Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Anthem Biosciences Q4 FY 2026 earnings conference call hosted by JM Financial Institutional Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Amey Chalke from JM Financial Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Alric. Good morning and warm welcome to all the participants on Anthem Biosciences 4Q and FY 2026 earnings call hosted by JM Financial. Today on this call we have with us from the management Mr. Ajay Bhardwaj, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Gawir Baig, Chief Financial Officer. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Ajay Bhardwaj for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Amey . Thank you everyone for being on this call. Good morning. At the outset, I'm very pleased to say we ended the financial year 2025, 2026 on a very strong note. Our consolidated revenue from operations for the full year was INR 2,124 crore. Out of this, our CRDMO business contributed 83% of this revenue, delivering INR 1,773 crore, which was an 18% growth over last year. Specialty Ingredients contributed 17% of our revenue, and that delivered INR 352 crore worth of sales. We delivered INR 156 crore other income for the financial year, taking our total revenue to INR 2,280 crore, which was a growth of 18% over last year.
Other operating income includes gain on account of forex and RoDTEP export incentives of INR 63 crores and financial and other non-operating income of INR 92 crores. Our EBITDA was just shy of INR 1,000 crores at INR 990 crore, which included other income with EBITDA margins of 43.4%, a growth of 31% on absolute terms and 420 basis points on margins over the last financial year. PBT before exception item was INR 849 crores. A word about the new Labour Codes impact and tax expense. Our profit after tax for the year was INR 592 crores, a growth of 31% over last year, with PAT margins of 26%. Net cash position as of March 31st, 2026, is INR 1,375 crores.
With respect to the quarterly financials, this was our highest revenue quarter ever in Q4 FY 2026. We delivered a revenue growth year-on-year of 26% for the quarter. Consolidated revenues at INR 611 crores. CRDMO business delivered INR 513 crore revenues with a growth of 31% on a year-on-year basis. Specialty ingredients delivered INR 98 crores, a growth of 8% year-on-year. EBITDA, including other incomes, was INR 318 crores, a growth of 52% over last year, with EBITDA margins at 48%. 48.1%, to be precise. PBT before exceptional items was INR 277 crores. We reassessed the impact of the new Labour Codes changes, factoring in the revised remuneration structure.
As a result, we have recognized a credit of INR 98 lakhs as exceptional items on account of the new Labour Code implementation. PAT was INR 990 crores for the quarter, with PAT margins at 28.7%, a growth of 130% on a YoY basis. Overall, in a nutshell, it was a strong performance for the financial year 2025, 2026, with our highest revenue quarter ever in Q4 FY 2026. Anthem's commitment to prudent cost management and focus on long-term value creation has enabled us to expand profitability margins while delivering this revenue growth. Our EBITDA and PAT for the year grew by more than 30% in line with our growth aspirations. We continue to maintain a healthy financial position and remain committed to delivering sustainable growth across all business segments.
As we step into this financial year of 2026, 2027, our priorities remain clear: To build one of the most agile, science-led, and future-ready CRDMO platforms in the world. Well, thank you for your attention. I now open the floor for any questions and comments.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Bansi Desai with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on good finish to the year. As we step in fiscal 2027, you know, how should we think about the growth for, you know, CRDMO business, both for research and, you know, development and manufacturing, both these pieces? Also, you know, if you could comment on, you know, for our key products where we had witnessed some destocking impact in fiscal 2026, you know, are those largely sorted now? You know, should we see, you know, growth coming back on those molecules as we, you know, move ahead?
Well, thanks, Bansi. Just an overall comment. You know, when we look at the future, if you look at our history as well, if you look at our track record, we have delivered growth in the vicinity of 20% and more, that's what we aspire to even in the coming years. It is for us, we believe that we are in a good place to, you know, align with what we have done in the past. Of course, you know, that remains to be seen. We are very confident of our growth trajectory in this year and the years to come.
On the question of destocking, you know, that part, that portion, there was definitely that with our customers, from many of our customers. You have seen that in spite of that, we have delivered such good growth. Going forward, when things get better and when this situation of destocking now swings to restocking, I think Anthem would be in a better place. Again, I think mostly it's behind us, and we expect that this would be, this will have a very positive impact on Anthem's top line and bottom line.
