Margins pushed up by domestic & Brazil performance, turnaround seen in Brazil business, FY08 sales seen up 22-25%: Torrent Pharma

Sanjay Dalal, Executive Director of Torrent Pharma said our domestic business has done very well, but the Brazilian business has done substantially well. Both these pushed up the margins. Brazilian business, which posted loss last year, has been a turn around story and made profit for the whole year. Domestic business has also done similarly. Last year it was impacted due to VAT implications in 8 states, which was corrected this time. Our overall growth has been 29% and for next year we expect 22-25% growth rate in turn over. Bottom line will grow slightly better than top line due to SG&A growth.

Regarding Merck’s generic business bid, Sanjay said we were there till the last lap of the bid, however we lost to Mylan in the last phase. Merck was a very unique opportunity and such opportunities do not come frequently, that is why we were very much interested in it. In future we will be looking for such opportunities.

In Europe and US we are trying to build up our presence. In territories where were present like Brazil, we are trying to expand our business. As for acquisitions, we are not perusing any particular size and price. What we are looking for is a perfect fit for our business, Sanjay informed.

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Alembic is to out-licence drug delivery platform for Levetiracetam. It would get $ 11 million as milestone payment, royalty for Levetiracetam. R K Baheti, CFO of Alembic said out licence agreement has been with UCB Pharma, based in Belgium. It has $ 2.5 billion revenue. $ 11 million will come in 2 years. Then after there will be royalty on sales.

Payment will start from 2007 and last payment is likely to be in 2009. Royalty will start when sales starts which are expected to start in 2009. It would depend on how much release formulation we can achieve. We expect the drug to become $ 400-00 million in 2nd years of its launch. Any other company registering for the same drug can happen only after its patent expiry, Baheti informed.

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Bharti Airtel breaks into 40 Mn Mobile Customer Club, adds 20 Mn customers in record 13 months

Bharti Airtel has crossed the 40 million mobile customer milestone. With this, Bharti Airtel becomes the first Indian mobile services provider and the 10th in the world to join an exclusive list of global telecom operators with more than 40 million customers from a single-country. This landmark customer base was achieved in just 12 years, making Bharti Airtel one of the fastest companies to make it to this exclusive list.

The last 12 months have witnessed Bharti Airtel dominating the Indian telecom space and recording spectacular growth, both in terms of customers and revenues. This remarkable achievement is highlighted by the fact that it took Airtel 11 years to reach the 20 million customer landmark and just another 13 months to add the next 20 million customers.

Its overall wireless market share catapulted to over 23.2% as of April 2007 from 20.4% as reported in FY06. Airtel’s lead over Hutch has widened from 2 million in March 2006 to over 11 million in April 2007. Similarly, Airtel’s lead over Idea and BSNL has increased from 11 million to 24 million and from 0.5 million to 8 million, respectively. More significantly, Airtel’s swing over Reliance Communications has increased by 10.7 million customers - from a deficit of 1.7 million to a lead of 9 million.

Currently, Airtel is present in nearly 4,700 census towns and over 200,000 non-census towns and villages covering 59% of the country’s population. The company plans to aggressively roll out more than 30,000 cell sites in FY08 to increase its population coverage to 70%.

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Bhushan Steel acquires 15% stake in Bowen Energy

With reference to the news item appearing in a leading financial daily titled, "Bhushan Steel eyes 15% in Aussie firm", Bhushan Steel & Strips has clarified that, for supply of coal for the company's plant at Orissa, the Company has entered into MOU with Bowen Energy of Australia.

In order to ensure regular supply of coal, the management decided to take 15% stake in the said Australian Exploration Company Bowen Energy. This is a step towards vendor development ensuring regular supply of one of the major inputs for manufacture of steel.

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Raj TV: Have board approval for launch of 11 new channels; Looking to partner with either Tata Sky or Dish TV for DTH

Raj TV management says that they have the board of directors approval to launch 11 new channels. Raj TV has been on the upmove ever since the Maran family feud broke out. The political conditions in Tamil Nadu are expected to benefit Raj TV. The company says that there have been too many speculations regarding the launch of Kalignar TV, but they are going to launch that service in one month or so.

The company is looking to partner with either Tata Sky or Dish TV for DTH. The management also adds that they will not poach any producers from other networks in Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile the Sun TV management says that there will be no impact on the company due to the changed political position. They add that their current market share is 70% across all channels.

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Batliboi acquires Canadian machine tool company for Rs 22 Cr, plans Rs 10 Cr capex program, to fund from internal resources

Batliboi has come out with a good set of numbers and working in across 3 business segments in the engineering space. IT has acquired Canadian machine tool company, Quickmill for Rs 22 crore. Batliboi has manufacturing facilities at Surat and Bangalore.

Nirmal Bhogilal, CMD, Batliboi said acquisition of Quickmill is already complete. It is in the space of machine tools. Quickmill enjoys a high market share in North America. For financial year January-December 2006, we had total turnover of Rs 50 crore with profit of Rs 4 crore.

For organic growth we do not require any funding. We have a capex program of Rs 10 crore and we should be able to fund it from internal resources. As of now we have promoter holding at 81% and as per SEBI guidelines, we need to take it down to 75%. If there is any further inorganic growth in the future, we will take help of debt rather than raising capital by equity dilution.

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