Jun 16, 2022 | Business
Legend Capital’s portfolio company Talent New Energy, a new Chinese powerhouse in the solid-state battery industry, recently announced the completion of its Series A++ financing round with several hundred million RMB. Legend Capital initially invested in Talent New Energy by joining the Pre-A financing round and continued to support the company’s development by following up this Series A++ financing round.
With the improved battery technology and continuous high oil prices, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles is rising. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China reached 25.3% in April, and according to the industry forecasts, it will increase to 35% by the end of the year. Under the global background of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, the wind power, photovoltaic and energy storage industry are also ushering in a golden era, gradually replacing the traditional fossil energy. With the technical advantages of high safety and high specific energy, it is widely believed in the industry that solid-state batteries will become the next trillion-level super track and the ultimate solution for battery technology.
Technology innovation is the core path to support the realization of carbon neutrality. With the acceleration of vehicle electrification, applications such as energy storage have opened up a new trillion-level market. Legend Capital actively explores suitable investment opportunities in more advanced lithium battery technologies. As a brand-new technology solution, new energy solid-state batteries have been deeply explored by many giants and startups in China and around the world. With nearly 20 years of international and domestic solid-state battery R&D technology accumulation, the Talent New Energy team has determined the oxide technology route and the gradual development path from mixed solid-liquid to all-solid-state lithium battery since the establishment of the company in 2018.
Legend Capital stated: “under the leadership of the founder Dr. GAO Xiang, the Talent New Energy team has been conducting R&D with the goal of industrialization, not only achieving a comprehensive breakthrough in product performance but also making Talent New Energy the leading semi-solid-state battery company in the market in terms of mass production capability. After the completion of the first investment in Talent New Energy last year, Legend Capital has continued to support the company’s development by investing in each subsequent round of Talent New Energy’s financing, helping the company become a leader in the solid-state battery industry in various aspects such as capital and industrial resources.”
It is reported that Talent New Energy’s first semi-solid-state power battery production line in Chongqing will be put into production in October this year. Talent New Energy said that after this round of financing, the company would accelerate the integration of technological resources to set up an advanced energy materials research institute and a new energy technology industrialization joint R&D center in Beijing. The company is accelerating the mass production and commercialization of semi-solid-state lithium batteries and striving to launch the all-solid-state lithium-ion battery at the end of this year, providing advanced and reliable energy solutions to the new energy vehicle industry and electrochemical energy storage industry and providing “energy blocks” for the construction of new infrastructure for high-efficiency cross-space-time energy storage in the future human society.
Under the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, Legend Capital’s investments focus on energy system decarbonization, vehicle electrification/intelligence and synthetic biology. Energy decarbonization includes photovoltaics, wind power, smart grids; vehicle electrification/intelligence includes lithium battery vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, battery recycling and others.
Legend Capital has long been optimistic about the electrification, intelligence, and automation of new energy vehicles. It has invested in numerous enterprises in automation equipment, lithium batteries and material in the past 10 years, many of which were went public successfully, such as Wuxi Lead Intelligent (300450.SZ), CNGR Advanced Material (300919.SZ), Putailai New Energy (603659.SH), Hymson Laser (688559.SH), Colibri Technologies (002957.SZ). Legend Capital is also one of the early investors of CATL (300750.SZ).
Topic: Press release summary
May 26, 2022 | Business
On April 26, 2022, the expedition ship Xuelong 2 for China’s 38th Antarctic expedition berthed at the Shanghai base dock. So far, China’s 38th Antarctic expedition, which lasted 174 days and traveled more than 33,000 nautical miles, has ended successfully.
For the 38th Antarctic expedition, the Polar Surveying and Mapping Engineering Center of Heilongjiang Surveying and Mapping Geographic Information Bureau, the School of Surveying and Mapping of Sun Yat-sen University, and the Third Institute of the Ministry of Natural Resources both chose drones from Feima Robotics, a civilian UAV manufacturer in China, to assist in polar aerial photogrammetry. According to media reports, the 38th Antarctic expedition successfully completed the tasks of material supply and personnel rotation at the Great Wall Station and Zhongshan Station in Antarctica and achieved many scientific research results.
