Pharmaceutical major, Dr.Reddy’s Laboratories on Thursday announced that it had posted a net profit for Q2 of the current fiscal of Rs.722 crore, up from Rs. 574 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.
Announcing the 18.1 per cent increase in net profit, President and Chief Financial Officer Saumen Chakraborty said that they were pleased to record the highest-ever quarterly sales and EBITDA of Rs.3989 crore that meant a year-on-year growth of 11 per cent and Rs.1140 crore that represented 28.6 per cent of revenues, respectively. In some emerging markets like in Russia where over-the-counter (OTC) sale formed 40 per cent of total revenues the growth was encouraging.
Other highlights included the gross profit margin which stood at 61.3 per cent meant an improvement of 285 basis points over last year. In a release the company’s Co-Chairman and CEO G.V. Prasad said that the robust sales growth across U.S., Europe and India markets were supported by new products launched over the last 12 months. “Our R & D spend remains at 11 per cent as we continue on our strategy of building an exciting pipeline of assets across our businesses,” he stated.
Chief Operating Officer Abhijit Mukherjee attributed the highest-ever sale to a 32 per cent, y-o-y growth in North America, 65 per cent in Europe, 22 per cent in emerging markets and 14 per cent in India. He admitted that in emerging markets the company’s big brands were picking up slowly, primarily because of the rouble-US dollar relationship.
As for the forecast for the 2nd half of the fiscal, Mr. Mukherjee was rather guarded and said there were more headwinds than tailwinds and hence he could not really comment. “It is not going to be a very active 2nd half. We only hope that the negative factors don’t hit us and that itself would be a big positive,” he said, summing up.