Bansi, I just want to add something over here. Historically, if you look at it last 10 years, our revenue growth has been around 20% level. Even when we started last year, we said that we'll be delivering about 20%, but then we course-corrected, and then we delivered about 15% revenue growth. While we had said 20% on revenues and 20% on EBITDA and the PAT, whatever was the shortfall on revenues, we more than made up with respect to our EBITDA and PAT performance, with a 30% EBITDA growth and 30%+ PAT growth for FY 2025/2026. You know, our aspirations are quite high.
What we have delivered in the past, we, you know, historically over a long-term period. We are not talking about a near-term FY 2027 or a near-term, you know, one year or a two-year kind of a period. We want to refrain from giving any guidance for, you know, FY 2027 or FY 2028. Long term, have we put in the ingredients from a growth point of view? I would say that the answer is yes. We're investing in our people. We are investing in our facilities. We are investing in technology. All of this is also seen by our customers. Customers do like us. We are getting more and more projects as well. Our commercial portfolio has increased. Our other portfolio from a late-stage pipeline has also gone up.
The all the ingredients are there. I would refrain from giving a forward-looking FY 2027 or a near-term guidance. Our thought process is to deliver on what we have delivered in the past, on across all parameters. Last year we missed out on one parameter, but more than compensated on the two parameters on EBITDA and PAT. We will continue to do our best to deliver, going forward on across all parameters from a growth and profitability point of view.
Thanks, and appreciate that. My second question is, you know, also in terms of how do we from here on intend to augment our, you know, relationship with, you know, more innovators? I know we've got very strong relationship with probably three of the top 20 big pharma. We've added probably two more there. You know, as we move along, you know, what probably, you know, the initiatives in that you've been taking, you know, so that we probably have, we see broadening of, you know, of our footprint with, you know, more innovators, large innovators.
Secondly, on capacities, you know, do you think this is constrained by, you know, our capacity and therefore as we move along over the next two years when more capacity comes on-online, you know, we should see, you know, broadening of our relationship with more big pharmas?
Yeah, it is already, as you rightly said, and there have been two notable additions last year in big pharma, which we didn't have earlier. These were done directly. Okay? A lot of our relationship with big pharma have come through acquisitions of the biotechs that we've been working with. When they get acquired, as I've said, we move into working with big pharma. And then once we're in there, we try to broaden our relationship in other parts of their business. However, now there have been last year we've had two direct contacts and two direct relationships, which are now I'm glad to say growing healthily.
We expect that, you know, as. Se e, this is not a, it's not like flipping a switch. Your customers will have to build confidence in you, and they will slowly start giving you more and more exposure to their business, so a larger contract. I think we've already done that, the initial part, and we see, we expect that we will see a bigger part of their pie in the years ahead. That's one. Secondly, a lot of our new programs. We have at this moment about 10 programs in phase III in small biotechs, and historically, they always get acquired. Once they get acquired by Big Pharma, we expect that our relationship will be now with new Big Pharma.
I think we're in a good place. We have about 100 projects are in, more than 100 projects we are doing in R&D in early stages, and 10 of them are in phase III. We are in a good place, I think, to add more Big Pharma customers to our portfolio.
The point which you had asked on capacity, I think with the capacity additions that we have made in the last financial year, with respect to Unit II expansion and also Unit III commissioning, we have a decent headroom right now, which we can use up till the time our Unit IV comes up, both on chemistry and biology. Capacity will not be a constraint. In Unit II expansion that we made, that added significant capacity. We moved up from 246 kL in Unit II to almost about 376 kL.
50%.
In Unit II, so it's a 50% addition. Unit III is also fully up and running right now. Capacity will not be a constraint. What we are doing in Unit IV is more to make ourselves future-ready, so that whenever the capacity comes up for Unit IV, and there are more programs coming in from early-stage biotech innovators or from Big Pharma, we have the wherewithal to be able to service them. Capacity is not a constraint for us now.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Saion Mukherjee with Nomura Holdings. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for taking my question, sir. One question, you know, you mentioned about, you know, you're trying to make the business more agile, you know, future-ready CRDMO platform. In that context, what are the big missing pieces that you would like to address, let's say, over the next two, three years, either organically or even inorganic is part of your plans, whether in India or even outside India, you know, given the current geopolitical situation and you're expanding, you know, customer relationships?
