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Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) on Tuesday reported a 66.6 per cent increase in net profit to Rs 571 crore for the quarter ended March 31, compared with Rs 342.7 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. This was driven by robust sales from North America and emerging markets in the global generics segment besides improved performance from the pharmaceutical services and active ingredients segment.
Revenue grew 25.6 per cent to Rs 3,340 crore, against Rs 2,658.4 crore in the same period last year.
For the year ended March 31, net profit stood at Rs 1,677.6 crore, against Rs 1,426 crore, an increase of 17.6 per cent. It witnessed a 20 per cent growth in revenue to Rs 11,626.6 crore, compared with Rs 9,673.7 crore in the previous year. Revenue from the global generics segment stood at Rs 8,260 crore, a y-o-y growth of 18 per cent.
In the global generics segment, revenue from North America stood at Rs 3,780 crore, a growth of 19 per cent.
“The growth was largely driven by key limited competition products such as ziprasidone, fondaparinux, ramp-up in the company’s antibiotics portfolio and products from its Shreveport facility in the US,” Managing Director Satish Reddy said.
Stating that a lot of patent expires were happening in the North American market, he said the company was looking at other dosage forms like injectables to grow in that geography. “OTC (over-the-counter) is a big segment and we will continue to invest in resources there,” he said.
Revenue in the generics segment from the emerging markets for the year stood at Rs 2,240 crore, a growth of 31 per cent, while that from India was up 13.2 per cent to Rs 1,460 crore from Rs 1,290 crore. The growth was driven by volume increase across most key brands and new product launches.
DRL had launched 14 new products during the year, with the major contributors being finasteride 1mg (180-day exclusivity), montelukast granules, atorvastatin, metoprolol, clopidogrel, ibandronate and zoledronic acid 4 mg/5ml.
Finasteride cornered a market share of 78 per cent in the global generics market, while OTC revenues contributed 34 per cent to the company’s annual sales. According to Dr Reddy’s chairman GV Prasad, the company has been garnering OTC revenues from India as well, but the scale is different.
On the biosimilars business, Prasad said the company had collaborated with Merck Serono, a part of Germany-based Merck KGaA, to develop and commercialise biosimilars, in the last financial year.
“We expect to see the cash coming in from this tie-up in three to four years from now,” he said.
