Panacea Biotec, a Punjab-based Rs 840-crore plus major biotech company, has achieved impressive financial performance during the year ended March 2007 on account of higher revenues from vaccines and pharma formulations. The company's net profit has taken a quantum jump and touched Rs 146.81 crore against Rs 60.94 crore in the previous year, registering a strong growth of 140.9 per cent. Its net sales increased by 55 per cent to Rs 831.55 crore from Rs 536.35 crore last year. With significant jump in profitability, its earning per share moved up to Rs 23.1 from Rs 9.9 in the last period.
The Board of Directors has recommended equity dividend of 100 per cent. Rajesh Jain, joint managing director, said, "The improved financial performance of Panacea is the result of our approach to explore global business opportunities with enhanced domestic focus. The company continues to expand its geographic reach by exporting branded formulations and vaccines to several new markets worldwide."
Panacea's turnover of vaccines increased by 63 per cent to Rs 662.72 crore from Rs 406.69 crore in the previous year. Similarly, its sales of formulations increased by 30.4 per cent to Rs 168.05 crore from Rs 128.88 crore. The company has launched Glimtotal 1 and Glimtotal 2 tablets, GlizidTotal tablets, GlibenTotal 5 tablet for Type-2 diabetes; Lower EX tablet for diabetic dyslipidemia, Mycept S 180 and Mycept S 360 tablets immunosuppressive agent used in renal/liver transplantation; dolzero tablet for acute pain.
The company has successfully commercialized new facilities at Baddi including pharmaceutical formulations facility, soft gelatine capsules facility, herbal formulation facility and anti-TB drug formulation facility. The work in progress for the new vaccine formulation facility at Baddi, Tetanus and bacterial vaccines bulk product facilities at Lalru, Punjab. The company has also started two new R&D centres at Mohali and New Delhi.
The company received pre-qualification from WHO for its recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine. The WHO process for approval of other innovative combination vaccines Ecovac-4, Easyfour and Easyfive is at an advanced stage and is expected to be completed during current year. Till March 2007, it has filed 467 international applications out of which 164 applications were granted and 227 applications were pending. It has been granted patent for 26 applications in India and 104 patent applications were pending with Indian Patent Office as at the end March 2007.