The Hindu Business Line : Aventis set to launch disposable insulin pen

The company, whose export performance declined last year due to factors like rupee appreciation and the removal of some of its products from the reimbursement list in Russia, expects export turnover to improve during 2008.

At the AGM held recently in Mumbai, the APL Chairman, Mr Vijay Mallya, said a number of factors had affected overall performance in 2007, the most important being “the significant decline in exports.” The appreciation of the rupee “played no small part in this decline”. The Russian medicine distribution system had removed some of APL’s products from its reimbursement list which resulted in significant drop in exports. But domestic business had performed very well and, except for two major products that suffered from severe supply constraints during the year, domestic sales “grew handsomely”.

He expected improved export turnover during 2008 and said the company would also try to export some new products to sanofi-aventis group affiliates during the year.

He expected robust domestic growth on the back of some ‘line extensions’ to be launched in the second half of the year.

APL had for the year ended December 31, 2007, recorded net sales of Rs 873.5 crore against Rs 884 crore in 2006. Net profit was Rs 144.4 crore (Rs 169.3 crore). Domestic sales recorded 6.8 per cent growth — from Rs 658.2 crore to Rs 703.1 crore. But export sales had declined drastically — from Rs 225.8 crore to Rs 170.4 crore — a decline of 24 per cent.

Mr Mallya said APL would by the end of the month launch a new disposable insulin pen — ‘SoloStar’ — for use with the 24-hour insulin Lantus for type 1/type 2 diabetes. The product was the result of over four years of intensive research and development, and had been designed with inputs from patients, nurses and doctors.

Price reduction

He said in the wake of announcements in this year’s Budget, APL had “voluntarily reduced” the prices of not only all price-controlled products but also non-controlled products much ahead of the guidelines issued by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), and had passed on the entire benefit of excise duty reduction to patients.

The APL Chairman said there was need to improve the Patents office infrastructure to enable speedy disposal of patent applications. He also cautioned the Government to “carefully consider all the pros and cons” before granting compulsory licences under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement. He said India had accepted the international convention of respecting innovations in the form of patents and “the laws of the land must protect this fundamental intent” and there should be no loopholes that allowed backdoor entry of copies. Any attempt to subvert rules “to suit generic companies to introduce copies of patented products will seriously dent the image of the country”, he said. He suggested issuing data exclusivity or data protection to pharmaceuticals for a five-year period from the date of marketing approval, as is done in China.

In first quarter ended March 31, 2008, APL’s net sales were Rs 216.9 crore (Rs 212.9 crore), net profit was Rs 34.5 crore (Rs 43.3 crore) and EPS was Rs 15 (Rs 18.83).

At the end of December 2007, APL had reserves of Rs 665 crore and equity capital was Rs 23 crore.

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