Dr Reddy's Laboratories, the second largest pharmaceutical company in India with consolidated net sales over Rs 4900 crore, has posted impressive performance during the third quarter ended December 2008. The company's consolidated net profit, as per Indian GAAP standard, has taken quantum jump and touched to Rs 159.16 crore from Rs 62.55 crore in the corresponding period of last year. With impressive growth in profits, DRL's earning per share for the quarter worked out to Rs 9.45 as compared Rs 3.72 in the last period.

Its consolidated net sales went up by 50.5 per cent to Rs 1804.99 crore from Rs 1199.15 crore mainly due to successful launch of the authorized generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's Imitrex (Sumatriptan Succinate) during November 2008. DRL's revenues from global generics business increased to Rs 1370 crore from Rs 800 crore in Q3 of FY2008. The company's revenues remained flat in India at Rs 200 crore during the quarter despite it launched 10 new products in the domestic market.

Excluding revenues from Sumatriptan, the growth of 80 per cent in North America was driven by volume growth in existing products and acquisition of the Shreveport facility. DRL achieved sales of Rs 670 crore in North America during the December 2008 quarter as against Rs 170 crore. The company launched three new products in Q3. It filed five ANDAs taking the total fillings to 133. Total of 69 ANDAs are pending with the US FDA.

Revenues from Europe remained almost stagnant at Rs 250 crore. The company's sales from betapharm, its subsidiary in Germany, declined by 2 per cent to Rs 200 crore on account of de-stocking due to the AOK tender and olanzapine withdrawal from market. The company launched two new products and filed 4 dossiers across Europe. Further, its revenues from Russia increased by 44 per cent due to key brands of Omez, Nise, Ketorol and Cetrine. The company launched 26 new generic products and filed 32 new generic product registration and also 6 DMFs globally.

The company's revenues from pharmaceutical services and active ingredients went up by 6 per cent to Rs 450 crore from Rs 420 crore in the similar quarter of last year. The R&D spending increased by 17.7 per cent to Rs 101 crore and its personnel costs went up by 43 per cent to Rs 253 crore during the third quarter of FY 2008.

For the nine months ended December 2008, DRL's consolidated net sales increased by 34.2 per cent to Rs 4862 crore from Rs 3622 crore in the similar period of last year. Its consolidated net profit for the nine months, however, declined by 6.9 per cent to Rs 337.75 crore from Rs 359.67 crore in the last period. Its R&D expenditure went up by 23 per cent to Rs 302 crore and its personnel costs increased by 37.5 per cent to Rs 736.63 crore.