Excerpt of CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Sanjay Pai and Wayne Bos:

Q: Tell us about Natrol, and how it fits in with Plethico?

Pai: I will just introduce Wayne Bos, who is the CEO of the company that we have acquired. And he will give you some thoughts on the acquisition.

Bos: What’s happening here is Plethico is looking to acquire Natrol, and we have put the merger agreement in place, so the transaction is happening now. The company operates primarily in North America and have about 8-9% of our revenues are international. We are a nutraceutical company that sells significantly through mass-market retail and health food stores in the US.

Q: What kind of revenues will it have this year and would it be profitable - Natrol this year?

Bos: Last year the company did approximately USD 65 million and this year we made several small acquisitions ourselves, but they are over USD 30 million worth of revenues that we have acquired. So, this year, some of those revenues have started to come in.

The business has been operating up until the last year profitably. Before that the company has lost some money in 2005, and the first half of this year the company has been profitable.

We have made some arrangements and cleaned up some of our books in the third quarter. And we operate at 12-month calendar to the end of December January 1 to December 31.     

Q: Can you talk a little bit about what Plethico is paying to acquire Natrol and whether on or not you will have to make an open offer as well for the stock that’s listed?

Bos: Plethico’s offer is USD 4.48 per share in aggregate, that’s approximately USD 80 million. The company’s bid, it’s a public tender. The tender will be open for a period and that will work out what the process is of finalizing the acquisition.   

Q: What sort of a combined growth are you seeing for Plethico and Natrol?

Pai: With this acquisition, we have almost doubled the revenues of Plethico, and with this we will be touching around Rs 1,000 crores going shortly. So that’s the main point for Plethico.

With this acquisition we are clearly going to be present globally. Now we are very strong in this CIS, we are very strong in Africa, we are now very strong and getting stronger in the third front consisting of South East Asia, Latin America and the GCC.

And here we have a company, which is very strong in the US, which we were not having till now in our portfolio. They are present in the UK and they also have a joint venture in Hong Kong. So that makes us a global player internationally.