GC Biopharma Sells Entire Stake in US Vaccine Subsidiary 'Curevo' to Eli Lilly... Valued at 460 Billion Won

The corporation GC Biopharma has secured large-scale financial resources for new business investments by selling its entire stake in 'Curevo', a US-based shingles vaccine development subsidiary, to the global major pharmaceutical company 'Eli Lilly'.

GC Biopharma announced on the 27th that it held a board of directors meeting the previous day and decided to transfer 21,075,336 shares of Curevo for 459.92641 billion won. This is a large-scale asset sale contract amounting to 32.99% of GC Biopharma's equity capital and 15.48% of its total assets. Once the sale process is completed, GC Biopharma's stake in Curevo will become 0%, and the scheduled transfer date is August 24.

The total transaction amount will be paid entirely in cash and will be injected in stages according to conditions. Upon meeting the closing conditions for the share transfer, such as regulatory approval, an upfront payment of 284.6 billion won will be paid first within 6 business days, and upon fulfillment of additional subsequent conditions, 21.9 billion won will be additionally deposited. The remaining 153.3 billion won is structured to be received in the form of milestones if the developed substance achieves its sales target within a certain period in the future.

Hanul Accounting Corporation, which conducted an external evaluation of this sale price, stated that as a result of an analysis applying the discounted cash flow method, the estimated value range of Curevo's shares was calculated to be between 264.88 million dollars (approximately 400.8 billion won) and 339.54 million dollars (approximately 513.8 billion won). Accordingly, it presented the opinion that the total sale price of 303.92 million dollars (approximately 459.9 billion won) agreed upon by both companies falls within an appropriate level, and there is no basis to judge it as inappropriate from a materiality perspective.

Curevo, the target company for the sale, is an R&D company specializing in shingles vaccines headquartered in the United States. As of the end of 2025, it records total assets of 99.2 billion won and total equity of 86.8 billion won; due to the nature of the new drug development stage, no sales were generated, and it recorded a net loss of 63.3 billion won last year.

In the pharmaceutical and bio industry, as GC Biopharma explicitly stated 'securing financial resources for new business investments' through the public disclosure, it is expected that the company will use this large-scale cash inflow as a stepping stone to accelerate in earnest the securing of new pipelines for future growth engines and investment in new businesses.