Yeah. Thanks, Saion. Again, in terms of becoming more agile and more ready, science-led, and be ready for our customers, what Anthem is doing is investing in technology. We, though we do have, you know, if you look at our factories, we do have traditional reactors and bioreactors. At the same time, we are also investing heavily in changing the way chemistry is done. We are looking at and also biology. Can we do this in a continuous fashion? Can we change it to using, you know, bringing better automation and control? Can we also do, you know, more green chemistry? All of this at a commercial scale.
Where we have the advantage is that when we look at a program, we look at it very early in its evolution. When it's an early program comes in, you can implement all these so that when it goes for regulatory, when it goes to the regulators, you've already implemented these new technologies. That makes us puts us in a place where we have obviously the respect of the customer, but also the regulators love better control, better more green chemistry and, at the same time, you know, delivering higher quality as a result of all these better controls. The emphasis on technology will remain, and it is this is not just limited to what we've already told everybody.
We are adding new aspects to this technology and as and when you know, visit Anthem, you'll be able to see those in action. This is the first part. Secondly, in terms of acquisitions and growth, I mean, apart from our organic growth, which is also substantive, we are not averse to looking at acquisitions, both in India and abroad. We are actively searching. Unfortunately, we haven't come across the right candidate and I've said this ad nauseam, and I'll repeat it again, we will not do an acquisition for the sake of an acquisition. It has to make sense, and it has to be the right asset.
We're always scouting for such targets, but, you know, once they come along, only then and the right one there, we'll make that call. This is, you know, to answer, we will drive our business with technology.
Understood. Just one more question on CapEx. You know, if you can talk about your CapEx number for next year as you're expanding the new unit and also, slightly medium-term, CapEx outlook, let's say, over the next three, four years, if you can guide for that?
Sure. Saion, in terms of our CapEx plan, the first and the major CapEx what we are incurring right now is on Unit IV. Unit IV, we have articulated that this is going to be our largest project. Unit I, II, and III put together, Unit IV is going to be much larger than all of the units put together. It's a 30-acre piece of land, and all our Unit I, II, and III put together is close to about 30 acres. In phase one of that expansion, we are looking at adding, and we are looking at investing almost about INR 1,200 odd crores across two years. This year, FY 2027, and in FY 2028. We aim to complete the phase one expansion by March 2028 financial year, towards the latter half of March 2028.
This will add close to about 365 kL of custom synthesis capacity and 100 kL of fermentation. Vis-à-vis our current capacity is 425 kL custom synthesis and 180 kL fermentation. We are more or less doubling on custom synthesis and adding 50% more on the fermentation side. That's on Unit IV. We'll be completing a few expansion, which is ongoing, item more on Unit II and Unit III, which is lying as CWIP in our books in this half year of FY 2027. Largely medium term, if you look at it's going to be Unit IV which will be driving the major part of it. Just to add, We still have two more phases to be done with respect to Unit IV.
That we will take it up once phase I gets completed, and that will be post March 28. The aspirations are huge over there so that we can build a much larger facility, which will in phase I at least double, in phase II it could be triple of our overall size, from an overall capacity size point of view.
Understood. Just for clarification, next year your CapEx will be north of INR 600 crores, right?
Yes.
Would that be a right assessment?
That's right.
INR 600+ from residual CapEx plus maintenance CapEx. What would be the number we should work with next year?
Roughly about INR 700, and then post that will be about INR 500.
Okay. Got you. Yeah. Thank you.
This we are investing for the future.
Yeah.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Debanjan Bhakta with Universal Sompo General Insurance. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes, Debanjan. Please be a little louder, though. Thank you.
Okay. Like I wanted to get some color on the product side. As you are seeing like new orders coming on the new SKUs, what modalities are they coming in? Like, are they biological entities or chemical entities?
Sorry, Debanjan, I didn't catch that question. Can you just repeat the question?
Like, the orders that you are seeing, the new orders that you are seeing coming, right? Are they coming in the biological entity modalities or chemical entity modalities?
Both. I would say that, across both custom synthesis side and biology side, plus on the advanced technologies on the custom synthesis, more on the peptides or on the RNA side, we're getting more and more orders there.
Okay. Another question, like, what payload are we developing in the ADC platform? What type of payload?
Sorry?
What type of payload are we developing in the ADC platform?
I mean, I'm not at a liberty to disclose those. Those are confidential work that we do for our clients. We do a variety of payloads. At least I think 15, 20 payloads, we have. We work on depending on what our clients want, and some of them are proprietary. That's a very interesting area, and we have a huge amount of activity going on there. I'm sorry, I won't be able to give you the names of payloads.
