연구개발비 회계처리 및 공시에 대한 이해 : H제약 사례를 중심으로

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry is one of the industries which have the highest proportion of intangible assets (capitalized development costs) among total assets. Therefore, financial performance of the companies is greatly influenced by the accounting treatment of research and development (R&D) costs. This paper uses a case of H pharmaceutical to understand the importance of R&D costs in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and to explain appropriate accounting treatment of it. Especially, considering the long-term developing process and low success rate of a new pharmaceutical drug, this paper investigates the timing of capitalization of the development costs of various drugs. Also, this paper finds out the financial effect of the accounting treatment of R&D costs depending on whether they are expensed or capitalized. Through the case of H pharmaceutical, we can discuss whether pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies appropriately disclose information about current state of new drug development, capitalization of the development costs, and their development and commercialization transfer agreements with global pharmaceutical companies. Thus, we can infer the reason why stock prices of pharmaceutical companies are excessively fluctuated with the news of the transfer agreement. Finally, based on the case of H pharmaceutical and guidelines of Financial Supervisory Service, we explore the desirable direction of accounting treatment and disclosure about R&D costs in order to provide enough information to outside information users for estimating the value of a new drug development and further the value of pharmaceutical companies.