Nicholas Piramal India Ltd (NPIL), an Rs 2500 crore pharma company, has reported impressive performance during the second quarter ended September 2007 with significant growth in custom manufacturing and pathlabs business. The consolidated net profit, after minority interest and prior year items, has taken a quantum jump of 57.9 per cent to Rs 84.77 crore from Rs 53.69 crore in the corresponding period of last year. It's consolidated net sales increased by 16.8 per cent to Rs 764.57 crore from Rs 654.66 crore. The earning per share moved up to Rs 4.1 from RS 2.5 in the last period.

The domestic branded formulations sales grew by 13 per cent to Rs 350 crore due to growth in anti-diabetic, dermatology, anti-infective, and OTC segments of the market. The revenues through Wellspring (Pathlabs) business also improved by 77 per cent to Rs 31.17 crore.

Its Custom Manufacturing Group (CMG) business recorded revenue of Rs 340 crore, a growth of 22.2 per cent. Ajay Piramal, chairman of NPIL, said, "NPIL has been making significant capital investments to create facilities for this business in India. Revenues from these facilities have now begun to gain momentum. Custom manufacturing revenue from Indian facilities increased over 300 per cent to Rs 69.40 crore during second quarter of 2008". The revenues from custom manufacturing will worked out to around 40-45 per cent of total revenue in the current year.

Piramal added that the company is taking measures to reduce the adverse impact of rupee appreciation in terms of dollar. The bottomline will be protected through these measures, though there may have some adverse impact on topline. The company is looking more for imports, increased prices of products and undertaken cost cutting measures.

The company is now de-merging its NCE Research Unit into a separate company with effect from April 1, 2007. Piramal said that the listing of new company will be from June 2008 and it will take 2-3 years to generate revenue. The company included R&D expenditure of Rs 39.67 crore in the financial results for the second quarter of 2008. The NCE programme has a pipeline of 13 compounds in Oncology, Inflammation, anti-diabetes and anti-infective segments. Four of these compounds are in clinical trials and other are at different stages. The new product is likely to be introduced in 2011. Currently, 400 people are working in R&D activities and the company is spending around 5 per cent of total revenue.

Piramal told that the outlook is positive and the company has stepped up its guidance regarding EPS to Rs 17.5 as against earlier projection of Rs 17 for the current year. The new products will add to 8-10 per cent to domestic turnover in 2007-08.

For the first half of 2007-08, NPIL's consolidated net sales increased by 16.6 per cent to Rs 1373 crore from Rs 1177 crore in the corresponding period of last year. The net profit moved up by 19.9 per cent to Rs 128.20 crore from Rs 107.55 crore.