NewTimeSpace | Hong Kong’s “first PDGF stock” frozen out by capital markets: B&K CORPORATION LIMITED (02396.HK) has lost more than 70% since listing

The listing bell rang, euphoria evaporated, the debut broke issue and the stock has been moribund ever since.

B&K CORPORATION LIMITED (02396.HK), which soared in pre-listing grey trading, has since been trapped in a relentless slide and is now about 70% below its offer price.

Secondary-market performance: down more than 70% since IPO

B&K is a leading domestic biopharma company built around the discovery, development and commercialisation of platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) therapeutics and owns several self-developed innovative biological drugs.

In the public offer the company placed 17.648 million H-shares. Hong Kong retail tranche was 791.95× oversubscribed and froze more than HKD 50 billion, while the international tranche was only 6.05× oversubscribed—an obvious contrast. No cornerstone investors participated.

The final offer price was fixed at HKD 38.20 per share, raising gross proceeds of about HKD 670 million; after deducting listing expenses the net was roughly HKD 600 million.

NewTimeSpace notes that B&K began trading on the Main Board on 22 December 2025. In grey trading a few days earlier the shares had at one point surged more than 30%.

The honeymoon ended immediately: on 22 December the shares opened at HKD 33.8, 11.5% below the offer, and closed at HKD 27, down 29.32%. Since then the price has drifted lower, with only brief rebounds. On 23 January 2026 the counter closed at HKD 10.71, a cumulative 71.96% fall from the IPO price in just one month.

Hong Kong’s “first PDGF stock” with two pipelines in the clinic

At listing B&K was marketed as “Hong Kong’s first PDGF stock”.

PDGF is one of the growth factors secreted by platelets after injury and the only recombinant growth factor approved by the FDA for topical use; it promotes neovascularisation, modulates inflammation and stimulates cell proliferation and migration, accelerating wound healing—especially in diabetic-foot ulcers.

Frost & Sullivan puts China’s wound-care market at RMB 95.7 billion in 2024, rising to RMB 104 billion in 2028 and RMB 118 billion in 2033—an incremental opportunity of roughly RMB 20 billion over the next decade.

Only three PDGF pipelines are active in China: one for chronic diabetic lower-limb skin ulcers, one for diabetic-foot ulcers and one for burns. The last two belong to B&K: Pro-101-1 entered Phase IIb for burns in December 2023 and Pro-101-2 entered Phase II for diabetic-foot ulcers in February 2022.

R&D hurdles remain; core products face substitutes

Growth-factor therapies now include PDGF, FGF, EGF and NGF. Although B&K faces little direct PDGF competition, the technical barriers are systemic: optimising the PDGF gene sequence for production, achieving high-purity purification, preventing protein aggregation or misfolding, and formulating/storing the protein to retain maximal activity.

More than 60% of the HKD 600 million raised is earmarked for clinical development and commercialisation of Pro-101-1 and Pro-101-2, but the timeline to approval is uncertain.

The company has yet to launch a product. Revenue was merely RMB 472k in 2023 and RMB 261k in 2024; the first nine months of 2025 produced zero revenue. Net losses were RMB 105 million, RMB 212 million and RMB 134 million for the respective periods. Cash and equivalents at 30 September 2025 were about RMB 73.9 million—equivalent to only 4.34 months of operations given a monthly burn of roughly RMB 17 million in 2024. The IPO proceeds ease the pressure temporarily but will not cover a lengthy development cycle.

Burn-wound alternatives already exist: eight domestic companies have nine approved growth-factor drugs (mainly EGF or FGF formulations) that are well entrenched in prescription habits for burns and wound repair. B&K will need superior clinical-endpoint data to displace them.

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