Okay. Like last question, from the current manufacturing revenue, right, not the early research, how much of it coming from biologics and how much it is coming from chemical entities? The current manufacturing revenue.
A larger portion of it is from custom synthesis. Debanjan, a lot of work includes enzymatic work. There is a lot of peptides work which gets done. A lot of work on the RNAi side. Even in custom synthesis, on some of the areas we use biotransformation. It's very difficult to articulate and differentiate saying that this is pure play biology and this is pure play custom synthesis. A sizable portion of our work comes from the NCE molecule side, on the custom synthesis side.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Vivek Gautam with GS Investment. Please go ahead.
Congratulations, sir, for good set of numbers. Sir, my question is any risk of stocking, destocking inventory, et cetera, in our company? In GLP-1, basically how is the opportunity size for us and overall opportunity size for us in an expected growth rate for the next 2, 3 years and differentiators for our company, sir? Thank you.
Okay, to answer the first question, The destocking that had to happen has already happened. This year, everything will be in the positive territory. We are restocking now. That part is behind us. The second part is on the question of GLP-1. See, if you follow the GLP approvals in India, most of them have their active is from China. Now, we are in conversations with, I would say, all the big players to give them an alternate, which is based here in India. We are in a very good position as far as GLP-1 goes.
This will be the end, as, after, most of them have launched, so we will be in a good place to replace imports. That is a position that we are, you know, we've always been strong in. The third question was on.
Differentiator for our company and opportunity size and expected growth rate for the next few years, sir?
Historically, we've grown upwards of 20%, and we feel confident that this is what we want to maintain. You know, as I say, we don't give forward-looking guidance, so I would not be able to give a number. You know, we do aspire to the growth that we have maintained so far. Everything, as far as Anthem is concerned, is aligned to give you that growth rate. In terms of what differentiates us, I think it starts at the very, very basic thing. We are very different from our peers in India. We are more focused on small biotechs, and therefore we are more on the discovery side rather than the full-time equivalent type of business. What we differentiate ourselves is by technology as well.
I think in that we have no peers in the country. We absolutely approach every problem from a new technology solution and which our clients love. I think that gives us a lot of visibility and traction with our clients. The third part that differentiates is our culture as well as the, you know, a very large number of our, hello? Is the line still active?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. A very large number of our employees are on our ESOP plan, 40% at the time of announcing stock options. We have a very young, energized workforce which wants us to see the company grow, and I think are really making a difference.
Yeah. Yeah. Any risk of AI in the discovery stage where we are focused?
Yeah. We see, AI is coming into all kinds of function of the company. It starts with the recruitment, with the, with HR, with warehousing. We are trying to bring in, you know, there's a lot of type of hype of AI, but you have to pick up the use cases and implement them case by case as they are relevant to you. It's not some overarching thing that you can say, I have now put the company on AI. It has to be in the areas where it is relevant. It's a work in progress. We are constantly exploring that.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Vivek Rakholiya with Ficom Family Office. Please go ahead.
Very good morning. Am I audible?
Yeah. Great.
Thanks a lot for the opportunity, and apologies in advance if my questions are very basic. I'm very new to the company. I wanted to understand firstly, on the peptide front, a listed peer claims to have also developed the capability of making the full peptide chain, right from fragments to the APIs, and they have even started expanding their capacity for the same. How do you see this development, and what would be your strategy to differentiate against the competition, domestic and international?
Okay. Listen, for instance, when you say peptide is like saying an organic molecule. There are very different type of peptides, and it's a full body of chemistry by themselves. There is many ways to make, depending on the peptide that is of interest. You can make different fragments, then do convergent synthesis, or you can do even serially by step-by-step, or you can do partly by fermentation and partly by synthesis, and then do what's called biosynthesis. There are all kinds of ways of doing it. Depending on the peptide in question, we've actually done, we have seven or eight amino, even more than that, 10, 12 peptides which we are working on.
Each of them follow a different strategy. It depends on the structure and the way it has to be built. I won't have an answer, which is, you know, to give you a very generic answer, how are we doing this? Again, when we look at a problem, we look at what is the most optimal solution in terms of economics. We approach the problem from that side, which therefore our aim is always to get the best cost of goods. As to your other thing that, you know, the other question that somebody is doing all this assembly of a peptide right from beginning, so is Anthem.
