SK Biopharm’s Xcopri posts record U.S. sales, lifts earnings outlook

SK Biopharm said its central nervous system drug cenobamate, sold in the United States as Xcopri, drove record results as the company expanded its foothold in the U.S. epilepsy market. The company said U.S. sales of cenobamate totaled 630.3 billion won last year, up 44% from a year earlier.

SK Biopharm reported total revenue of 706.7 billion won and operating profit of 203.9 billion won, up 29.1% and 111.7%, respectively, from the previous year. The company said that compares with 246.2 billion won in revenue in 2022, nearly tripling over that period.

The company said cenobamate is an epilepsy treatment that became the first new drug developed by a South Korean company to win U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 2019. It said U.S. prescriptions in the fourth quarter jumped 29.2% from a year earlier, pushing the 2025 monthly average above 47,000.

Market watchers have credited a strengthened U.S. sales organization and “line of therapy” marketing for expanding early prescribing. SK Biopharm said, “As new patient inflows continue, the foundation for growth has become solid,” and raised its 2026 guidance for U.S. cenobamate sales to $580 million, about 860 billion won.

Lee Dong-hoon, SK Biopharm’s CEO, attended the company’s “2026 National Sales Meeting” in Florida earlier this year and said, “Based on a shared goal, we will break down organizational boundaries and move in the same direction,” adding that the company would pursue business expansion on the back of cenobamate’s success.

Lee, described by the company as an investment professional, has led the global sales expansion of cenobamate. He also serves as CEO of SK Life Science, SK Biopharm’s U.S. subsidiary, and oversaw the buildout of a direct U.S. sales system that helped lift operating profit above 200 billion won last year.

The company said Choi Yoon-jung, head of the strategy division and the eldest daughter of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, is overseeing investments and shaping a mid- to long-term roadmap. It said she was promoted to strategy chief in a recent reorganization and is directly managing future growth initiatives, including the launch of a radiopharmaceutical therapy, or RPT, division.  
SK Biopharm said it plans to use cenobamate’s momentum to increase research and development spending and accelerate pipelines that apply precision-medicine approaches, including for Parkinson’s disease. Some in the market have said expanding cenobamate’s share and moving RPT into clinical trials could speed the company’s push toward a top-tier biotech position.

Analysts said cenobamate is expected to hold a favorable position because it is the only branded new drug among epilepsy treatments. Huh Hye-min, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, said, “For now, cenobamate is the only branded new drug, so favorable market penetration is expected,” and added that because most R&D catalysts remain at early stages ahead of Phase 1 entry, the company is likely to expand R&D investment to secure growth drivers after Xcopri’s patent expiration.

SK Biopharm said it traces its origins to the “P Project” launched at the Daejeon research complex in 1,993 under the late SK Group Chairman Choi Jong-hyun’s vision to build new growth engines. The company said the “P” stood for the first syllable of “pharmaceutical,” and that it began with six researchers focused on developing new drugs.

It said it later built a global base by establishing a cooperation system with a pharmaceutical research center in New Jersey and is now pursuing global markets with a CNS-focused pipeline. The company said it is also expanding beyond cenobamate into next-generation modalities such as RPT and targeted protein degradation, or TPD, as it seeks to demonstrate SK Group’s “30-year commitment” to biotech.