Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Sai Life Sciences Limited Q1 FY 2027 earnings conference call. 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 the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Diwakar Pingle from EY Investor Relations. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you so much, Sagar. Good evening to all the participants on this call. Warmly welcome you to the Q1 FY 2027 earnings call of Sai Life Sciences Limited. Before we proceed on the call, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward-looking statements that may note unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors. It must be viewed in conjunction with our business risks that could cause future result performance or achievement to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Please note that we've mailed the results and the same are available on the website too. In case you've not received the same, you can write to my team at EY, we'll be happy to send the same over to you.
To take us through the results and answer your questions today, we have the top management of Sai Life Sciences Limited, represented by Mr. Krishna Kanumuri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Siva Chittor, Whole-Time Director and Chief Financial Officer. We will start the call with a brief overview of the quarter gone past and then conduct the Q&A session. With that said, I'll now hand over the call to Krishna Kanumuri. Over to you, Krishna.
Thank you, Diwakar. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q1 FY 2027 earnings call. We are pleased with the progress we have made in the first quarter and importantly, with the momentum we are seeing across our business. Revenue from the quarter grew by 12% year-over-year, supported by growth across two businesses, quality and the CRO, which grew by 26% year-over-year. The Q1 performance has been in line with our expectations, and we remain confident of our growth trajectory and prospects. As we have discussed in the previous earnings call, we expect a stronger H2 with planned capacity expansion going live in the H2 of the year. As we look ahead, we believe Sai is at an important point of evolution from being a strong small molecule CRDMO to becoming a technology-led multimodality partner with capabilities spanning discovery through commercial manufacturing.
Let me begin with the broader environment. From a customer standpoint, geopolitical uncertainty and concerns around intellectual property have made India an increasingly important part of their diversification strategies. I would say this trend has not only continued but strengthened. In the biotech environment, we have seen several large acquisitions and about 18 IPOs in the U.S. As investors cash out, we expect capital to flow back into funding new biotech companies. The clear message we are picking up is that these new companies will be built with even leaner in-house capabilities, which should continue to support healthy demand for our sector. Our pipeline is being built for the long haul. Through dedicated FTE models, we are building deep, durable relationships with our customers' development teams. This is impacting our pipeline in three distinct ways. Molecules from biotech companies that we have supported being acquired by our pharmaceutical operators.
Molecules from acquired companies transferred to us. Finally, molecules from our FTE relationships progress into late-stage development. Together, these three create a broad and sustainable funnel for the business. As we engage with our customers, it is clear that the complexity and range of technologies we are pursuing are broader than ever. This aligns very well with our strategy of building strong R&D capabilities across diverse range of modalities. We believe the biggest long-term opportunity is to continue building a fully integrated delivery engine from discovery through commercial manufacturing. We are seeing a clear traction with our clients beginning to engage across the full spectrum of our services. We are well-positioned to transition from integrated small molecule CRDMO to a full-fledged multimodality integrated CRDMO. We have already made meaningful progress and will continue to accelerate this build-out. Peptides are an important modality for us.
We are one of the largest and fastest-growing peptide teams within discovery. While GLP-1s receive significant attention, there's substantial work underway in macrocyclic peptides, peptide-drug conjugates, and lariat chemistry applications. Our first dedicated peptide development lab is coming online shortly for a top-tier pharma company. We're also expanding the scope of our peptide center of excellence to support both discovery and development teams with the ability to deliver higher quantities for clinical trials. In addition, we plan to break through a peptide manufacturing facility at our new greenfield site near Hyderabad, which is expected to be operational in 2028. We are close to opening our XDC Center of Excellence, which will support both discovery and development teams in the synthesis of payloads, linkers, and conjugation across antibodies, peptides, PROTACs, and oligonucleotides. There's increased need to support our development programs with greater speed and flexibility.
We are working on building new capacity specifically designed for early to mid-stage arrays. It'll be an important part of expansion to our new greenfield manufacturing site. Formulation is another area we're entering. While we are still about six months away from being operationally ready, we are seeing significant interest from our pharma partners. There's a clear demand for integrated offering that can deliver both trusted human APIs and drug products with speed, helping customers accelerate development timelines. Scientific excellence remains the heart of this evolution. For the past few years, we have deliberately invested in strengthening our scientific capabilities, infrastructure, and talent across the organization. Recent successes have been reinforced, a belief that we are on the right trajectory. For example, we recently developed capabilities in ADC bioconjugation characterization and analysis and recently published our work in high impact peer-reviewed scientific journals.
