New Delhi: Drugmaker Lupin Ltd plans to focus on chronic therapies, explore in-licensing opportunities and restructure its domestic business in the year ahead, a top company executive said.
Lupin, like other drugmakers, has suffered from the rollout of goods and services tax (GST) and price regulations in India and pricing pressures in the US, but hopes to recover and grow in the days ahead, Rajeev Sibal, president of Lupin’s India region formulations said in an interview.
“We have seen the market has grown around 9-10% in the past and even in future also, the market will continue to grow. In the next few months, you will see better results as far as stock market is concerned,” said Sibal.
The company, which was served several warning letters from the US drug regulator over safety and quality, is attending to issues at its Goa and Indore plants which have received so-called Form 483s from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), Sibal said, adding “Whenever the next inspections happen, we are sure that we will come out of it.”
Going forward, Lupin will concentrate on its chronic therapies, which brings 57% of its revenue.
“Four therapies contribute maximum business. Our objective is that we will consolidate in these four therapies and we will continue to gain our market share in these four therapy areas because these are very important and these are the drivers of the market, lifestyle disease prevalence is going up so obviously these therapies are going to drive the market,” he added.
Lupin is focused on chronic therapies like respiratory, cardiology, diabetes and anti-infectives.
During 2018-19, Lupin plans to restructure its domestic business and add four new divisions to maintain a product and therapy-specific approach.
“We have always grown better than the market, we have improved our ranking in domestic market, we were ranked number nine in 2015; we have improved four rankings. We are also working on other therapy areas like dermatology, urology, oncology as well as ophthalmology because these are also very important areas for us to be in,” added Sibal.
Lupin will watch out for more in-licensing opportunities to develop and market products from other drugmakers, in differentiated products and drug delivery systems.
“New product pipeline is getting dried up; so in-licensing is the other way,” Sibal said. Big pharmaceutical companies, he said, are collaborating with Indian partners to increase the reach of their products and Lupin is at the forefront as far as those alliances are concerned.
“We are the only company which has got 16 alliances of different pharma companies; so when it come to alliances, most of the companies considered Lupin as their preferred partner,” he said. The company already gets 13-14% business from in-licensing, Sibal said.
On Wednesday, Lupin shares fell 1.78%, or Rs14.05, to Rs774.50 on the BSE while the benchmark Sensex slumped 1.05%, or 351.56 points, to end the day at 33,019.07.