Torrent Pharmaceuticals approved to split the face value of equity shares of the company from Rs. 10 to Rs. 5. The shareholders will get 2 equity shares of new face value for every existing equity share. The Board also approved bonus shares in the ratio of 1 share for every share on a post-split basis to the equity shareholders of the company.

As a result of these decisions, the equity shareholders will get 4 equity shares of Rs. 5 face value for every equity share of Rs. 10. Both these decisions are subject to approval by shareholders of the company. The company has convened an EGM on Jan 25, 2006 to obtain the shareholders approval. The split and bonus will help balance the capital structure of the company, reward the shareholders of the company and improve the liquidity in the company's shares. The share price of Torrent Pharma was Rs. 663 prior to the announcement of split and bonus. It closed at Rs. 861 at the close of trading on Dec 15, 2005.

Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (TPL) is part of the Rs. 3125 crore (USD 714 mn) 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 Rs.1000 crore from Rs. 566 crore during 2004-05. About 50% 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. 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 129 patents.