During the quarter, we also published a joint paper with AstraZeneca on experimental approach determining reaction kinetics early in development. Objective is generating better process understanding early in the life cycle and ultimately supports smoother scale-up and technology transfer. We believe these are important indicators of the scientific depth we are building at Sai, and not only in terms of services we provide to customers, but also in our ability to develop and contribute new approaches to solving complex scientific and technical problems. Technology remains central to the solution we offer customers. We are making meaningful progress in advanced process technologies. Recently, we successfully scaled up a late-phase GMP intermediate for a large pharmaceutical customer at our manufacturing facility using flow chemistry. They accepted continuous downstream operations, including extraction, distillation, crystallization, with a longer-term objective to developing more flow application in our commercial manufacturing.
These capabilities are particularly relevant as we see increasing complexity in molecules entering our development and manufacturing pipeline. Talent development is an important part of this journey. We have kickstarted a campus strategy program led by a former board member. The objective is establishing Sai as an employer of choice for life science talent. We are putting in place a more structured approach to how we attract, develop and retain scientific and technical talent. We are establishing structured management development programs for first-time experienced managers based on external technical and behavioral assessments, making them more targeted and outcome-oriented. We are also increasing the intensity of Sai Academy, our strategic capability-building program designed to create common scientific, technical and operational standards across the organization. We believe building this depth of talent and capability is essential as we take on more complex programs and move into new modalities.
In conclusion, there's a clear evolution of what large pharmaceutical companies are looking for from their outsourcing partners. The expectation is with strong scientific-led partners who can take greater ownership of discovery and development programs, rather than simply executing individual pieces of work. We believe that the combination of our technology-based scientific talent and culture is a key reason why large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly bringing significant work to Sai through strategic engagements. These engagements will create a healthier, sustained pipeline over multiple years. With that, let me hand over to our CFO, Siva, to take you through the financial performance and progress we're making in the business.
Thanks, Krishna. Good evening. Good morning, everyone. Let me start with the financial performance for the quarter and provide commentary on the two businesses. For the quarter ended Q1 FY 2027, total revenues stood at INR 553 crore, representing a year-on-year increase of about 12% compared to INR 496 crore in the quarter last year. The CDMO business contributed approximately 60% of our revenues and the CRO business the remaining 40%. On a YoY basis, CRO revenues increased by about 26%, while the CDMO revenues grew by around 6%. Our balance sheet remains healthy, and we continue to maintain the financial flexibility required to invest behind the opportunities we see across the business. We will continue to balance investments in future growth with disciplined capital allocation and returns. In the discovery business, the discovery chemistry services continue to scale.
During the quarter, we successfully converted a pilot collaboration with a large pharmaceutical company into a long-term, high-volume discovery chemistry partnership. This is exactly the kind of progression we were looking for, starting with a focused engagement, demonstrating value, and expanding the relationship over time. We've also completed a large-scale DMPK data generation project for a biotech customer and have continued to build capacity to support our growing base of large pharmaceutical customers. A few years ago, we made a deliberate decision to move beyond being a low-value chemistry services provider and invest significantly in biology and DMPK, while continuing to expand our discovery chemistry capabilities. Those investments in infrastructure, technology and people are now translating into integrated service delivery for approximately 65% of our customers, today, primarily biotech customers. We are now seeing the same model gaining traction with large pharma.
We are already in discussions with several large pharmaceutical companies and hope to transition at least two large pharmaceutical customers to an integrated model this year. Moving now to the CMC business. The underlying health of the CMC business continues to be strong with 33 active commercial molecules and 14 molecules in late phase. As Krishna mentioned in his opening remarks, dedicated SE development contracts are expected to be a key differentiator for Sai Life Sciences in augmenting our pipeline of late-phase and commercial molecules. Over the last 15 months, we have added six late-phase molecules to our pipeline. Five of which have come through large pharma clients with whom we have ongoing SE engagements. One such collaboration with the top-tier market pharma company, which began at a small scale, has now expanded into a sizable dedicated SE contract.
With this customer, our engagement now extends end- to- end, truly from discovery to commercial, with active programs across the life cycle from early discovery to late-stage manufacturing. We've also begun negotiations for another large pharma SE engagement on the process development side, which we expect to close by the end of Q2, with work expected to commence from Q3. With respect to the phase III pipeline, one of our customers received an approval during FY 2026. Two more have regulatory milestones during this financial year, and one is expected in Q2 of FY 2028. An equally important indicator for the quality of our customer relationship is the level of repeat business we generate. We continue to add new customers, but returning customers accounted for over 90% of our revenue in fiscal 2025 and 2026.
