Dr Reddy's Laboratories Limited (DRL) on Tuesday reported a seven per cent jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 307.8 crore for the quarter ended September 30, compared to Rs 286.7 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. The drugmaker benefited from healthy growth in sales, driven by global businesses, led by North American and Russian markets.
Revenues grew 21 per cent to Rs 2,267.9 crore from Rs 1,870.4 crore in the corresponding previous quarter. “This quarter presents pretty good numbers with growth in sales and Ebitda in line with each other,” P Satish Reddy, managing director and chief operating officer of Dr Reddy’s, said.
Expenditure was up 20 per cent at Rs 1,047.3 crore from Rs 871.8 crore.
The company's global generics business registered growth of 18 per cent at Rs 1,613.6 crore and pharmaceutical services and active pharmaceutical ingredients business grew 28 per cent to Rs 593.3 crore.
Sales in North America increased 42 per cent, a further improvement over last quarter's growth, to Rs 777.7 crore in the second quarter from Rs 546.4 crore. Russia came next with 28 per cent growth on a standalone basis, while together with CIS sales rose 23 per cent to Rs 338 crore (Rs 275.1 crore). The company's over-the-counter sales in Russia reported higher growth compared with industry.
According to the company, growth in these markets were driven by new launches and market share improvement of a couple of existing products.
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In Europe, sales increased 11 per cent in spite of a steep decline in revenues from Germany to Rs 453.6 crore (Rs 410.1 crore).
Dr Reddy’s continued to underperform in the Indian market, while registering an overall growth of 10 per cent revenues at Rs 421 crore for the quarter (Rs 381.3 crore).
“We expect considerable improvement in Indian sales in the second half to reach industry’s year-on-year growth of 14 per cent being reported currently,” Satish Reddy said.
He said the company was not in for chasing sales but aimed only at profitability-led growth in all the markets.
Meanwhile, the quantum of loans and borrowings transacted by the company in the three-month period was substantially higher at Rs 736 crore, which essentially went into payments towards acquisition and working capital requirements, according to Umang Vohra, chief financial officer. However, the company was quite comfortable as far as debt equity position was concerned.
GV Prasad, vice chairman and CEO, said they were expecting the recent joint venture with Fuji Film for generic drugs business in Japan to start working in the next few months.
The company on Tuesday announced the final approval of its olanzaine 20 mg tablets, the generic version of Eli Lilly's Zyprexa, from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). The durg is used for treating dementia.