Since the 33rd Antarctic expedition in 2016, the civilian UAV intelligent aerial survey remote sensing system series from Feima Robotics has successfully assisted China’s 33rd, 34th, 36th, and 38th Antarctic expedition. Different from the previous three Antarctic expeditions, Feima civilian UAV took over the honored F-series civilian UAV in the 38th expedition, and dispatched V10, D2000, V1000, V100 and other civilian models currently in mainstream service, becoming the only civilian UAV manufacturer in China that has a full range of civilian UAV products to serve polar scientific expeditions and has successfully obtained large-scale effective aerial photography results. As of the completion of the 38th Antarctic expedition in 2022, the Feima civilian UAV has completed nearly 150 total historical and effective flights over the polar regions of the South and North Pole, achieving a veritable “Feima Antarctic Era”.
Feima Robotics was founded in 2015 and is a company with more than 15 years of extensive experience in the civilian drone industry. Legend Capital is the very early-stage investor of Feima Robotics as Legend Capital led the Feima Robotics’ Series A financing round in June 2016 and has long supported the company’s development. Since the establishment of Legend Capital in 2001, it has been systematically investing in the field of science and technology, including new generation display materials, IoT, autonomous driving, AI pharmaceuticals, etc. At present, the investment portfolio has reached more than 100 companies. Legend Capital’s technology investments closely follow the national industrial planning and policy guidance and majorly focus on cutting-edge technology fields.
Topic: Press release summary
Apr 27, 2022 | Business
Legend Capital’s portfolio company Lunit, a Korean Medical AI company, recently announced a preliminary approval from the Korea Exchange for initial public offering (IPO) on the KOSDAQ market, and it plans to submit a registration statement within the second quarter of 2022.
Founded in 2013, Lunit is a company with the world’s top-notch AI technology focusing on R&D of medical software to assist tumor diagnosis and treatment. It utilizes advanced AI technology to process medical image data, which helps doctors to make accurate clinical decisions in diagnosis and treatment. Lunit’s flagship products are Lunit INSIGHT, an AI image analysis solution for cancer screening, and Lunit SCOPE, an AI biomarker platform for cancer treatment.
According to Korean media reports, Lunit is considered one of the most promising medical AI IPOs in Korea in the first half of 2022. After the listing, Lunit plans to use the secured funding for R&D of AI products and global market development, laying the cornerstone for sustainable growth.
Lunit has partnered with global medical device giants such as GE Healthcare, Philips, and FujiFilm to supply products to about 600 medical sites in more than 40 countries worldwide. In addition, Lunit is also focusing on its biomarker business by signing an exclusive business contract with Guardant Health, a leading global liquid biopsy company.
Brandon Suh, CEO of Lunit, said: “Lunit is the first deep learning-based medical AI company in Korea with a specialized AI research team and medical team, developing AI solutions for cancer diagnosis and treatment. As our AI technologies and products are acknowledged globally, we will strive to continuously grow and pioneer the global medical AI market by going public.”
Legend Capital has invested in Lunit 4 times in 2018, 2019, and 2021; it is one of the company’s main investors and has long supported its development. Closely following the deep integration of medical and health industry and technology, Legend Capital has built a solid portfolio in medical AI sector in recent years. In addition to Lunit, Legend Capital also invested in a number of other leading medical AI companies, such as Xbiome, an AI-based microbiome drug development company, StoneWise, an AI technology-driven innovative drug R&D platform company, Deepwise Healthcare, an AI medical imaging company, Deep Informatics++, an AI medical pathological diagnosis company, Genome Wisdom, a genomic big data company, and Ayshealth Technology, an AI medical chronic disease management system company.
Topic: Press release summary
Apr 24, 2022 | Business
Shanghai Langsheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Legend Capital’s co-founded company Innostellar Biotherapeutics, announced that the clinical trial application of its product LX101 injection for the treatment of patients with Rpe65 biallelic mutation-associated inherited retinal degenerations (IRD) was approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the National Medical Products Administration of China.
Founded in 2020, Innostellar Biotherapeutics is a biopharmaceutical startup company focusing on gene therapy for innovative drug discovery, manufacture, and commercialization. Its core team consists of scientists and professionals from world-renowned institutions and biopharmaceutical companies. Since its establishment, Innostellar Biotherapeutics has been working closely with top-notch clinical scientists from hospitals around China and focusing on urgent needs of patients with genetic diseases and chronic diseases. The company has laid a firm foundation in the proof-of-concept development of a number of pipelines, process technology development, and quality system.
