Samsung BioLogics said Tuesday that it recorded 131 billion won ($121.1 million) in sales in the first quarter of this year, a 21.2 percent decrease from the previous quarter.

The contract manufacturing organization (CMO) service provider also registered 10 billion won in operating profit in the same period, losing over 80 percent of its 50 billion won operating profit from the previous quarter.

“Sales of Samsung BioLogics declined by 35.3 billion quarter on quarter (QoQ), and operating profit by 40.6 billion won due to productivity drop, which is a characteristic of the biopharmaceutical business,” the company said in a statement.

Net loss increased to 57.2 billion won due to an unrealized loss on intercompany transactions with Samsung Bioepis, an affiliate of Samsung Biologics, the company added.

However, when compared with the first quarter of last year, sales and operating profit increased 23.4 billion won and 6.6 billion won, respectively, as capacity utilization at its second plant continued to grow.

Despite the weaker sales performances, Samsung BioLogics became the first Korean pharmaceutical company to obtain ISO 22301 certificate, the international standard Business Continuity Management System (BCMS), on Wednesday, it said.

ISO 22301 certification is a comprehensive standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that represents the highest level of commitment to business continuity and disaster preparation.

In the case of biopharmaceuticals, safe production and supply of drugs are crucial as they directly affect the lives of patients. Accordingly, global pharmaceutical companies consider crisis systems as critical and request a high level of crisis response system from their CMO partners.

Samsung BioLogics has launched an in-house task force, composed of 16 teams and 22 people, and has identified a total of 573 projected risks since 2016. The company has established procedures to prevent such accidents from happening while implementing a system to recover as quickly as possible in such an event.

“Through the ISO 22301 certificate, the company has once again reaffirmed its quality management ability, which will be a great help in contracting additional orders,” Samsung BioLogics CEO Kim Tae-han said. “We will continue to identify internal and external risks and improve our processes so that we can become a company that leads global standards for crisis response by providing our customers with high service availability and business continuity.”

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