Bora Pharmaceuticals Co Ltd (保瑞藥業) has posted significant earnings gains in the year to date as the company’s acquisition efforts to solidify its foothold in the US contract manufacturing market begin to pay off, it said.
Net income in the second quarter rose 85 percent sequentially to NT$74 million (US$2.41 million), while revenue surged 245.61 percent to NT$394 million, company filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
Earnings per share were NT$2.82, up from NT$1.56 at the end of March.
However, gross margin dropped to 30.4 percent in the second quarter, from 35.1 in the first quarter, with operating margin also dipping to 13.3 percent from 22.3 percent at the end of March.
In the first half of the year, total net income came to NT$113 million, compared with NT$4.1 million in the same period last year. Earnings per share jumped to NT$4.34, from NT$0.17.
Bora Pharmaceuticals in February completed a NT$550 million purchase of a Taiwan-based manufacturing facility previously owned by Impax Laboratories Inc.
Impax has merged into US-based Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc to become one of the country’s largest makers of generic drugs, so Bora Pharmaceuticals was able to purchase the facility, valued at NT$3.5 billion, at a steep discount, company chairman Bobby Sheng (盛保熙) told an investors’ conference in March.
Through the purchase, the company has gained an advanced manufacturing facility certified by US regulators and customers, Sheng said.
The acquisition has helped Bora Pharmaceuticals expand its list of US customers to become one of Taiwan’s top-five makers of oral formulation drugs, the government-funded Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry reported in a newsletter on Thursday, quoting Sheng.
The company’s contract manufacturing and development businesses now account for 49 percent of Taiwan’s drug exports to the US, Sheng was quoted as saying in the newsletter, adding that Bora Pharmaceuticals products are sold in more than 17 markets.
Contract manufacturing and development has seen faster growth as new-drug developers have increased their reliance on partners, due to difficulties in securing enough volume to sustain their own facilities, he said.
Increasingly, new-drug development companies are becoming “virtual,” with patents and regulatory approvals their most significant assets, Sheng said.
The company would continue to seek acquisition targets and joint development partnerships for new brand-name drugs with specialty pharmaceutical companies, he was quoted as saying.
The company’s strategy is to build up its brand power in the US and European markets before expanding to China, Sheng said.
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