Panacea Biotec incurs consolidated net loss of Rs 67 cr

Mumbai-Panacea Biotec has suffered heavy setback during the year ended March 2009 on account of lower vaccine sales and foreign exchange loss of Rs 175.07 crore. It incurred a consolidated net loss of Rs 67.07 crore as against a net profit of Rs 128.98 crore in the previous year. The company's consolidated net sales also declined by 6.3 per cent to Rs 788.17 crore from Rs 841.34 crore. It's earning per share worked out to negative of Rs 10.06 as against positive of Rs 19.51 in the last year. In view of losses, the board of directors has not recommended any dividend on the equity share for the year 2008-09.Panacea's vaccines sales declined to Rs 562.37 crore from Rs 647.24 crore, a de-growth of 13.1 per cent and its formulations sales increased to Rs 228.73 crore from Rs 200.85 crore, a growth of 13.9 per cent. The company has opted for change in accounting policy in respect of foreign exchange fluctuation difference relating to translation of long term foreign currency monetary liabilities. This has resulted into reduction in losses during the year by Rs 85 crore. For the fourth quarter ended March 2009, its sales increased by 16.4 per cent to Rs 227.42 crore and incurred a net loss of Rs 40.17 crore as against a net profit of Rs 24.91 crore in the corresponding period of last year. Dr Rajesh Jain, joint managing director, said, "In line with our outlook in Q3, the Q4 sales turnover has increased by 16 and 28 per cent compared to corresponding quarter of previous year and Q3 of year under review, respectively. Tough times have now been left behind and the company is back on the growth path. Consolidation and optimization of product mix and increased thrust on overseas markets saw revenues growing up during the quarter by 29 per cent to Rs 227.6 crore as compared to Rs 175.9 crore in the previous year."The EBDITA margins have also improved significantly by 95 per cent to Rs 83.2 crore as compared to Rs 42.7 crore. Domestic Pharma as well as exports have gone up by 9 per cent and 27 per cent respectively over last year, while domestic vaccines have witnessed a formidable growth of 30 per cent over last year. We expect that the momentum will continue during financial year 2009-10 on a yearly basis rather than a quarter, which is typical of innovation based business models like ours."