Working to cut debt over next 2 years: Elder Pharma

Alok Saxena, Director, Elder Pharma in an interview with CNBC-TV18 spoke about the growth plans of the company. The company has completely restrategise the domestic operations in the last few months.

"Women healthcare, wound management and nutraceutical segment are the major core segments where the company plans continuous growth of about 25-30%," he added. The company's overseas markets of Africa, Latin America and Sri Lanka are showing good traction.  It is earning a combined turnover  of Rs 300-350 crore from European operations. Elder Pharma's current debt stands at Rs 750 crore. The company recently issued non-convertible debentures (NCDs) to retire some of the high cost debt. It is working to reduce debt over the next two years. Below is the verbatim transcript of Saxena's interview with Latha Venkatesh and Gautam Broker of CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video. Q: Can you give us an idea of our growth plans? There is lot of expectation that your FY12 revenues and profits are going to be a huge improvement over the FY11 numbers, what exactly are the growth plans looking at in FY12? A: One of the things that the company has been doing over the last few months is completely restrategising the domestic operations. We have got in new President for our pharma operations. We have been working at our some of our major growth brands like Shelcal and Chymarol. We have now worked on a strategy that over the next three years we have a pipeline of about almost 40-45 products. The strategy being that our major growth markets of womens healthcare, wound management and nutraceutical segment are the major core segments where the company plans continuous growth of about 25-30%. We would continue to strategize in the rural market segments where our marketing initiatives have had very good success. So going forward we will see all these initiatives will allow us to get major shares of our current market strategy. Q: What kind of revenue figure you are looking at for FY12? A: From a standalone basis we are looking at almost Rs 1,000 crores. On consolidated basis the turnover is likely to be between Rs 1,300-1,350 crore next year. Q: What about the export market, we understand that currently in FY11 the export revenue was just about 10% of sales - are you likely to ramp up that revenue which could drive growth for you going forward? A: One of the strategies for the export market is that we are working with our principles in the UK; this is the company which own NutraHealth to do some supplies to them but some of the markets which are showing really good growth for us are the markets in Africa, Latin American markets. We have also opened markets in Sri Lanka. We have now started setting products in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Malaysia. So all these markets have slowly opening for us. We are not yet in the CIS or the Russian markets, these are not really focus markets for us at the moment. But, we intend to continue our growth strategy across the African markets. In fact the francophone country is where our major thrust is coming from. We have been working with the WHO to get some products into the anti-malarial programme there. We are looking at some of the strategies in the Latin American markets so this is the core market where we will really do well. Find out: When should you enter Elder Pharma Q: One of the key points in your company is the debt; your debt now stands at Rs 900 crore? A: It is roughly about Rs 750 crore, we have been working on a plan on that. We recently did an NCD to retire some of our high cost debt. As we go forward through our internal accruals, we don