Ranbaxy Laboratories, a subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo Company Ltd of Japan, has received major blow during the year ended December 2008 and its incurred a consolidated net loss of Rs 915 crore as against a net profit of Rs 787 crore in the previous year. The consolidated net sales amounted to s 7251 crore representing a growth of 8 per cent. The emerging markets portfolio achieves sales of Rs 3911 crore, maintaining an upward trend with a growth of 9 per cent and accounts for 54 per cent of total sales. Developed markets sales grew by 7 per cent to Rs 2833 crore and contributes around 39 per cent of sales.

The results were significantly impacted by three major factors viz., AS30 impact of US$ 161 million, forex impact of US$ 179 million, US related provisions of $59 million. While these three items were non-cash in nature, they primarily contributed to the overall loss of Rs 914.60 crore for the year 2008. The company's R&D expenditure for the year 2008 increased to Rs 432.56 crore from Rs 413.94 crore.

Ranbaxy incurred a hefty standalone net loss of Rs 103.23 crore as against a net profit of Rs 61.77 crore in the previous year. The company recorded foreign exchange loss of Rs 749.14 crore as against a gain of Rs 312.03 crore in the last year. Its earning per share worked out to negative Rs 26.96 as compared to positive of Rs 16.56 in the last year.

The company's standalone net sales for the year ended December 2008 increased only by 6.9 per cent to Rs 4305 crore from Rs 4027 crore. Its exports touched to Rs 2795 crore as against Rs 2630 crore and its domestic sales reached at Rs 1539 crore from Rs 1441 crore.

Malvinder Mohan Singh, chairman, CEO and managing director, said, "The past year has been a significant one. We saw ourselves, redefining paradigms in the pharmaceutical space through the alliance we reached with Daiichi which will strengthen both companies and unleash tremendous growth opportunities for them. We also settled ongoing and potential patent litigations bringing visibility to multiple first-to-file opportunities in the US over several years to come."

A multi-pronged action plan is underway to restore and safeguard the current and future product portfolio in the US market. The company made its first set of authorized generic launches in the US. Both omeprazole 40 mg capsules and felodipine ER tablets have performed well in the market with omeprazole garnering 43 per cent market share.

Following the US FDA import alert in September 2008, Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency, Japan (PMDA) audited three dosage form and one API facility of the company during October-November 2008. All these inspections were successful and as a result, the company has so far received approvals for levofloxacin 100 mg tablets and bicalutamide 80 mg tablets.

The company and Pfizer Inc. entered into an agreement to settle most of the patent litigation worldwide involving atorvastatin. Further, it reached several agreements with AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline settling patent infringement litigation for nexium and sumatriptan succinate tablets respectively.