Inherited retinal degeneration (IRD) caused by the Rpe65 gene mutation is a typical rare disease that leads to blindness and has no effective treatment in the past. As a breakthrough technology, gene therapy provides the possibility to compensate or fix defective genes and fundamentally reinstate the normal gene functions. According to the early data of related products abroad, the treatment helped IRD patients in vision improvement and maintained therapeutic qualities for long term.
Dr. Fenghua WANG, CEO of Innostellar Biotherapeutics, said: “This is an important milestone for our company since its founding. LX101 has gradually demonstrated its therapeutic potential since we cooperated with the National Clinical Research Center for Eye Diseases in 2021 to carry out the first IIT clinical research of IRD gene therapy in China. We expect LX101 to benefit more patients with the therapeutic breakthroughs and maximal treatment effects. We also expect gene therapy to provide effective solutions for improving life of people with genetic and chronic diseases.
Innostellar Biotherapeutics was co-founded by Legend Capital and its founding team. As the earliest investor in the company, Legend Capital and the Innostellar team worked together on company structure organization design, strategy decision, and pipeline planning. With constant support to the development of Innostellar Biotherapeutics, Legend Capital has backed the company in its two rounds of financing. Legend Capital has long been committed to systemic investment in the field of innovative medicine. Adhering to the investment philosophy of “Global Vision, Chinese Perspective”, Legend Capital is looking for truly internationally competitive technologies and teams to solve the unmet clinical needs; many of its portfolio companies have listed on A-share or H-share successfully, such as Kawin Technology (688687.SH), Innovent Biologics (01801.HK), Harbour BioMed (02142.HK), and Recbio Technology (02179.HK). At the same time, Legend Capital also have made investments in leading companies in the segment like Suzhou Ribo Life Science, Pegbio, Exegenesis Bio, Lynk Pharmaceuticals, and Glubio.
Topic: Press release summary
Apr 3, 2022 | Business
According to South China Morning Post, Global market experienced another rock year. The impact of COVID-19 still not got away, the chaos of global supply chain showed that the world still need time to recover; the aftermath of geopolitical factors heavily disturbed the global capital markets, further sparked investor concerns. In such an environment, a comprehensive company with a solid business foundation and years of forward-looking layout tends to have higher risk tolerance, such as Legend Holdings. The company announced its 2021 annual results yesterday, achieving a steady growth.
Mr. Li Peng, CEO of Legend Holdings stated: “the company strengthened its foothold in its industries of focus, proactively responded to the impact of the pandemic and various external environmental changes, dynamically modified business strategies and increased investment in technology and innovation. Legend Holdings realized a revenue of RMB489.872 billion, an increase of 17% year-on-year, and a net profit attributable to equity holders of the Company of RMB5.755 billion, an increase of 49% year-on-year. Both revenue and profit hit new high.”
Continuous Growth Momentum of Industrial Operations Segment, Business Foundation Further Consolidated
Legend Holdings’ sound performance is mainly due to the continuous growth momentum of industrial operations segment, pillar companies in this segment consolidate existing advantages and deepen innovation in all aspects, namely Lenovo, Levima Advanced Materials, Joyvio Group and Banque Internationale a Luxembourg S. A (BIL).
In 2021, Lenovo seized the opportunities of global digitalization and intelligent transformation, the three core businesses achieved record-high results and further improvement of profitability, resulting in a net profit attributable to equity holders of Legend Holdings amounted to RMB4.019 billion, an increase of 92% year-on-year. Lenovo has always attached importance to investment in science and technology, and in 2021, it set a goal of “investing an annual average of RMB20 billion in R&D in the next three years and doubling its R&D personnel to no less than 24,000”. At present, relevant work is progressing steadily. In the fourth quarter of 2021, it invested RMB3.5 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 38%.
Levima Advanced Materials adhered to its innovation-driven strategy with a 60% year-on-year increase in R&D investment and planned to invest RMB10 billion in the fields of new energy materials and biodegradable materials, some projects have already started. Benefiting from factors such as strong demand for new energy products, improved operational efficiency, and high-end differentiated product strategies, it realized a net profit attributable to equity holders of Legend Holdings of RMB565 million, an increase of 70% year-on-year.
