Sun Pharma confident of specialty sales momentum, sees limited impact from Halol import alert

India's largest drugmaker Sun Pharma is confident that its specialty sales business will continue its growth momentum and that its focus remains on growing this business.

In an interaction with CNBC-TV18, Group CFO CS Muralidharan said that the company is on track to achieve its revenue growth guidance of high single-digits to low double-digits.

Specialty sales for the quarter stood at $222 million, excluding milestone payments, compared to $200 million during the September period. Including the milestone payments, specialty sales were up 28 percent from last year to $235 million.

"This was primarily driven by a strong contribution by Illumya and Winlevi. If you see, for the last five quarters, we have been consistently maintaining the momentum and we expect that momentum to be maintained as we go forward," Muralidharan said.

The other major pain point for Sun Pharma has been the import alert issued to its Halol facility. The unit contributes 3 percent to Sun Pharma's US business. Muralidharan said that besides Halol, there are other facilities that also supply to the US. There are also certain products which Sun Pharma supplies from the Halol unit that have been granted an exception by the US drug regulator.

"In fact, given the size of our organisation and the overall global revenues, we don't see any much impact at our end," Muralidharan said. While the company is working on the remediation process, he did not share a specific timeline for the resolution.

Sun Pharma's Group CFO expects some sequential volatility in the India business. The company recently acquired three brands and is on the look out for bolt-on acquisitions in India. A bolt-on acquisition is that of a smaller company in the similar line of business that presents strategic value.

The company continues to focus on maintaining and improving its operating margin, but that will not come at the cost of growing the business, according to Muralidharan. He further added that the company continues to face some headwinds on the price pressures, which continue in the sector.

- Sales in nine months of the current financial year are close to full year sales in financial year 202

- Immediate priority post closing the Concert Pharma deal is to follow the estimated timeline. Expect filing of product by the first half of this year.

- Taro has their own internal strategy driven by the management and board

- On track for revlimid generic launch

- Working with the regulator on the OAI status of Mohali point

Shares of Sun Pharma ended 0.7 percent lower at Rs 1,007.35.