Dear Shareholders,
FY2024 was an exciting and eventful year. We grew our core, invested in
our future, and continued to serve our stakeholders. We also observed 40 years of our
company's journey. Through this second edition of our integrated report, we bring you
a brief overview of our journey, important highlights of the year, and the work we do for
patients, people and planet.
40 Years of Creating Value
In February 2024, we marked our 40th year of serving patients, with a
legacy of access, affordability, innovation, and sustainability. Our company was founded
in 1984 to enable patients to access life-saving medicines, and to use science and
innovation to open new avenues to meet unmet medical needs. This pioneering spirit and
quest for excellence drove us to achieve industry-firsts such as investment in drug
discovery in the 1990s, expansion into international markets and first-to-market launches
several countries, the first 180-exclusivity granted to Indian pharma by the USFDA,
listing on the NYSE, and adoption of voluntary disclosures and science-based commitments
in sustainability.
Giving back to society was instilled into the ethos of the company from
its early days.
We also learnt several lessons along the way from a myriad of
challenges from acquisitions that did not work well, to a period of Quality
compliance issues, and several geo-political crises. We are grateful that through all the
thick and thin, we had constant support and trust from our patients, the medical
fraternity, shareholders and investors, customers, partners, and all other stakeholders.
Our people are our pride, and nothing gives us more joy than to see our people realise
their full potential in the company, and to see several of our alumni lead the industry
forward. There is still a long way to go.
No company can afford to rest on its past laurels. The pharma landscape
continues to evolve constantly and remains extremely competitive. Our approach is to
ensure that we continue to do the basics well in our core businesses of API, generics,
branded generics, biosimilars and OTC. On the other hand, as demographics, disease
patterns, business models evolve, it is important to anticipate healthcare trends of the
future. We have started investing in areas that we think could be future growth drivers
novel molecules (NCEs, NBEs, CAR-T), digital therapeutics (wearables, apps), and
consumer healthcare (nutrition and OTC wellness). These are relatively new and
long-gestation areas requiring companies to think and do things differentlythrough strong
investment in newer capabilities, and an appetite for risk. In FY2024, we made good
progress in some of these areas.
Highlights of FY2024
Overall, we delivered strong financial day results in FY2024. We
had double digit revenue growth at 14%, reported EBITDA margin for the year at 29.7%, and
ROCE of over 35%. Our growth and profitability were driven by our performance in the U.S.
Strategic collaborations played an important role in helping us
introduce the latest generation of treatments to patients in India, both in our current
core business as well as future growth drivers. We signed a partnership with Sanofi in
India take their well-established and trusted vaccines portfolio to more people all over
India. With combined sales of over Rs 426 crore (as per IQVIA MAT February 2024), the
vaccine portfolio also propels us to the second position among vaccine players in India.
Our collaboration with Bayer in India, to market their second brand of the molecule
Vericiguat, helps us make this new class of drugs in heart failure management available to
patients in India, in and beyond metros in tier-I and tier-II towns. It also bolsters our
heart failure management portfolio as we look to strengthen our play in the chronic
segment. Our collaboration with
Pharmazz Inc. enables us to market the first-in-class molecule
Centhaquine in India, a potential add-on drug in the management of hypovolemic shock. We
continue to advance our work in the identified future growth spaces of access to novel
molecules, digital therapeutics, and consumer healthcare. Our regulatory work in India on
Toripalimab, for which we partnered with Junshi Biosciences, has moved forward. We have
taken early steps in the area of digital therapeutics, with the launch of the drug-free
migraine management device Nerivio?, and a digital integrated care plan to manage
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Consumer healthcare is a fast-growing segment. In recent
years, we have acquired several well-known brands in the U.S. in Nicotine Replacement
Therapy (NRT), pain-relief, and women's health. In India, we have a portfolio of OTC
products in the hydration, cough-cold-allergy, and skin care categories. The recent
announcement of a joint venture with Nestl? India to bring the well-known global range of
nutritional health solutions as well as vitamin, minerals, herbals and supplements of
Nestl? Health Science (NHSc) to India, is another significant move to strengthen our
nutrition and OTC business in India. In Emerging Markets, we have a long-established and
sizeable
OTC business with market-leading products in the allergy, pain relief,
gastro-intestinal and women's health categories. We also entered the UK consumer
health market with the launch of the OTC allergy medication Histallay this year. A few
days ago, we announced the acquisition of the global consumer healthcare brand Nicotinell
and its various market-leading brand names in over 30 countries outside of the U.S. We see
this acquisition as an ideal anchor platform to grow our consumer healthcare business.
Through all of the above, our aim is to meet unmet needs of patients
and to enhance standard of care wherever possible. We also continue our efforts to be
viewed as the partner of choice for our commercial strengths and footprint, our
governance, ESG and progressive practices, and our discipline.
While our people put in every effort to ensure we meet our business
targets and ESG goals, there are always challenges along the way. Our record financial
performance in the last two years has been led by a blockbuster product in the U.S. We are
working hard to ensure that our current investments and diversified business model
approach help us maintain sustained growth in the upcoming years. As part of the usual
course of business, we faced several regulatory inspections at our manufacturing sites in
FY2024. Our all-time readiness approach stood us in good stead but we continue our state
of constant vigilance in Quality compliance. Our dossier for our proposed rituximab
biosimilar candidate received a Complete Response Letter from the USFDA. We will continue
to work closely with the USFDA to address and resolve all concerns within stipulated
timelines in order to make this biosimilar rituximab available to patients in the U.S. as
soon as possible. Similarly, the bold and ambitious nature of our ESG goals means that it
is challenging to succeed equally in every goal every year. However, our commitment
remains undeterred. By the end of FY2024, we had served over 700 million patients and
continue our endeavour to reach over 1.5 billion patients globally by 2030. Our
progress was recognised in our ascent to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index,
improved position in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook, and Gold Medal status by
EcoVadis. In FY2024, we also launched Womb to the World, an initiative within our India
business for working mothers from the pre-natal care stage to support in various ways
until their children attain 18 years of age, thereby enabling more women to stay in the
workforce and succeed in their careers. In partnership with Dr. Reddy's Foundation,
we upgraded several primary healthcare centres in Srikakulam. We also completed a pond
rejuvenation community project in Baddi, and funded a rare disease research centre at the
Dr. Reddy's Institute of Life Sciences. Over 40 years, our company has evolved from
an API player to formulations, finished drugs, biosimilars, and newer healthcare segments.
Amidst the evolution, what has remained unchanged is our endeavour to keep access,
affordability, innovation at the heart of everything we do. And we continue to be
guided by our core tenets of deep science, progressive people practices, and robust
governance. Once again, deep gratitude to all those who have supported and contributed to
our journey of 40 years. It is an important milestone, but as our founder Dr. Anji Reddy
often remarked, we would like to build an organisation that will last 500 years.
K Satish Reddy |
G V Prasad |
Chairman |
Co-Chairman and |
|
Managing Director |