan.
However, few people have noticed that the link in Yin Ye’s shopping cart – Umiida probiotics is not a product of BGI, it comes from another company under BGI Group – Huada Precision Nutrition, strictly speaking These are two sibling companies. Therefore, despite the promotion of Yin, the insiders of BGI Group said that BGI implemented the executive rotation system, and it happened to be his turn at that time. But in any case, the status of the group CEO makes Yin Ye’s delivery of goods justifiable.
Since then, the style of Yin Ye’s Douyin account has changed suddenly. The related video with goods is not only frequent, but also straightforward in content. It first promoted that probiotics have many effects, including protecting the intestines, promoting defecation, relieving alcohol, losing weight, reducing uric acid, relieving insomnia, and even promoting women’s private health, and then made a final decision and pushed the product directly. The price is not expensive. Usually there are only dozens of yuan, one or two hundred yuan, and the obvious mass consumption positioning.
Probably because there are many popular people, this incident also brought trouble to Yin Ye. Recently, Rao Yi, president of Capital Medical University, posted on his personal account “Praise Yin Ye for proving that he sells counterfeit medicines: published dozens of papers without a single one.” tested for any biological effect of its probiotics.” Rao Yi said that there are hundreds of probiotic products currently sold in the domestic market, mainly in the form of health food or ordinary food.
Maybe Yin Ye couldn’t figure out why Rao Yi insisted on holding him. There are thousands of companies selling probiotics in the market. Why was he the only one who was bombarded by Rao Yi for 6 consecutive days.
In fact, the reason is not difficult to understand. The flags that Yin Ye and Huada set up before were too high. Once they start to reduce dimensionality and start to join the WTO, it will make people feel disillusioned.
Speaking of which, although the threshold for probiotics is low, they are microbes anyway, which is somewhat related to the positioning of BGI’s biotechnology company, but in fact, this company is currently launching mask products on the market. Like other brands, BGI’s mask It is also commissioned, and the ingredients are also common, which has little to do with biotechnology. In addition, BGI even has an insurance brokerage company, which really doesn’t even count biology.
Many people believe that BGI is eager to make money because BGI is in decline. For example, its net profit in 2021 will drop by 30.08% year-on-year, and its net profit in the first half of this year is expected to drop by 33.70% to 46.59% year-on-year.
However, this statement is not true, because the BGI department does not only have BGI genes. BGI, which was approved to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board a few days ago, has achieved considerable net profit.
Speaking of which, desire determines the direction of the company. As early as 2018-2019, in response to BGI’s efforts in the tertiary industry, co-chairman Wang Shi once reminded that the most important thing for companies at this stage is to focus on strategy, and BGI is going a little too fast.
In a way, companies are also organisms. It also has its own genes. So what are the genes of Huada? Wang Jian must think it is science, but from a practical point of view, BGI’s genes should be more than science, at least like its name, there is a big character.
In fact, when a company wants to grow too big, it is easy to have genetic mutations, and then science surrenders to desire.
01
In Yin Ye’s personal Baidu Encyclopedia, he was introduced as a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Copenhagen. However, Rao Yi called Yin Ye “Dr. Water” because “according to the records of the University of Copenhagen, Yin Ye’s thesis started research in 2015 and was submitted in 2018. Yin Ye was the CEO of BGI at the same time. Obviously, only He knows what kind of doctor he is.”
Of course, Rao Yi’s words were later criticized by alumni of Copenhagen University, because this school really exists and has a long history. Although it is not very famous in China, it has indeed produced many Nobel Prize winners.
However, when we were looking for information, we saw an interesting record from Wang Jian’s personal Baidu Encyclopedia. In 2010, the Sino-Danish Genome Joint Center, jointly established by the Shenzhen BGI Research Institute of China and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, completed the world’s first In-depth sequencing and interpretation of the entire ancient human genome.
So a clear timeline was formed. BGI and the University of Copenhagen first cooperated, and then its executives obtained a doctorate from this university. It should be noted that we are only stating facts here, and have no intention of Prove that these two things are related.
After the effectiveness of probiotics was questioned by Rao Yi, Yin Ye published an article on his personal public account, including all the research articles on BGI related to the flora, “BGI has published 3565 SCI-indexed papers, including There are 71 related research articles.” Yin Ye said.
But the article doesn’t answer a question. In mid-2021, Yin Ye, who just became the CEO of the group, told reporters in an exclusive interview, “I don’t want to make quick money.” So does selling probiotics count as making quick money?
Similarly, in January 2018, Yin Ye took the lead in publishing personal whole genome sequencing at the JP Morgan conference and officially entered the era of 100 yuan dollars. But at present, in the official flagship store of BGI, various genetic tests are packaged as To C products for sale, of which the price of the personal whole genome test is 56,800 yuan, and the discount is also 45,800 yuan.
