Biocon Reports Profits Of INR74 crore

Biocon has announced a three-fold increase in profit at INR74 crore for the quarter ended 30 September, up from INR25 crore in the same period last year.The company’s revenue grew 31% to INR580 crore from INR442 crore in 2008.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and managing director of Biocon, said: “Our earnings show that we are getting out of gestational mode and entering into growth mode.”

Mazumdar-Shaw is optimistic that the growth, particularly in active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and contract research, will continue. For its expanding API business, Biocon acquired a manufacturing facility of IDL Specialty Chemicals in Hyderabad in September. In contract research, where Biocon has an alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), the firm expects to sign a few more deals. The market for contract research, according to a recent KPMG study, is expected to be $23 billion (INR1.07 trillion) by 2011 with India accounting for 15%.

Committing INR80-100 crore in research and development for this fiscal, it’s the proprietary molecules that Biocon is pinning its blockbuster hopes on. In September, it signed an exclusive co-development and marketing pact with California-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals for peptide therapeutics. Specifically, this is geared towards a peptide hybrid or ‘phybrid’, meant to combine the properties of two peptides into one small molecule to treat diabetes.

In its own research portfolio, two new molecules, for psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, have advanced in clinical trials. But it’s still the oral insulin entering the late stage trial in India that Biocon considers as a global opportunity. On Thursday, French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis SA announced that it has signed a global licensing agreement with US-based Wellstat Therapeutics on a novel oral first-in-class insulin sensitizer for the treatment of type II diabetes.