Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL) chairman K Anji Reddy believes that the best is yet to come from the over Rs 1,000 crore company.
Sharing this optimism at the company's 17th annual general meeting (AGM) here today, Anji Reddy said: "We will have some good news on Genomics discovery front when we meet next time." He said Reddy US Therapeutics Inc, the Atlanta-based research arm, is working in this area.
Recapitulating the company's achievements, Anji Reddy said: "What we have achieved in a short span of time reinforces my pet theory that size really doesn't matter in innovation, in fact, size is the consequence of innovation."
Also Read
G V Prasad, executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer of DRL, said Dr Reddy's had promoted a new company, Auregene Discovery Services, to offer discovery services for pharma companies globally.
He described the current year's performance of the company as "truly outstanding on all fronts and going to meet all internal goals."
Dubbing the launch of fluoxetine 40 mg in the US generic market under 180-day marketing exclusivity a huge success, Prasad said it had reached a conversion rate of 79 per cent from the branded product and exceeded the company's initial expectations.
On the company's strategy to become global, Prasad said: "As we go forward to build our sales and marketing organisation for generics, we are thinking of moving up the value chain further into branded products in the US."
"We will finally evolve into a full service discovery company within a decade," Prasad said. Santosh Kumar Nair, the company secretary of DRL, said October 25 will be the record date for splitting each share into two with a face value of Rs 5.
"... bonus issue out of fashion"
Dr Reddy's chairman Anji Reddy today felt that bonus issues from corporates "have gone out of fashion". He was responding to a shareholder's observation that the company has not declared any bonus issue since 1994.
Another shareholder complained that the 40 per cent dividend declared by the firm in recent years was low compared with the competitors.
Pat came the reply from Anji Reddy: "I agree. For a Rs 1,800 share, 40 per cent dividend is peanut. But even if I declare 65 per cent as others do, it will still be small."
Describing the company's listing on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as a measure of the stakeholder value it had created in all these years, he said his company was among the top ten performers on NYSE for the year.
"Even after the September 11 turmoil in the US, our share price stand at $18.5, compared with the listing price of $10.04," he said.