■ Growth Strategy of Phoenix Bio <6190>

1. Market Environment When it comes to video distribution, there are few pure-play companies that can handle various types of video distribution, such as J-Stream <4308>. However, some companies that are partially similar include Brightcove Inc and Vimeo Inc for video sharing and distribution platforms, and Akamai Technologies, Inc. and Amazon.com Inc , which provide Amazon CloudFront and CDN services, respectively. They are all global giant companies. In addition, some major ISP providers that deliver the service to their own members and portal site providers that partner with major content holders to provide secondary distribution services also conduct some business similar to the company. In the case of webinars in the pharmaceutical area, which account for a large proportion of the company's revenue, some overlap with the business of Kimura Information Technology Co., Ltd. and M3, Inc. 2. Meanwhile, the viewing environment of internet videos has improved both indoors and outdoors, due to people carrying devices capable of playing videos such as smartphones at all times, as well as the improvement of Wi-Fi environments and the spread of 5G. Additionally, the increasing use of videos in SNS and in-house portals, improved recognition of cost reduction and promotional effects resulting from the use of videos, and other factors have further improved the video-distribution environment. Therefore, not only Generation Z, who grew up with digitalization, but all generations have started to watch videos on the internet, and the video distribution market has rapidly expanded, especially due to the increase in demand for online services amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It was expected that the demand for hybrid and other types of video distribution would continue to be strong even after the pandemic. However, with the transition to the fifth phase of the new coronavirus infection in May 2023, there has been a strong trend toward real-world meetings, particularly in the pharmaceutical and EVC areas, and the industry seems to have gone through a short-term plateau. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that online services, including hybrid, will regain their growth momentum by 2024, after the real-world meeting trend subsides, given the convenience and high value of video distribution. In this environment, the company, which has accumulated know-how as a pioneer and a pure-play company for many years while constantly incorporating cutting-edge technology, is also expected to return to the growth trend.

In pharmaceutical development, there is a shift towards next-generation pharmaceuticals (such as nucleic acid drugs, cell therapy, regenerative medicine) that are more effective and safe, targeting not only proteins that cause diseases but also the synthesis of the proteins themselves that cause diseases by targeting human 'DNA' and 'RNA'. This trend is called the 'transformation of drug modality (the method or means of how pharmaceuticals are made, or the classification of pharmaceuticals based on that)' by technological innovation.

According to the company's data (source: TCP Marketing Research '2022 Global Nucleic Acid Pharmaceutical Market'), the market for next-generation pharmaceuticals, specifically nucleic acid drugs (preventive and therapeutic drugs), was predominantly occupied by preventive drugs, such as COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, from 2021 to 2022. However, it is predicted that the market size of therapeutic drugs will expand (from 363.7 billion yen in 2021 to 2.0882 trillion yen in 2035). In the development of nucleic acid drugs, there has been a challenge in evaluating them using conventional animal models. However, the company's PXB mice, which possess human DNA, have the advantage of making evaluation possible, and there is great potential for market development.

In terms of the composition ratio of revenue by modality, while the percentage of small molecule pharmaceuticals decreased from 22% in the fiscal year ending March 2022 to 17% in the fiscal year ending March 2024, the percentage of nucleic acid drugs increased from 31% to 54%. Due to the transformation of drug modality, nucleic acid drugs are experiencing an upward trend.

(Authored by FISCO guest analyst Masanobu Mizuta)