Biocon, a Rs.3,050 crore plus pharma major from Bengaluru, has registered consolidated net profit growth of 22.7 per cent during the first quarter ended June 2015 on account of one time compensation of Rs.44.63 crore from a customer to absolve the customer from capacity reservation fees and recovery of product development costs from co-development partners of Rs.27.52 crore. Its consolidated net profit amounted to Rs.126.24 crore as against Rs.102.91 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. Its consolidated net sales increased only by 8.4 per cent to Rs.778.96 crore from Rs.718.81 crore. With higher profit, its EPS improved to Rs.6.31 from Rs.5.24 in the last period.
Biocon's pharma sales increased by 10 per cent to Rs.603.87 crore during the quarter from Rs.549.01 crore in the last period and that of contract research and manufacturing services improved by 30.8 per cent to Rs.233.55 crore from Rs.178.62 crore. The branded formulations sales improved to Rs.112 crore with contributions from metabolics, nephrology and market access divisions. The biopharmaceuticals segment benefited from a strong contribution from its insulin and biosimilar business in the emerging market. The company has established a new entity Biocon Pharma to support its finished dosage generics business.
Its R&D expenditure reached at Rs.50 crore and Narendra Chirmule has been appointed as head of R&D. Two new biosimilar molecules, Pegfilgrastim (PEG-G-CSF) and adalimumab have entered global phase 3 clinical trials, taking the tally to five partnered programmes in phase III clinical development, others being; trastuzumab, insulin glargine and bevacizumab.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson and managing director, said, The strong performance this quarter reflects the overall growth of our business backed by a combination of product sales and monetization of R&D assets through licensing. Our biosimilars strategy is playing our well with five programmes in phase 3 clinical development. During the quarter we successfully licensed biosimilar trastuzumab in key emerging markets. Our insulins business was boosted with the launch of insulin glargine in Mexico and Colombia. Our focus on key brands in branded formulations has begun to translate into a better quality of earnings.”
The company's standalone net sales, however, declined by 3.7 per cent to Rs.515.11 crore from Rs.534.60 crore in the similar quarter of last year. Its net profit moved up strongly by 38.6 per cent to Rs.103.43 crore from Rs.74.63 crore basically due to significant higher other operating income.