I mean, I don't have, you know, I'm not privy to what they are doing, but Anthem is in a very, very good place as far as GLP-1 type of peptides are concerned. I believe that we have extremely competitive cost of goods, rivaling even the Chinese. I think we're in a good place there. We're very competitive.
Great. Thanks a lot for that answer. Next was also just stepping back in terms of molecules and complexities. Would it be the correct understanding that the TAM of peptide is larger than that of oligonucleotides? Also just wanted to confirm if between, say, peptide, oligonucleotides and ADCs, how would you rank yourself on the basis of the complexity of the subject that you work with, your capability, of course, and the TAM of these areas and competition, if you can explore these areas of these three, what molecules and modalities?
Okay. You know, you're asking a very fundamental question. Right now, peptides are the most successful commercial molecule, so in terms of TAM, they would be the biggest. For some applications, peptides don't work. There you need an ADC, and that's a very big area of growth in the pharma industry. When you bring all your oligonucleotides, they are everywhere again. Anthem has capability to work in all these areas. It adds to something which is because these are the new modalities and these are new areas of research. As I said, Anthem addresses all its problems through, you know, find solution, technological solutions. We are present in these three modalities in a very strong way.
I mean, it'd be unfair to compare ADC versus peptide versus oligonucleotide. They all do specific jobs, they are designed for that. The idea is to, you know, get to the patients the right treatment. Anthem is present in all of them. As far as market is concerned, given the very large nature of, you know, diabetes as well as obesity, right now peptides are the largest sales in, you know and in the foreseeable future, that's what it looks like.
Great. Thanks a lot for your answers. All the very best. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Dhawal Khut with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to understand what steps are we taking to build a pipeline even in large molecule? You know, wanted to delve deeper into the BD side of large molecule. Like, how willing are innovators to give their projects to Indian CRDMO? How easy or difficult is it to bring those early-stage molecules in the country versus, let's say, you know, the willingness in small molecule? Does India have any cost benefit advantage versus Korea or China? Because, you know, CRDMO from those region claim that in large molecules there's no cost difference. Their yields are extremely high. Just wanted to get thoughts around the large molecule CRDMO space. That's my first question.
Okay. Thanks, Dhawal. Anthem is, as I said, we are focused equally and not all our peers in India at least are. We are focused very well on biology as well as chemistry. We're making investments in this space as well so that we can do large molecule manufacture. We are working with about four or five projects where we would be the development partner and hopefully then the manufacturing partner in large molecules. To answer your question about, you know, how willing they are, they have no problem. Most of the customers we work with and they don't see a problem of coming to India. The problem, if it is any, lies in the capacities.
The Koreans, in particular in China also, the large companies, they've built massive capacity. In that sense, they tend to be. They are ahead of us. There's no denying that. Because the upfront investment in large molecules is quite large. You have to be willing to invest billions of dollars for those kind of capacities, which some of the players in Korea and China have done that. Second part, what is Anthem doing to get people on board? We plug away at this because I think in terms of early development, Anthem is a very, very good partner.
If you have early development, at least in biologics, the chances are that you can retain the project because you would know more about it than anybody else, and they would not like to transfer out when all the regulatory things of work has also been done at Anthem. Our strategy is a little different. It has to be. We can't go in there, you know, like Celltrion or Samsung and say, "Give us the project," or even Lonza, a ready-made project, because they have the capacities to support it. But you know, that it's All Indian companies are in the same position. Biosimilars, India is already making a dent.
In novel molecules also, it is in the same position that we were in small molecules, let's say, 20, 25 years ago in NCEs. I think it's a very good place because now the barriers of mental barriers of giving work to India are not there. We, the more we invest, which we are, the more we will see projects coming our way.
Got it, sir. This is a very helpful commentary. Secondly, just wanted to get the update on the biosimilar asset that we are working on. How's the progress going on? Eventually, when things will hit our P&L, we'll put it under the CRDMO category or will it fall under the specialty ingredients?
That's going really well. That project is well on its way and, I think, you know, as you know, there's a process of doing this. It has to be refiled three batches. All that is going on now, typically the lead times in approval of another site tends to be you know, one year or so. I think it will hit our P&L next year. Where will we classify it? I think it'll go in CRDMO.