We believe this is a strong reflection of customer satisfaction and the value we are creating for customers over the course of their programs. It also reflects our ability to deepen engagements with clients over time. In calendar 2025, Sai contributed to five FDA-approved molecules, meaning we were part of either discovery or development of commercial manufacturing for the product. Over the past five years, we have supported 17 launches, demonstrating our ability to supply launch quantities and play a meaningful role in commercialization. I am also pleased to report that we secured the prestigious EcoVadis Platinum rating 2026, placing us among the top 1% of the companies assessed worldwide for sustainability performance. Overall, we believe the quarter reflects continued progress across both the businesses and our longer-term strategic priorities.
Notwithstanding the inherent lumpiness in the business, the long-term opportunity for the CRDMO sector remains robust, and our integrated model with strong pharma relationship and technology investment position us well for sustained growth. We remain confident in our ability to sustain our longer-term revenue growth guidance of 15%-20% and the EBITDA range of 28%-30%. With that, we will be happy to take your questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then one on their touchtone phone. 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. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Again, to register for a question, please press star and then one. Your first question comes from the line of Binay Singh with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Thanks for the opportunity. In the opening comments, we talked about strengthening our relationship with big pharma. We talked about integrated CRDMO, long-term discovery contracts, more FTs, and you also made a comment on intellectual property. Do you think these things have accelerated this calendar year, or it is more a continuation of what you were seeing last year also was similar, or there is some sort of a change in environment where we are highlighting these more in this calendar year?
Binay, I think we are looking at the progression of business. I think if you look at what is really happening, customers are trying to build sustained relationships over the next five, 10 years. You will see a gradual increase in these relationships in terms of one service at a time, and starting small and growing big. I think we are very early part of this journey in terms of expanding these relationships. We think that these risks all have potential to expand significantly over the next five, 10 years. I think they are all in the early stage evolution, but we are seeing acceleration in terms of the scale and scope of the service we offer.
I think just to add, Binay, I think when we started, for example, on the FTE relationship that you pointed, we started this 15 months ago. We said this is starting small. We know this is very different. This is how China built some of the largest CDMOs, and we are seeing this for the first time in India. If you look at where we are today, we are staying with one customer already on an end-to-end basis. We are talking about molecules that have transitioned. It's not just early phase development, it's late phase development. As Krishna mentioned, we are talking about molecules that are being acquired by pharma that is being pushed into our FTE development so that a robust development process can be developed and then scaled up. I've talked about six molecules in phase III over the last 15 months come through this process.
There is a progression happening. I think the broader sentiments are there. It's the name's same, as we kind of get into this and start working with the customers, acceleration with respect to size is what we are seeing. That's the sentiment that we are expecting.
Binay, to give you a little more context. If you look at, let's say, a WuXi model, where customers are doing integrated discovery services, they're doing all the FTE development services and commercial manufacturing. What India has seen as a first phase is discovery chemistry services and then tech transfer at late stage commercial manufacturing. What we are seeing now is the middle part, which is FTE collaboration, where basically WuXi had built all the relationships, starting to migrate here. We're also starting the early phases of that discovery program going to integrated programs. It just shows that this is a very early part opportunity. I think these have a long way to go in terms of scaling.
Thanks for that detailed answer, team. My second question is, earlier in the call, I think in the last call, Krishna had commented that how in financial year 2027, the H2 will be stronger than the H1 . If you see in the past also, leaving aside financial year 2026, that is generally the trend, 40%-60% between H1 , H2 . This year you called it out as more because of more capacity coming this year, that the skew of H2 will be a little heavier than H1 . Is that the reason you had called it out?
That is true. Plus also, fiscal 2026 for us was a little out of the ordinary in terms of how our numbers panned out. We were roughly 48/52, if I remember the number right, Binay. Fiscal 2026 for us was slightly, I would say, very different. It has always been historically 40/60 kind of a period, but fiscal 2026 kind of was almost flat, and hence we just, for the last call, just kind of make sure that we kind of give advance intimation on how we are seeing our next year.
Great. Thanks, team. I'll come back in the queue.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and then one. The next question comes from Amey Chalke with JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. Congrats to the management on good numbers. I have first question on CRO. We have said in the opening remark also in PPT that we have added one large customer in the CRO side in chemistry in this quarter. What has worked in our favor to convert this relationship? Also, how big this relationship could be for us in terms of number of projects or revenue, if any quantification you can provide. Thank you.
Generally, we don't quantify what we're doing with each customer. It's just our one we've stumbled a couple this quarter. I think that tends to There's multiple that we are actually converting, it's just not one. Some of them are converting more linearly, some of them are basically going more integrated. We have more than one customer who expanded collaboration for this quarter.
