Laurus Labs

“On the capacity front, our commercial fermentation facility, Laurus Bio 4 is progressing as planned, and we expect this to be operational by the end of this year. And we are already advancing on customer capacity reservations for this facility.”

“The Phase 1 production blocks are scheduled to commence operations in mid-2027, which will significantly enhance our commercial capabilities with a focus on high-potent and general OSD manufacturing.”

“We're also building a GMP-grade fermentation facility for some of the products in animal health. That will be operational second half of next year.”

“So we are investing significantly in growth capex and majority into API, yes.”

“Like we are investing a lot of investment in our Unit 4, that is a brownfield capex and then our Unit 2 investments are a brownfield capex, which are going to do better.”

“So we just commercialized OEB 5 facility for payload linker now.”

“See, current capacities we foresee may not be enough for us to cater to the requirements in the near to midterm. So we are significantly increasing capacities because we see some of the programs in the early clinical phases.”

“So like we've mentioned in our investor presentation, when we say we've created peptide capacity, that includes the entire value chain of synthesis, purification and isolation.”

“We continue to strengthen the capacity of liquid-phase peptide synthesis and several new technologies.”

“So we already have a visibility into how we would leverage these facilities and thereby having the visibility to invest more in furthering this capacity.”

“Coming to the small molecule CDMO, the business has continued to deliver robust operational execution in Q2, reporting an 86% growth with the sales of INR875 crores.”

“For the first half of the current financial year, the division recorded INR1,710 crores. That equates to about 77% growth.”

“Revenues from the affordable medicines stood at INR1,302 crores in Q2, which represents a strong 15% year-on-year growth.”

“For the first half of this financial year, we achieved a healthy growth of 13%. This growth was driven by continued expansion of our order book across various established portfolios, which was also supported by stable pricing in both our ARV portfolio and developed market portfolios.”

“For the commercial revenues, we expect somewhere around the '29 time frame for some of these peptide capacities that we are talking about today.”

“Based on what we know at the moment, we don't anticipate such a situation. But with that being said, we have several programs that are commercialized in nature. So these volume changes generally tend to balance out.”

“And second, we don't foresee any significant supplies for launch and then destocking events. So we don't have that problem because the visibility for next 18 to 24 months.”

“We also continue to see encouraging demand on the newly commissioned assets across both Human Health and Animal Health businesses, both in terms of the volumes and opportunities with existing partners as well as with new client engagements.”

“Gross margins were also healthy and maintained at around 63%, and EBITDA margins further expanded over previous quarters by 2.7 percentage points to 34.5%.”

“On the R&D front, overall spending to sales for the first half of this financial year was at 4.3%, increased by over 34% year-on-year, which has been exceptionally high, primarily on account of capability development efforts for our gene therapy, ADC technology infrastructure.”

“Gross margin maintained at a healthy level for H1 at 62.9% and for quarter 2 at 63%, mainly due to better product mix and division mix and improved operational efficiencies.”

“EBITDA for H1 stands at INR1,406 crores with a margin of 33.2%. For the quarter 2, EBITDA reported at INR762 crores with a margin of 34.5%.”

“I think the quarter 1, we have filed some ANDAs. So there is a reason the cost has gone up in quarter 1.”

“Our net debt stood at INR2,466 crores and debt-to-EBITDA is around 1.02 versus 1.28 for the last quarter on the back of strong internal cash flows.”

“So there is some additional absolute number inventory as of 30th September. That will be what we call utilized in the current quarter in the coming quarter.”

“we have taken a call between the free cash flow versus the growth capital, and then we are investing growth capex.”

“So I think we may not be worried on the free cash flow front because if you look at our net debt to EBITDA is still at a very healthy level of 1x, around 1x.”

“agreement to acquire majority 60% stake in Canada-based Galenvs Sciences, specializing in oligonucleotides and precision magnetic nanoparticles-based purification.”

“Second is an acquisition of majority stake in SI & C Resins, a peptide resin technology-focused company based out of Hyderabad. This will allow us to enhance long-term supply security by in-sourcing critical solid support resins for peptide synthesis”

“On the filings front, we have cumulatively filed 92 DMFs to date.”

“In developed market formulation business, we filed 2 dossiers and received 2 approvals during H1. Overall, we have cumulatively filed 96 products to date.”

“Our investment in peptide resins is not going to give so much a financial benefit, but it will strengthen our position in our peptide synthesis. But our investment in oligo peptide start-up for Galenvs in Canada, we have no customer right now in oligos.”

“Currently, we don't have a significant concentration of customers or programs.”

“In addition, fortunately, in the space that we've been in, we're not necessarily looking at any patent cliff for any of the programs that we support.”

“Business will not come today, it will come tomorrow. So we don't want to spoil partnerships or relationships by taking too much that we cannot handle.”

“Laurus has maintained its growth trajectory and once again delivered a record revenue and profits for quarter 2. Total revenues were INR2,206 crores, reflecting a continued strength of our CDMO platform”

“In the first half, Laurus underwent 59 quality audits by multiple drug regulatory agencies and key partners and has been successfully cleared audit inspections without any critical findings.”

“Total income from operations for H1 is at INR4,233 crores, registering a growth of 31%.”

“Profit after tax for H1 at INR809 crores and for the quarter 2 at INR441 crores.”

“So our ROCE is moving upwards to 22.5% for the H1 versus FY26 of 17.7%.”