Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd, the Ahmedabad-based pharma major, achieved impressive financial performance during the third quarter ended December 2005. Its consolidated sales showed an impressive growth of 82 per cent, reaching Rs 273 crore as against Rs 150 crore for the comparable period. Domestic formulation business showed a healthy rise of 23 per cent to reach Rs 108 crore. Sales in international markets, which stood at Rs 132 crore, grew by 292 per cent. This was achieved by organic growth of 111 per cent in existing international markets and 181 per cent from Heumann acquisition.

Consolidated sales for 9 months registered a robust growth of 70 per cent to touch Rs 753 crore as compared to Rs 444 crore for the corresponding period last year. This includes sales of Rs 112 crore of Heumann Pharma GmbH & Co Generika KG (Heumann), the German company which was acquired in July 2005. Consolidated operating profit (PBIDT) for 9 months ended December 31st, 2005 stood at Rs 94 crore, riding mainly on the back of higher sales. The consolidated PAT stood at Rs 52 crore resulting in EPS of Rs. 24.64.

Consolidated sales in international markets registered a robust growth of 234 per cent at Rs. 305 crore (including sales of Heumann) during these nine months. Besides Heumann, organic growth of 112 per cent in the territories of Europe, Brazil, Russia & CIS and Rest of the World (ROW) business contributed to this achievement.

Domestic market too, showed a healthy rise in sales. Torrent's Domestic Formulations (DF) business recorded a jump of 26% in sales to Rs. 355 crores during the nine months of the fiscal. The growth was credited mainly to the field force expansion drive carried out in the last fiscal and supported by new products flow.

The company's proposal to split the face value of equity shares from Rs.10 to Rs. 5 and issue bonus shares in the ratio of 1:1 on a post-split basis was approved by the members at the EGM. As a result the shareholders will get four equity shares of Rs. 5 face value for every equity share of Rs.10. As part of its global initiatives, the company incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary 'Torrent Australasia Pty. Ltd.' in Australia, on 8th December, 2005. This is the sixth subsidiary of Torrent outside India.

The integration of the operations of Heumann with Torrent's India operations is progressing smoothly and is expected to achieve significant savings in production and product development costs over the next three years, besides boosting sales growth.

Torrent's new formulations facility set up at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh with capital outlay of Rs 137 crore, started commercial production in November 2005.

Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (TPL) is part of the Rs 3,125 crore (USD 714 million) strong Torrent group having interests in pharma and power. Post-acquisition of Heumann Pharma GmbH & Co Generika KG (Heumann), Germany, the pro-forma annual sales of TPL is expected to cross Rs1000 crore from Rs 566 crore during 2004-05. About 50 per cent of such sale will be outside India.

TPL employs over 500 scientists and has a combined experience of around 3000 scientific man-years in drug discovery and development. Torrent is among the largest spenders on R&D and has earmarked 9% of its sales annually for R&D. Currently, Torrent has seven discovery projects in pipeline - three in diabetes and related complications, one in cerebro-vascular, two in obesity and one in cardio-vascular. Torrent has filed 208 patents for NCEs in all major markets worldwide; the patent offices of the US, Japan, Europe, Czech Republic, Australia, Hong Kong, Russia and India have granted / accepted 129 patents so far.