CRDMO.
Yeah. It will go in CRDMO.
Thank you, sir. I have more question. I will join back the queue.
Yeah. Thanks, Dhawal.
A reminder to all participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of Ashish with UTI. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. If you could also talk about specialty ingredient, what is the kind of order book that we are dealing with right now? Is this segment currently a victim of destocking, as we can see in the revenue growth numbers?
Ashish, with respect to specialty ingredients, the nature of the business is slightly different. Hi, can you hear me? There's a little bit of a background noise. We're dealing with products like serratiopeptidase, vitamin B7, probiotics, enzymes. All of these products which we are dealing, and that is more catered towards the India and ROW markets. We are also looking at getting these products filed for some of the developed markets as well. These are products, our own products, where we are selling to multiple customers.
It's slightly different than the CDMO business, where we are working with the innovators one-on-one and, you know, where there is dedicated, you know, manufacturing which we do for some of the customers, and we get order book from them, and there's a significant large lead time in terms of supplying those molecules. Hence you have order book right at the very beginning of the year for, you know, six months down the line. Specialty ingredients has been a flow business for us. If you look at specialty ingredients, I just want to add over there, last year was a, towards the first three quarters of the year was a little bit flat for us, but we have started increasing revenues in specialty ingredients from the fourth quarter onwards.
We delivered about 8% growth on the fourth quarter, and we would aspire to grow that business also in a similar growth trajectory as what we are looking at growing for our CDMO business. Overall on a 20% sort of for specialty ingredients as well. We don't have a order book sort of a concept in specialty ingredients because we manufacture depending, we manufacture and then we try to sell to the customers who are already taking the products across multiple geographies and across multiple product categories.
You know, we are very confident now. We are also adding in a unit for a dedicated food facility. This something which has been lacking. What has been happening is one reason why the growth tends to be a little patchy there is that we have the same facilities for specialty ingredients and our CDMO business, NCE business. Sometimes when the project is when we get new projects in that area for CRDMO, we tend to, you know, give less importance to the specialty ingredients business. It tends to be some of their capacities get cannibalized by our CRDMO business. That's one reason why they're not able to really see the growth.
Now we are investing in a separate facility, and that will help us a lot in the future.
Yeah. Okay, so given that some part of the gross block, is actually fungible, how do you maintain margins then? Is there an aspiration? You have spoken about the revenue as growth aspiration. Anything on the EBITDA margin side you would like to comment on?
Our aspirations across all the parameters, whether it is revenue, EBITDA or PAT, is the same. The technique, I mean, if we continue to grow our business in a particular growth rate, our costs are also escalating in a similar sort of a growth rate. With a little bit of an operating leverage, we will be able to keep our margins constant and continue to witness a similar growth trajectory in EBITDA as well as in PAT terms.
Okay. 38%-40% EBITDA margins is a fair number to assume?
We've delivered so far. We'll continue to deliver those numbers going forward as well.
Okay. Lastly, on headwind side, for at least for our business, you do not see any risk emanating from the tariff situation, right?
No, no, tariffs is not a problem because most of the big pharma that we work with already have separate deal with the administration in the U.S. The second part is this is, I think, you know, these are very difficult times to predict what will happen as terms of headwinds. Nobody anticipated a war in the Middle East. There's so many things which are up in the air. In spite of that, Anthem has grown and grown really well, and I don't see why we couldn't do that. These are times where there are inflationary pressures. We all know that. We can see it. At the same time, we also know that what will deliver the goods is our technology platforms and we believe that we'll be able to maintain both growth and profitability.
That's very helpful. Thanks and all the best.
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Saion Mukherjee with Nomura Holdings. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the follow-up. Just one question. You know, Anthem today is still a very small company, you know, compared to many global peers, and you have sort of a very cohesive unit, high quality service, which also reflected in, you know, steady growth and also very high profit margins and profitability. If we look forward over the next four-five years, even if you grow at like 20%, maybe, you know, your scale will double or maybe triple. If you add inorganic, it could sort of become even larger. Your comments do suggest that we are at an inflection point where, you know, CRDMO in India is accepted. Anthem as a company is gaining traction with big pharma.