Sure. Your voice is not bit clear. What I heard is our integrated platform, it is what helped us to convert these customers. Is that right?
No, I'm just saying we are seeing both growth in terms of scale, in terms of certain lines of service, like I said, it's early chemistry. Some customers are also expanding more gradually in terms of integrators as well. This growth is not contributed by one customer, there are multiple customers with this who have potential to scale up as well.
Got it. The second question I have on the four commercial contracts which will be added this year. I think three of them have been added in the first quarter. Is it possible for us to give some clarity in terms of modalities where these four products would be, and also whether we would be a primary supplier or the secondary supplier for these projects? Have these projects been already commercialized, or these are newly commercialized products? Thank you.
The three of the four that we will be working on this year, as we had mentioned during the last call, will be commercial supplies. Primary, secondary as we've discussed before, I think we probably are primary in two out of the three, but this is more anecdotal than what I can tell you at this point in time.
At least if you can provide the revenue per product potential, would it be in line with some of our top commercial products, or will it be sizably below or over and above that? If you can give color on that.
I think what we had mentioned in the last call, Amey, was that we said this would be a decently sized product. Looking at our size and revenue, we said this is a decently sized product. Three of them would be decently sized products, and one of them will be a lower volume product, is what we had. The fourth one we said will be a lower volume product. That's what we had mentioned last quarter. We'll stay with the same comment.
By size you mean value or volume for all three?
Value. Volume does not matter. Low value is what I'm talking about.
Got it.
I'm talking value with respect to how our revenues are. I think it's a decent size value.
Sure. Thank you so much. One more question I have on the formulation capabilities where we are entering. What kind of formulation capabilities would that be? I think we have written drug product. Is it a biologic, the fill and finish facility which we expect to construct here, or is it something else? What visibility we have in the pipeline for these projects?
As of now, we're building the small molecule, primarily oral solids of different forms, up to phase I and phase II. We have significant interest from multiple of our large pharma partners already who we're working with on the chemistry side, to be able to support them on their early clinical formulation. We have significant interest for that piece.
Typically, we have not seen CDMOs entering into oral solid formulation capabilities. What's the thought process here? The reason being is the profitability in these segments are typically on a lower side. Is it something different for these projects?
Look, right now we're only talking about clinical up to phase II supplies. We're not talking about commercial supply at this time. This was driven by our discussion with customers where the need is, and their need is very specific to supplying China Plus One, where they're getting a lot of clinical material early phase, and this fits in with the China Plus One strategy of our partners at this point. This only works well when you have existing relationship on the development side, not stand-alone.
Sure, sir. Thank you so much. I will join back. Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and then one. Your next question comes from the line of Akshay from AK Investment. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is about the therapeutic-wise split in the revenue. What is the therapy-wise currently split or exposure for different therapeutic makes in the revenue and also in the pipeline as well? Which are the therapeutics areas are we focusing on?
I think we've given the therapeutic distribution for the last financial year. I think that's part of the investor deck. We do it on an annual basis, on a quarterly basis, this does not make any sense. It's available in the deck that we have uploaded on the investor presentation. We've given you a detailed presentation on that one. This is, if I remember, it's slide number 21 of the investor presentation.
Okay, sir. For the pipeline in the product as well, that would be more or less similar in that line also?
I'm sorry. Can you repeat your question, please?
Yeah. Definitely. Sir, also for the products in pipeline as well, that split will be more or less similar in that category as well?
It's difficult to say, right? It's about what our pharma customers are looking to innovate on. Finally, we will be driven by what the innovator pipeline looks like. This is just a reflection of where we are today or how our revenues were in the last year. At least from our books perspective, that's really what we have reflected there.
Okay, sir. My second question is, what is the CapEx guidance for FY 2027 and FY 2028?
Sir, what is that for 2027 and 2028, sir?
CapEx, capital expenditure guidance for FY 2027 and 2028.
We have given an FY 2027 CapEx guidance of INR 1,100 crore-INR 1,300 crore. That still stands. We haven't provided a guidance on fiscal 2028. We will come back to you with a guidance at an appropriate time.
Okay, sir. Fair enough. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sajal Kapoor with Antifragile Thinking. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Hi, Krishna and Siva. Congratulations. What stands out over the last year is not just the growth, but the deepening big pharma relationships and Sai getting involved earlier in the development cycle. Very well done. Two questions. You mentioned that five of the six late-phase molecules added over the last 15 months came through large pharma FTE relationships. Does getting involved through these dedicated development teams materially increase Sai's probability of retaining those molecules for commercial manufacturing versus programs where you enter later through an RFP or tech transfer? Thank you.
