Aurobindo consolidated Q2 profit before tax up 5.9% at Rs 904 crore

Gross profit margin slipped to 20.8% during the quarter under review from 21.6% in the year-ago previous quarter owing to higher expenditure, which grew by 19%

Indian drug major Aurobindo Pharma Limited has reported a 5.9 per cent increase in consolidated profit before tax (before forex and exceptional items) at Rs 903.8 crore for the quarter ended September, 2019 as compared with Rs 853.2 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year.

Revenues from operations grew 17.9 per cent to Rs 5,600 crore as compared to Rs 4,751 crore in the year ago period on the back of a strong revenue growth from US and European markets.

Even though the company performed well on the revenue front, the gross profit margin marginally slipped to 20.8 per cent during the quarter under review from 21.6 per cent in the corresponding previous quarter owing to higher expenditure, which grew by 19 per cent.

Commenting on the company's performance, Aurobindo managing director N Govindarajan said, "We had another quarter of healthy performance where we continued to grow in US and Europe, which are our focused geographies. Our R&D initiatives have been progressing well across the products basket and we have started clinical trials for our first biosimilar product in Q3FY20. We reiterate that we are committed to quality adherence and are in the process of resolving all pending regulatory issues."

Despite the recent regulatory issues the US formulations revenues of the company witnessed a strong growth of 27.3 per cent at Rs 2,835.5 crore as compared to Rs 2,226.8 crore in the corresponding previous quarter. In fact, the US formulations revenues have accounted for 50.6 per cent of the consolidated revenues during the period. Similarly Europe formulations revenue grew by 21.2 per cent at Rs 1,401.3 crore.

Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) revenues marginally declined to Rs 805.8 crore as compared to Rs 816.6 crore.