Samsung's biotech unit debuts in Seoul. Here's what to know.
The company has included bio tech and health care in the five businesses it named as future growth engines for the next decade, to counter slowing growth in its key consumer electronics businesses.
Just as it has made huge profits suppling microchips to Apple and other tech companies, Samsung believes it can supply biologic drugs to global pharmaceutical companies.
Samsung Bioepis, an affiliate of Samsung Biologics, does research and development of biosimilars, or cheap copies of biologic drugs, to be manufactured by its parent company.
Once it goes online in 2018, Samsung Biologics will become the world's biggest supplier of biological medicines to global pharmaceutical companies by annual capacity, surpassing the two largest contract drug makers, Lonza of Switzerland and Boehringer Ingelheim of Germany.
Lee Jae-yong has a strong incentive to build on that, as he holds a 17.1 percent stake in Samsung C&T. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of memory chips, smartphones and TVs, owns a 31.5 percent stake in the drug maker.
Some analysts question whether Samsung Biologics really merits an $8 billion valuation, but Park Si-hyoung, an equity analyst at Baro Investment & Securities, puts the company's value at 10.5 trillion won ($9.1 billion) taking into account its future manufacturing capacity and drugs in the Bioepis pipeline.