Pharmaceutical major, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories on Thursday announced that it had posted a net profit for Q 2 of the current fiscal, of 18.1 per cent at Rs. 722 crore, up from Rs. 574 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.
Announcing the Q 2 results, president and chief financial officer, Saumen Chakraborty, said they were pleased to record the highest ever quarterly sales and EBITDA, of Rs. 39.9 billion, that meant a year-on-year growth of 11 per cent and Rs. 11.4 bullion that represented 28.6 per cent of revenues, respectively. In some emerging markets, the growth was encouraging like in Russia where over-the-counter (OTC) sale formed 40 per cent of total revenues. Other highlights included the gross profit margin which at 61.3 per cent meant an improvement of 285 basis points over the last year. In a release, the company’s co-chairman and CEO G.V. Prasad said the robust sales growth across the US, 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 and added that they had country managers in Brazil and Columbia.
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As for the forecast for the 2{+n}{+d}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 the second half. We only hope that the negative factors don’t hit us and that itself would be a big positive,” he said, summing up.