Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd., a wholly-owned US subsidiary of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, suffered net loss of USD 3.88 million during the first nine months ended December 2005 as against a net profit of USD 2.04 million in the corresponding period of last year. This is mainly due to stiff competition and higher R&D expenses. Its net sales, however, improved to $ 58.1 million from $ 46.8 million in the last period. The earning per share worked out to negative $ 0.15 as against positive $ 0.08.

Daniel H. Movens, Caraco's chief executive officer, said, "The increase in our nine-month revenue performance is primarily due to the company's improvement in the execution of our plan in all areas of the company. Considering that for 2004, we had record revenues of $ 60.3 million, to reach almost that amount in nine months, with little or no new product approvals from the FDA until December, is a credit to our management team and the entire staff. The recent approval of our generic equivalent to Ultracet, December 19, 2005, contributed $ 0.8 million for the last ten days of sales out of the $ 20.7 million for the quarter."

For the third quarter its net sales increased by 24 per cent to to $ 20.68 million from $ 16.68 million in the corresponding periods of 2004. Gross profit during the quarter ended December 2005 worked out to $ 10.3 million as compared to $ 9.4 million.

"We expect the trend of increased sales to continue during the remainder of the year. Based on current trends, we believe it is necessary to increase our previous guidance from 15-20% growth to 25-30% growth for fiscal 2006 compared to calendar 2004," he added.

"Two ANDAs were filed during the Q3 of fiscal 2006 and we received approvals for two ANDAs, resulting in a total of 13 ANDAs pending FDA approval. We also received tentative approval for one more ANDA. We continue to move forward aggressively with our product-development plan. We expect to launch Carbamazapine, our generic equivalent to Tegretol during Q4 fiscal 2006," said Movens.