Lupin Plans To Restructure Rs 150 Crore High-Cost Debt

Pharma major Lupin Ltd is planning to restructure Rs 150 crore of its high cost debt during the current year to lower its interest burden, DB Gupta, its chairman and managing director, said at the first annual general meeting after the merger between Lupin Laboratories and Lupin Chemicals.

It has reset loans to the tune of Rs 250 crore at a lower interest rate, reducing the interest burden to 6.61 per cent in 2001 from over 8 per cent in 2000.

Gupta projected an increment of 15 per cent in its turnover for the current fiscal and a growth in profits which will be "much higher than the current year profit".

The Rs 902-crore company has outstanding loans of Rs 617 crore, with a high interest burden of Rs 59.7 crore, almost a six-fold jump over that in the previous year.

Lupin also plans for licensing at least 2 new products in the next 12 month. In the new drug delivery systems (NDDS), the dominant area would be cephalosporin while in the new chemical entities (NCE) category, the focus would be on neurology, asthma, dermatology and tuberculosis (TB). "We have half a dozen products in the pipeline for licensing," Gupta said.

"The new markets we are targeting are the South African markets, especially Brazil and Venezuela. Lupin is to start marketing of its cephalosporin product Cefotaxime Sodium in the US markets from next month with American Pharmaceutical Partners (APP), its marketing associate there. It expects sales of $14 million annually from this product," he added.

Lupin had planned on filing an abbreviated new drug applications (ANDA) for cephdinal, which has been overruled by US authorities last week. The US patent is held by Fujisawa. "We have not ruled out applying again but we are evaluating the proposition in the light of this new development," added Gupta.

With an increased focus on research & development of new chemical entities and new drug delivery systems, Lupin plans to file for 6 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) in the field of anti infectives, out of which 2 applications may be filed in the next 3 months itself.