Hikal Q1 Net sales up 63% to Rs. 91.9 crore

PAT jumps 23% to Rs. 10.7 crore

The net sales are up by 63% to Rs. 91.9 crore compared to net sales of Rs. 56.2 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last year.

PAT has risen by 23% to Rs 10.7 crore from Rs.8.7 crore the same quarter last year even after providing for Rs. 5.03 crore for foreign currency fluctuations.

Registering an impressive growth of 145%, the pharma sales have risen to Rs. 60.1 crore in the first quarter of 2008 as against Rs. 24.5 crore in the previous year.

The EBIDTA for this quarter stood at Rs. 24.8 crore, an increase of 36.2% as compared to Rs 18.2 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

Commenting on the results, Mr. Jai Hiremath, Vice Chairman & Managing Director of Hikal Ltd., said, "The long-term contracts signed earlier with leading global life sciences companies is now resulting in increased pharma sales. We expect this trend to continue as a number of our projects will go on stream in the coming quarters."

Earlier this month, IFC, a member of the World Bank group, agreed to invest US$ 15 million in Hikal by way of equity. Hikal also announced the inauguration of a new multi-purpose agrochemical plant at Taloja for supply of Active Ingredients for Crop Protection Products to Bayer CropScience AG.

About Hikal:

Hikal is a reliable long-term outsourcing partner to companies in the Pharmaceuticals, Crop Protection Products, and Specialty Chemicals industry. The company has been supplying key active ingredients (AI) and intermediates, manufactured using stringent global quality standards, for it's customers in the United States, Europe and Japan. Hikal's advanced manufacturing facilities have been inspected and approved by leading global players in Crop protection and Pharmaceutical sectors. The crop protection facilities are located at Taloja and Mahad (Maharashtra). Hikal's manufacturing activities are supported by state-of-the-art research centers and pilot plant facilities located at Bangalore and Taloja respectively. The API and pharmaceutical intermediates manufacturing facilities are situated in Jigani (Bangalore) and Panoli (Gujarat) respectively.