Panacea Biotec, a Rs.875 crore plus Punjab based second largest vaccine producer in India, has posted impressive financial performance during the third quarter ended December 2010. Its net profit jumped to Rs.42.60 crore from Rs.7.34 crore in the corresponding period of last year. Its EBDITA also moved up to Rs.85.45 crore from Rs.41.48 crore. The company;'s net sales increased by 24.5 per cent to Rs.284.06 crore from Rs.228.10 crore. With smart improvement in profits, its EPS touched to Rs.6.83 for the quarter as against Rs.1.10 in the last period.
Its vaccines sales increased by 28.2 per cent to Rs.213.94 crore from Rs.166.84 crore and that of formulations increased by 13.2 per cent to Rs.72.51 crore from Rs.64.04 crore in the similar period of last year. The company launched new products namely Lenomust capsules 5 mg, 10 mg and 25 mg (multiple myloma for blood cancer), Renhold tablets (protein for dialysis patients), Exeroz tablets (for reduction of cholestrol) and Fiberfos powder & Gush powder (both for constipation).
Panacea has bought back and extinguished 55.92 lakh equity shares at an average price of Rs.196.39 per share by utilising an amount of Rs.109.82 crore under its buy-back offer. With this buy-back, its equity capital reduced to Rs.61.30 crore. As at the end of December 2010, the total unprovided redemption premium of US$ 50 million Zero Coupon Convertible Bonds (US$ 36.8 million) worked out to Rs.68.55 crore.
Dr Rajesh Jain, joint managing director, said, “In line with our outlook in Q3, the Q4 sales turnover has increased by 16 per cent and 28 per cent compared to corresponding quarter of previous year and Q3 of year under review, respectively. Tough times have now been left behind and the company is back on the growth path. Consolidation & optimization of product mix and increased thrust on overseas markets saw revenues growing up during the quarter by 29 per cent to Rs.227.6 crore as compared to Rs.15.9 crore during previous quarter.”
Jain added, “Domestic pharma as well as exports have gone up by 9 per cent and 27 per cent respectively over last year, while domestic vaccines have witnessed a formidable growth of 30 per cent over last year. We expect that the momentum will continue during financial year 2009-10 on a yearly basis rather than a quarter, which is typical of innovation based business models like ours.”
For the nine months period ended December 2010, Panacea's net sales increased by 38.4 per cent to Rs.791 crore from Rs.571 crore and its net profit went up by over 300 per cent to Rs.92.02 crore from Rs.22.50 crore in the similar period of last year.