CNBC-TV18 honoured the best in business at the glittering 10th edition of the India Business Leader Awards on Friday. Lupin won the outstanding company of the year award. Speaking to the channel, VC Kamal Sharma said yen deprecation will impact company’s Japan business revenue. However, a third of Lupin’s 72 products are market leaders. The company remains positive on its business outlook.Below is verbatim transcript of the interview:
Q: The company had guided for about 8 to 10 launches in the US in the second half. Are you inline to achieve it?
A: We were very much inline to achieve it but there were some delays from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) so that might just reduce the number of launches may be to four or five rather than eight.
Q: The company also received abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) approvals for drug such as Diovan generic and Celebrex generic recently. How much do you expect it to add to revenues for Lupin?
A: It is not so easy to predict the revenues for each product but what I can say for sure is that our track record of having achieved the market share that we achieve for different products even today of the 72 products that we have in the market one-third are in the top market share of the market. So, I believe that here too we should have a good run.
Q: In general don’t you think the industry has seen a slow down in fresh drug approvals in the US?
A: This has been a general situation if you recall a year ago the FDA has levied a fee for review applications what was popularly known as Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA). They had an equivalent of the new products for launch.
The idea was by levying this fee they would be able to augment the staff to review the file and therefore, there will be expedition’s clearance.
They will take some time to organise and so, in between we saw some bit of positive moment but I am afraid it is going to take another year and a half before we can really see a fillip for the better.
Q: The other key point is the yen which depreciated around 13 percent versus the dollar last year. What is the impact of Lupin’s Japanese operations?
A: It will not be very positive. For all the overseas subsidiaries where the currency of those countries are depreciating especially if they are not exporting enough out of that country which is the case with Japan very much would have not so positive effect.
Although the Japanese business is doing very well by itself but when in case translated to Indian company as a consolidated balance sheet it will have its impact.
Q: You had told us that you would be a USD 5 billion company by 2018. What is your blueprint to get there?
A: We remain very positive. I have often said that we set these milestones to really work hard and bring a sense of directions for the entire team of Lupin to achieve. We have had a great run so far and we hope that we would be able to achieve it.
Having said that, what is more important for Lupin is to sustain its profitability and the growth momentum. So, if we do not achieve USD 5 billion by a year does not matter but what matters is that profits remain strong and the company remains in a very good financial situation.
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