This is the reason why people cannot penetrate BGI in recent years. Because it always has two completely different images, one is a commercial company that has joined the WTO, and the other is a research institution that was born. In fact, this characteristic is not only reflected in BGI and Yin Ye, but also in its founder Wang Jian.
In 2019, our colleagues had a face-to-face chat with Wang Jian and asked him, “Why did you turn around and leave without ringing the clock when you went public?”
Wang Jian replied at the time, “Why did I knock that, how could I touch that thing?”
But then he said: “When I was asked to ring the bell, I had to go to the toilet. At that moment, I urinated frequently and urgently, so I didn’t say that I couldn’t get through with ringing the bell.”
You see, in just a few minutes, Wang Jian gave two Wang Jian.
Among the two Wang Jian, one is like this. According to his own statement, he is not a business-driven person. This is the biggest difference between him and Wang Shi. Wang Shi is the boss of a serious commercial listed company, while Wang Jian is a person who was “abducted” from basic science and was accidentally forced into the market.
The other one looks very different.
In 2013, BGI Group acquired Complete Genomics (CG Company), an American gene sequencing company, and developed the gene sequencing instrument business on the basis of CG, that is, MGI, which is about to IPO.
However, with the establishment of BGI in 2016, shareholders of BGI found that this company, which is generally considered to have high market prospects, is not actually owned by BGI. Greatly did not put good things into listed companies.
But in fact, MGI is not only not under the banner of Huada Gene, but in terms of equity relationship, it is not even under the banner of Huada Group (Shenzhen Huada Gene Technology Co., Ltd., the parent company of Huada Gene). According to Tianyancha, the major shareholder of MGI is MGI Holdings Co., Ltd., a company wholly-owned by Wang Jian.
Three years ago, our colleague asked Wang Shi a question, “Is Wang Jian a person who is not down-to-earth?” Wang Shi replied, “You have all misunderstood. When it comes to down-to-earth, Mr. Wang is a master.”
02
A researcher engaged in genetic testing still remembers that he visited BGI’s laboratory many years ago. Hundreds of Illumina sequencers were placed there, accounting for one-third of the world’s throughput at that time, which was a luxury.
Also because of such a large throughput, BGI has performed gene sequencing on a variety of Asian organisms and published many articles in the world’s top journals.
The researcher believes that in China, BGI has indeed driven the development of the high-throughput sequencing industry. Although many studies are engineering, their results are still great academic contributions. But he also laments the state of the company.
Judging from the annual report of BGI in 2021, the company’s two largest businesses are precision medical testing comprehensive solutions and reproductive health testing business. The precision medical testing-related business actually mainly refers to the new crown nucleic acid testing reagents and services. The reproductive health testing business refers to non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPT).
As we all know, whether it is the new crown nucleic acid test or NIPT, the technological content and technical threshold in the gene sequencing industry are not high, especially the new crown nucleic acid test. At present, there are many related companies in the market. Coupled with the price control at the government level, currently Its unit price and gross profit margin have fallen sharply.
The development of NIPT in China is full of ups and downs. The business was once suspended, and after it was released, it was controversial due to excessive marketing.
In 2018, Huxiu pointed out in an article titled “BGI Cancer” that out of commercial interests and excessive marketing, BGI’s core business, NIPT (non-invasive fetal DNA testing), made some doctors make inaccurate judgments. As a result, patients gave up comprehensive examinations, and eventually some pregnant women gave birth to children with physical defects, bringing a lifetime of tragedy to the family.
Since then, the growth of BGI’s NIPT business has slowed down rapidly, especially in 2020 and 2021, which has basically been flat. At the same time, as the NIPT market matures, the gross profit margin of this business is also declining year by year.
The above-mentioned researchers pointed out that as an auxiliary diagnosis and treatment testing project, the gene sequencing industry is currently recognized as the most technical threshold, and the most promising field should be tumor NGS testing, because a considerable part of cancer is caused by mutations in specific genetic loci. The principle of tumor-targeted drugs is to target these sites for precision medicine.
But this is not easy, because there are usually dozens of gene loci that cause cancer. Before there is no precise target, in order to find an effective targeted drug, patients usually need to make a lot of attempts.
Based on tumor NGS detection, it is possible to precisely lock gene mutation sites, and then perform precision medicine on patients.
Since 2015, there may be thousands of gene sequencing startups, most of which focus on tumor NGS detection. “After all these years of fighting, there is not much left,” said the above-mentioned person.
However, there are also some companies that have grown up in the competition. Currently, the recognized leading companies in the industry are Burning Rock Medicine, Shihe Gene, etc.
