Granules India's net profit up by 8 percent

Hyderabad, April 25 (IANS) Granules India Ltd., a fast growing pharmaceutical manufacturing company, has reported eight percent growth in the net profit during 2012-13.

The company earned a net profit of Rs.33 crore against Rs.30 crore during the previous year.

The net sales during the year were Rs.764 crore, an increase of 17 percent over 2011-12.

Announcing the results for the year and also the fourth quarter, managing director Krishna Prasad told reporters that the growth was constrained due to delay in capacity enhancements. "Due to the delay we sold more APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) than formulations," he said.

He explained that the delay was due to start-up issues they faced while scaling up production. He, however, said the company had identified and solved the problems.

Granules announced the completion of the expansion at its Gagillapur facility. Due to the delay in the scale-up of the new capacity, margins slipped since the company incurred costs to run the new facility without a concurrent increase in production.

Prasad expects the scale-up production throughout the first quarter of the current financial year. He said long-term outlook remained strong.

"We have made significant improvements over the past year and believe our foundation is stronger than ever. In FY14, we will continue to shift to formulations which will result in an improvement in profitability," he added.