The opportunities can come your way, you know, at a much faster pace, and that would require you to sort of grow much bigger than let's say or much faster than what you have grown in the past. You know, that would also sort of probably present some challenges on execution and profitability. I mean, have you envisioned like Anthem from a five, seven-year perspective, slightly longer term kind of aspiration you have? You know, these levels of profitability, can it sustain? Because it's already very high compared to anyone else in the industry.
Yeah. Yeah, we have envisioned five-seven years of growth. We, as we said, we are investing such a large amount in Unit IV. By the time that comes in, gets thing and gets filled up, this will more The capacity of Unit IV is going to be greater than all our units put together. Yes, we are There are much bigger players out there but, you know, in the We've also had the fastest growth rate among all our peers. We don't see that, you know, At the end of the day, The It is about your growth rather than worrying about what does, what other size is, right? Somebody can have a bigger company, but we are growing faster than most. That's one thing.
Secondly, yes, we are investing in the future. If we weren't looking at five years, five years ahead, why would we invest in such a large amount of money? The third thing about acquisitions and growth with the, in terms of merge, by, you know, getting into an inorganic growth situation, yes, we are very keen on that, and if we get something which is the right quality and the right geography, we will definitely go for it. There is no doubt about it that we are looking at all possibilities. Our cash situation allows us to be flexible. We can look at these possibilities. You're absolutely right, our margins are really, really high.
Just to maintain them would be. We also hear that it will give us many more optimized routes of manufacture. there AI will definitely play a part, I'm pretty sure of that. in the end of the day, Somebody has to get into the plant and manufacture, and that's 83% of our business. I mean, it's a very high percentage of our business. we are, I think, going to be We feel we are a little protected. Manufacturing still has to be done. there are areas where You still will start to optimize your thing. You will be able to optimize your plants better with better use of AI.
That will only help us, and that will help us improve our margins, hopefully. I don't have a, you know, a clear-cut answer to it, but there will be portions of your business which will benefit from it. I think we'll implement it in depending on case by case as to where we see the maximum benefit and implement AI there. Overall, a company which has to be AI-ready, it's not a catch-all, but it will solve certain problems better than people can, and I think that's something that we are definitely looking.
Sure. Just last question, if I can. On GLP-1, when is the commercialization expected on the generic side of it? Can it be a material segment for us going ahead? Thank you, sir.
Well, looking into the future, it will be a big contributor. I'm pretty sure of it. At the same time, you know, all our customers are working on their new formulation with our material, it also depends on when they can get approval and when we can get approval from to launch it. I think it's just sitting there. Otherwise, we are in a good place. That could happen in six months, it could happen in eight months, but I think we are there.
Sure, sir. Thank you so much. I will join back.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Dhawal Khut with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the follow-up. I just wanted some more color on the phase III molecule pipeline that we have. Two parts to it. On the first part, you know, the recently added four molecules. How many are lateral entry for us versus, you know, molecules coming from phase II and graduating to phase III? Secondly, can you divide this entire basket of 10 molecules into, you know, how many are big pharma versus biotech as of now? What will be the modalities of this entire basket of 10 molecules?
Dhawal, in terms of the additions which have happened from phase in phase III, all of them are non-lateral. These are molecules where we were working with them on early phase II, and they have moved to phase III. Okay. All of them are emerging biotech. It has come from our, you know, entire the biotech funnel where we work right from discovery, development, supplying them the small quantities. As the quantities progress, and as the product moves from phase I to phase II, they have moved to phase III. It's a good mix of molecules which are on ADC side. It's a good mix of molecules, you know We have some molecules where we also do biotransformation and that has also moved on phase III.
I won't say that, you know, it's more dominated towards a one particular therapeutic category or one particular, you know, technology category. It's a good mix across all the spectrum of ADC peptides or oligos, et cetera, work what we do. Everything coming from the emerging biotech customer.
Okay. This basket of ten is a mix across, you know, different technologies that you have. Is that a fair understanding, right? At least you have one molecule in each of them. Okay, got it. Lastly, is the U.S. pharma tariff creating any challenges in terms of business development, you know, especially with the U.S. customers? You think the customers are also taking it with a bit of a pinch of salt because there's a lot of to and fro, the clarity is not there, and they are planning for long term?
No, it hasn't had any impact on us. If you look at the nature of our business, most of our commercial products are with the big pharma, and they have entered into separate arrangements with respect to the tariff part with the administration. The early stage biotech cluster for us is still in the early development or in the late development stage. They are still in the drug candidates category for us.
They're not tariff.