Obviously, as the earliest commercial gene sequencing company in China, BGI has not developed prominently in the field of tumor NGS detection. In 2021, the related business income of BGI will only be 380 million yuan, while the operating income of Burning Rock Medicine and Shihe Gene will both be around 500 million yuan.
The reason for such a situation is nothing more than that BGI’s competitiveness is not obvious in the relevant subdivisions.
“Maybe BGI is too big, so in every subdivision, it has not been established.” The above researcher said.
In addition, it should also be noted that the tumor NGS testing business is essentially an expansion of the hospital laboratory department. The decision of which testing institution patients choose is often in the hands of doctors.
As a result, many companies engaged in tumor NGS testing are building their own strong sales teams, especially some companies with pharmaceutical company backgrounds, which have more experience in leveraging doctor resources.
The ability to run through departments is obviously not the strength of BGI. From the perspective of the industry, BGI focuses more on the positioning of service providers.
An example is that BGI previously launched the stem cell storage business. At that time, its model was to implement the cooperation of local agents, but soon after, BGI had a serious dispute with individual agents.
Since 2021, the stock price of Huada Gene has been in a downward range. Since the beginning of this year, the stock price of Huada Gene has fallen by more than 24%, and has fallen by more than 42% in the past 8 months.
From the 19-character daily limit in a row to the continuous decline today, but within two years, the stock price of BGI has returned to the beginning of the outbreak of the new crown epidemic.
03
In fact, when BGI sticks to low-threshold fields such as NIPT and new crown testing, it is not that the BGI department has not embarked on a difficult road, that is, MGI. It now appears that this uncrowded road will allow Hua Da Department and Wang Jian to reach new heights.
In Wang Jiankou’s words, MGI was “forced by the Americans”. Because before this company was born, the entire second-generation gene sequencing market, core technologies, and patents had been monopolized by multinational pharmaceutical giants such as Illumina, ThermoFisher, and Roche. Illumina, in particular, has had the pricing power over the world’s second-generation gene sequencing equipment for quite some time.
Although BGI and Illumina used to be very good counterparties, cracks have gradually emerged between the two companies over time.
In 2013, in order to break the monopoly of Illumina, BetaAcquisition Corporation, an American subsidiary of BGI Group, completed the acquisition of CG, an American gene sequencing company, and launched BGISEQ-100 and BGISEQ-1000, the self-owned brand sequencers of BGI.
So what kind of company is CG? The above researchers told us that although CG’s technology in bioinformatics is very good, when it comes to gene sequencing itself, the main problem is to bypass the patents of Illumina and other companies and explore new implementation methods, so it is impossible to start from the beginning. reach or even surpass the original technology. Years ago, he had looked at the CG company’s data, and it was really not enough in terms of accuracy and complexity.
But today, from the perspective of published papers and applications on the market, he believes that the instruments made by MGI should not be bad.
“The key is that compared with Illumina, the price of MGI’s instruments is too cheap.” The person said that his company has also planned to buy domestic equipment.
Relevant data from MGI can also prove the choice of the market. In fact, the first purpose of the birth of MGI is to solve the self-use of BGI’s instruments. Because of contradictions, Illumina no longer sells instruments and related reagents to BGI, which is undoubtedly the core business of the company. Salary from the bottom of the pot.
It is understood that until 2018, MGI started to sell to the outside world in a real sense, that is, since then, the proportion of related party transactions of the company has decreased year by year, and by 2020, only 18.81% remained. At the same time, in 2020, MGI also turned losses into profits, with a net profit of 256 million yuan that year.
However, over the years, the conflict with Illumina is still interfering with the development of MGI.
Since 2019, Illumina and its subsidiaries have initiated or may initiate patent and trademark infringement lawsuits outside China against MGI, its subsidiaries, distributors, and customers. The countries or regions involved in the lawsuit include 17 countries and regions including the United States, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Spain, Hong Kong, China, Denmark, Turkey, Finland, Italy, Japan, Greece, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
On July 15, MGI announced that it had reached a settlement with Illumina on all pending lawsuits in the United States.
Under the terms of the agreement, Illumina will pay a net compensation fee of $325 million to CG, a subsidiary of MGI.
Soon, MGI will be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, becoming the first stock of gene sequencing instruments in China.
However, even if MGI is on the rise, it is still only one star in Wang Jian’s “sky”.
In Wang Jian’s vision, BGI wants to be a whole industry chain of “all-in-one”. Horizontally: basic research, social responsibility, scientific and technological services, medical testing, personal health, agricultural breeding, genetic engineering, biotechnology venture capital, and even innovative talent training; vertically: instrument manufacturing, reagent research and development, sequencing production, Information interpretation, technology transformation, product promotion and a series of links.
He once made it clear that all the industries involved will not be cut off.
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