Overall growth guidance lowered to 18%: Sun Pharma

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Uday Baldota on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What your investors did not like particularly was the Caraco numbers and also the scaling back of the sales guidance - could you take us through what went on there?

A: Caraco has been distributing couple of exclusivity products for Sun Pharma and we have guided investors in the past that sales for these products are not going to be there for a very long time and they will continue to fluctuate.

So, for Q3 of last year there was high base and then for Q3 of this year there was some reduction in sales of Pantoprazole, so that was the reason why Caraco sales declined. This is something very difficult to predict as to the exclusivity products how much you would sell every quarter.

Q: For Q4 as a benchmark what have you estimated for Pantoprazole in those Caraco sales numbers?

A: We specifically don't want to guide anything on products or specifically even on the business. What we have now said is that our overall sales guidance for the company stands revised at 18-20% over last year.

Q: What about your domestic formulations business, which still clocks in half of your revenues - at what clip do you see that growing and any kind of scales down that you would guide there?

A: If you see the first nine months, our domestic business has grown at something like 16-17%, over the earlier years and we are quite happy this is in line with what we had expected. We would expect that whatever the market grows at, we should be able to grow faster in the market as far as the domestic business is concerned. We are quite happy with the performance of the domestic business.

Q: Along with the slippage in performance for Caraco though are you all still keen to peruse the offer you had going for Taro?

A: Yes, the Caraco performance the way we see it is absolutely in line with the kind of products that we have in the market. We remain quite focused on our US business and we are working quite aggressively both on the organic side as well as the inorganic opportunities.

We believe that the potential for us in the US market is much more and that makes us quite committed for both growing the Caraco business, the non-Caraco business in the US as well as we remain as committed for the Taro offer that we have going on.

Q: What is the current status of that Taro offer?

A: We have extended the offer till March 6 and the Supreme Court of Israel has recommended that we should be mediating with the other parties and hence a full fledged mediation process is on right now.

Q: There are still some lingering issues with the US FDA on Caraco, when do you see resolution to that?

A: I wouldn't be able to give a specific time frame, but we are quite hopeful that sooner than later we should be able to dissolve those issues with joint team of Sun Pharma and Caraco.