At least till now, we haven't had any impact with respect to the tariff announcements.
Your point is a good point that, you know, I think the biotechs are taking this with equanimity. There's, you know, as you yourself said, there's so much back and forth, nobody's very clear what the intent is. It seems to be the intent is very undefined and in the long run, it doesn't really matter. That's how people have taken this view now that, you know, directionally, there should India and China, I mean, sorry, India and America are, you know, on the same side. I think we're, e verybody's okay with it.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, we will take the last question from Udit Bokaria with Catamaran. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for giving the opportunity. sir.
I'm sorry to interrupt, Udit. Please be a little louder. Thank you.
Hello. Yeah.
Yes, please go on.
Thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted to understand a few of the commercial molecules which we were working with biotech companies were acquired by large pharma. You had mentioned in the past that they are yet to be launched commercially by the big pharma because they were still doing some assessment, right? When do we expect that to be launched? That's the first question. The second question, if you can share what your U.S. biotech partner is talking about now funding, biotech funding environment, and are you seeing increase in the inquiries?
Yeah. Go ahead.
I'll take on the biotech funding side. Biotech funding has been recovering, and I think till about April, the four months, it's gone up by about 50% year-on-year. There's a recovery which has happened on the biotech funding side. And we are also seeing that with respect to the request which is coming in on the early stage development projects. While the projects are smaller in size, but the number of requests which is coming in is increasing. Biotech funding is not a side of concern for us. Now, with respect to the commercial molecule questions which you had asked for. Last four molecules which went from our phase III pipeline to commercial last year, one of them was with a big pharma.
The rest three were with the emerging biotech customers, and they have launched the product in the market, maybe towards the end of the year, some maybe towards the middle of the year. It's launched, but the ramp up will take some time. They are still in the early phase of their launch in the market.
How should one read, like, from the customer indication, when can we expect the ramp up happening for these products?
It takes two to three years to build to have the ramp up, because, see, we might have mentioned the peak sales estimates of the four commercial molecules which went commercial last year. That peak sales estimates is pegged from typically from the analysts are four to five years from the launch date. It will take some time to launch because they will be looking at launching this molecule in one geographies, and they're looking at filing those registrations in other geographies and launching it. With respect to registrations also, it will take some time. It will be two to three years, you know, for this 2-3 years for the, you know, molecules to see that ramp up happen in the overall sales.
The current contribution from these four molecules would be like less than 5% or less, like meaningless. Is that correct?
Not really. Not really because they have launched it in the market, so they have taken launch quantities from us. Ballpark, the current contribution from these four molecules will be in the range of closer to about 8%-9% of our revenues. When I talked about commercial molecules being about 60% of our revenues, eight odd percentage ballpark will be from those new molecules which had been launched. 8%-9%.
There's a lot of headroom to grow.
Understood. Understood. Just back on the biotech funding part. In terms of the, what do you our capacity to handle number of projects, right? Currently, we are doing 100 projects. How should we think, like what is the peak capacity of inquiries that we can handle, and how are we ramping that up?
You said, we have invested new Anthem, there are Unit III, which is where we have put in a lot of labs, so we can handle many more projects. I must also tell you when these projects come in different slices, right? It is not that everything comes at one go. There'll be In order of these 100 projects, some would be at the early stage of just development of the chemistry, some would be at a stage of optimizing that chemistries, then another would be how we can get a commercial optimization of the process. When there are so many aspects to it, we have different teams to address that.
At any given time, we can handle a lot of projects. It's not that we are constrained by that. But you're right. You need more and more labs, and those That's what we built in Unit III. If the projects go to 200, we'll be fine. We'll be able to handle that.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing remarks.
Okay. First of all, thank you everyone for attending this. As we have said, we will continue to be our aspiration is to be the most admired, the most agile, and the one CRDMO that follows the best practices around the world. Our customers have shown their trust in us by being very sticky. We have very long-term relationships with most of our customers, which is yielding us very good results. Going forward, I expect that to remain, and we are very confident about the future. The investments that we have made will start to, at different, Unit III is already turning around, and it's going to be in the positive territory this year.
Unit IV will be ready by the end of next financial year. We are in a very good place to become the leading CRDMO out of our country. You know, after that, the sky is the limit. Thank you for your confidence in us, and we will work very hard to honor that confidence. Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of JM Financial Institutional Securities, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.