How did this round of "monkey madness" come into being

One must stay focused on the "lab monkey segment."

On July 14th, Joinn Laboratories announced that its estimated net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies for the first half of 2026 would range from 600 million yuan to 900 million yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 884.9% to 1377.4%. Driven by this news, Joinn Laboratories' stock price hit the daily 10% price limit strongly today.

The explosive growth in Joinn Laboratories' performance is closely tied to the surging prices of lab monkeys. Currently, the price of experimental monkeys has climbed back to around 200,000 yuan per head.

The company has explicitly stated that during the reporting period, the dual factors of rising market prices for biological assets and natural growth appreciation have driven a positive change in their fair value, making a positive contribution to the company's performance.

The market is no stranger to the "monkey frenzy" trend, and similar speculative cycles have played out before. However, history will not repeat itself exactly. How exactly has this current round of the experimental monkey market boom sweeping across the industry taken shape?

Dual Drivers: "Low Reproductive Capacity" + Robust Demand

This current round of the "monkey frenzy" market trend is essentially fueled by two core factors.

First, there is the issue of "insufficient reproductive output." According to research data from Huachuang Securities, the domestic captive population of experimental monkeys is only about 200,000, among which breeding female monkeys number less than 100,000, with the average birth rate dropping sharply from over 50% to below 30%.

What is even more alarming is that the age structure of domestic experimental monkeys forms an inverted triangle: young monkeys aged 0–4 account for 30%, prime breeding monkeys aged 4–10 make up only 20%, and the proportion of elderly monkeys aged 10–15 is excessively high, creating a clear supply gap between generations.

The ideal population structure should be "large in the middle and small at both ends." This imbalanced structure directly points to population aging, which will affect the sustainable supply of experimental monkeys in the long run.

Second, demand is gradually growing. The rigidity of demand for experimental monkeys stems from their short-to-medium-term irreplaceability: non-human primates are the irreplaceable core model for preclinical trials of macromolecular drugs. In recent years, the global boom in antibody drug R&D has continuously widened the demand gap for experimental monkeys.

On one hand, the R&D boom continues to accelerate, while on the other hand, factors like population aging have created a gap that cannot be filled in the short term. Experimental monkeys have fallen into a silent but persistent supply-demand imbalance, which has led to the sharp price surge.

The Antidote to the Cycle

To some extent, the root cause of this predicament is the backlash left by the previous price cycle.

From 2018 to 2022, the price of experimental monkeys skyrocketed from 10,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, plunging the industry into a frenzy of "selling every monkey available." A large number of breeding-age monkeys were prioritized for sale as commercial products rather than being retained for breeding, depleting the population structure from its very source.

This is not hard to understand. In a market where monkeys are extremely scarce, few companies are willing to sacrifice immediate profits to maintain long-term breeding stocks. Even though prices have now dropped below 100,000 yuan, the industry still views this as a high-prosperity range, and farms prefer to "lock in profits" rather than bet on the future.

Retaining breeding monkeys means incurring current costs, enduring long-term investment cycles, and facing uncertain returns. It takes at least 6 years for a breeding monkey to produce offspring that are ready for market. Six years ago, prices were prohibitively high, and no one can predict what the market will look like six years from now. This "realistic" choice has collectively led to today's aging monkey population.

Everything follows cycles, with large cycles nested within smaller ones. The aging of the experimental monkey population is essentially a biological cycle that the industry has selectively ignored.

When prices surged, profit-seeking impulses overrode long-term planning, and no one was willing to retain breeding monkeys. From 2023 to 2024, as prices declined, high investment costs and risks dampened the willingness to expand breeding operations. Now, as demand expectations recover, people realize that time has become an unavoidable hard threshold.

Combined with multiple uncertainties in policies, trade, and breeding stock sources, there are very few players who dare to take proactive, precautionary actions on a large scale.

The reality is harsh and clear. How to place the supply of experimental monkeys on a sustainable positive cycle remains an unsolved challenge. If downstream demand for innovative drugs continues to recover, the supply-demand gap is likely to tighten again, pushing prices higher once more and dragging the industry back into the familiar cycle.

Essentially, both the previous frenzied monkey price cycle and the new cycle now taking shape reflect the irreconcilable conflict between China's booming biopharmaceutical innovation wave and the underlying biological laws.

And the antidote to the cycle always lies beyond the cycle itself.

This article originates from the WeChat Official Account "Anji Observation" (ID: anjiguancha), authored by Zheng Xiao, and published by 36Kr with authorization.