Joyvio Group continued to focus on its two main business lines, namely high-end fruit and premium animal protein and turned loss into profit through a series of initiatives during the reporting period. BIL constantly upgraded its business models and in 2021, all of its key business indicators recorded year-on-year growth, CET-1 ratio up to 14.15%, net profit attributable to equity holders of Legend Holdings amounted to RMB873 million, an increase of 35% year-on-year (excluding exchange rate differences).
Through the above companies’ performance, we can find that in 2021, Legend Holdings has not only solidified the foundation of industrial operations, but also increased investment in technology innovation in line with national strategies, and the future development of the company is expected to be worth looking forward to. Legend Holdings has a tradition of deep involvement in the field of technology and innovation, and this tradition is also fully demonstrated in its industries incubations and investments segment.
Growing Industrial Incubations and Investments, Greater Support for Technology Start-ups
Legend Holdings has deployed technology start-ups for a long time, and in 2021, Legend Holdings continued to redouble its efforts in investment and financial support regarding scientific and technological innovation.
With the background of the government attaching great importance to the development of the semiconductor industry, Legend Holdings has earlier made a strategic investment in the high-tech company Fullhan Microelectronics, which specialized in the design and development of chips, and further increased its holding shares to 15.90% in 2021. Fullhan Microelectronics maintained a high proportion of R&D investment and promoted the improvement and upgrade of product lines. It has developed a complete product line from simulation to digitization and from front end to back end, with its R&D expenditure up by more than 100% over the previous year. In 2021, Legend Holdings and Fullhan Microelectronics jointly founded Hanlian Semiconductor Industry Fund for greater cooperation in the semiconductor industry.
Through Legend Capital and Legend Star, Legend Holdings invested in more than 100 new innovative technological projects, covering advanced technology, biomedicine, advanced manufacturing, TMT, and other fields, with 21 of its investee companies entering domestic and overseas capital markets. As of the end of 2021, there were 39 companies invested by Legend Holdings have been selected into the list of national-level Specialized, Fined, Peculiar, and Innovative (SFPI) enterprises. In addition, Legend Holdings and its subsidiaries’ businesses have also supported the growth of nearly 200 Chinese SFPI enterprises through supply chain procurement, financial support and professional services.
The Legend Holdings’ long-term investment in companies with high technological potential shows the insight to future. These actions would provide abundant financial returns and long-term development and will further nurture or establish a range of enterprises to take up leading positions while having excellent profitability in multiple industries and fields, meanwhile make more contributions to the development of innovative technological industries of China in the next step.
Comprehensively Strengthening ESG-related Initiatives
In recent years, global warming has led to a variety of environmental problems such as melting glaciers and rising sea levels, which has also aroused the concern of various countries. With the introduction of China’s “carbon peaking and neutrality” target last year and the unanimous decision to “accelerate climate action” at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) has been elevated to a new level, and the capital market is paying more attention to corporate ESG initiatives, which can also highlight corporate values.
In 2021, Legend Holdings strengthened and implemented its ESG-related initiatives into daily running continually. Lenovo reduced carbon emissions by 92% over the past decade, selected as a UN Advanced Business Practices case for low carbon practices. In 2021, It also set a goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and actively exports products, services and solutions to help various industries achieve carbon neutrality. Levima Advanced Materials also protected the environment in its business, put vigorous efforts to develop new energy and biodegradable materials, and effectively achieved the objectives of lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions through different initiatives.
In terms of ESG investments that have emerged in recent years, Legend Holdings’ subsidiaries are also at the forefront. BIL formally became a signature-recognized bank of the United Nations Global Compact and the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking (UN PRBs) and helped Chinese-invested enterprises successfully issue green bonds. Legend Capital, as the first leading VC/PE institution in China joining United Nations Organization for Responsible Investment, has invested in over 20 “dual-carbon” technology-based enterprises.
Looking into future, Mr. Ning Min, chairman of Legend Holdings said: “We have never forgotten our mission of promoting technological innovation, assisting industrial development, and our social responsibility as an international enterprise rooted in China. Facing the future, we will always keep an open mind, a pragmatic style, uphold the entrepreneurial spirit, move forward with courage, and make more positive contributions to the new era with solid achievements on the new journey in the future.”
Topic: Press release summary
Sectors: Daily Finance, Daily News
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