Panacea Biotec a Rs.1,100 crore plus largest vaccine producer in India, has suffered heavy setback during the third quarter ended December 2011 and the company incurred a heavy loss of Rs.71.72 crore due to significant lower sales of vaccines as against a profit of Rs.42.60 crore in the corresponding period of last year. Its net sales declined by 46.2 per cent to Rs.152.98 crore from Rs.284.06 crore. The operating loss before interest, depreciation and taxation reached at Rs.26.83 crore as compared to operating profit of Rs.85.45 crore.
The pharmaceutical formulations segment registered 17 per cent growth with net turnover of Rs.84.4 crore as against Rs.71.9 crore in the similar quarter of last year. Its exports of pharma formulations grew by 64 per cent to Rs.22.3 crore on account of increased export to countries in LATAM region, CIS region and Middle East. The domestic pharmaceutical formulations business improved by 6 per cent to Rs.62.1 crore. Panacea's sales of of vaccines declined to Rs.68.6 crore from Rs.212.1 crore mainly due to delisting of the pentavalent vaccine by WHO from its list of pre-qualified vaccines. The company also witnessed lower sales of its polio vaccines due to reduced immunisation activities in the country.
Dr Rajesh Jain, joint managing director, said, “The current performance continues to be affected due to the delisting of pentavalent vaccine, following a routine site audit by a WHO team in July 2011. We have taken several corrective and preventive measures and are in active touch with WHO in this respect. We are confident that with these corrective and preventive measures, we will be able to get re-listing of our pentavalent vaccine in the list of WHO pre-qualified vaccines soon.”
“Our pharma business continues its growth trend with 17 per cent growth during the current quarter on the back of 64 per cent growth in exports to key RoW markets in LATAM, CIS region and Middle East. We have also started our operations in Germany with the launch of Tacpan (Tacrolimus) as the first product. We will continue to focus on increasing the exports of pharmaceutical formulations to emerging RoW markets as well as the ICH region,” he added.
During the quarter, it launches new products like Hifibre 200, Valuecef-O, Toff-Lix, Wholesum, Uciro and Imuza in pharmaceutical formulations segments.
For the first nine months ended December 2011, Panacea's net loss touched to Rs.88.64 crore as against a net profit of Rs.92.02 crore in the corresponding period of last year. Its net sales also declined sharply by 24.3 per cent to Rs.598.40 crore from Rs.790.53 crore. Its vaccines sales declined by 40 per cent to Rs.336.05 crore from Rs.560.51 crore. However, formulations sales grew by 12.9 per cent to Rs.266.14 crore from Rs.235.69 crore.