The first intent of every pharma company is to leave the program with us for commercial. I think it's only in a case where there must be maybe a mismatch in capacity we would reroute, but the primary intent, a stated intent, is leave it with Sai all the way through the life cycle of the product.
Sure. You also said around 65% of discovery customers now use integrated services, and you hope to transition at least two large pharma customers to that model this year. As the large pharma moves from single service engagements to integrated programs, do you see a meaningful change in revenue per customer and relationship duration? In other words, getting more wallet share per relationship.
Thank you.
Yes. That's the reason we also brought out the point on while we look at our growth, right? Last year we grew 30%, but more than 90% of our revenue came from our existing customers. Whatever we've done over the last few years, it's kind of now that you are working with 19 of the top 25 pharma companies, there is a tailwind with respect to how India outsourcing is panning out. The objective is to go find out how much wallet share can you increase and what kind of services. You want to be careful when we do the wallet share increase. One, we want to increase commercial, but we also want to increase the spectrum of services that we go. We are able to then transition work across.
We are able to be present in every part of their services, and it also helps us de-risk our overall revenue concentration, even within the same customer.
Can I ask one more, please?
Sure.
Yeah. Thank you. You are entering a much heavier investment cycle with up to INR 1,300 crore of CapEx, which includes a greenfield for peptides. Given the greater customer and pipeline visibility you now have, what internal return threshold do you use before committing this capital, and what would make you slow down or defer an investment? Thank you.
Typically, we have certain internal hurdle rates, which will be generally higher than the ROCE, ROE from a company perspective targets that we put. That would be slightly higher than that. We kind of use that as the model. Then we kind of stress test this based on what we are seeing. We evaluate capital expenditure as we kind of put things in. There are certain expenditures that you are putting in because you have to build a capability, and you were expecting certain amount of revenue based on certain assumptions once you build that capability. In those cases, it may be slightly difficult to defer unless there are severe business circumstances. If you're doing a capacity addition, we evaluate the capacity addition as we run through our CapEx.
There are times in history where, even in Sai, where we've demonstrated that when we have seen capacity addition requirement slows down, we slow down the CapEx. That's the only way to control and be modular and be as just in time as possible, as is needed for the business.
No, that's very helpful. Thank you so much. Wish you all the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and then one to ask a question. Your next question comes from the line of Siddharth Nigandi with CWC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. One of the things that you've mentioned in previous presentations is to share updates on AI initiatives that you've been taking, and this time you've mentioned part of High Throughput Experimentation platform. Just wanted to understand if that was basically the AI initiative that you were talking about, or if you could give us some color on that. In terms of the capacity expansion that is there, just to check on whether that is in line as what we'd guided earlier, or do we see that timeline moving in any way? Yeah, those were my two questions.
On the capacity addition, I think in the past we've mentioned we are largely on schedule. You could see one to two months. Essentially, the immediate capacity needs, we talked about a few things at the end of last quarter or when we began this financial year. We talked about a discovery capacity that we were going to build that was going to come on stream in Q1. The facility has come on stream in Q1, and that facility is actually sold out at this point in time. What we thought we will probably need a year to fill in, or a year and a half to fill in, has already been filled in. On the capacity in Visakhapatnam, we had talked about building two production blocks of 225 KL each, totaling to 450 KL. The first production block will come on stream.
We had talked about plants getting completed and ready for operation in H2 or Q3. The plan currently remains the same, and we are on track for that. I think broadly, other capabilities that we talked about, we will bring a formulation capacity into operation this year, and Krishna just mentioned we are six months away, so it still will be in the current fiscal year. Broadly, we are on track for this. On the first question on AI, I think AI is slightly different. I think what HTE is more High Throughput Experimentation that kind of allows you to do multiple scenarios and generate more data points on the same experiment. The AI initiative that we talked about is slightly different. This more focuses on how you can eliminate wastage in terms of non-value add that today a chemist or an operator at the plant are doing.
It is necessary, but it's not the core value add that we can substitute with either some help from AI, some help from document generation. Also working on seeing how can you take data from scientific literature, kind of provide help on an online as you look through something. That's the thing that we are working on. We talked about it in detail last time. Working through this, we thought we'll give you another update, maybe before the end of the year, because we are building certain things, and as we see progress, we will provide an update on that.
Got it. On the peptides one, just if I may add in one more question. The peptide one, you mentioned about GLP-1s as well as PDCs. You're building capabilities in both or should we look at this as GLP-1s followed by PDCs? How should one think of your peptide capabilities?
No, the comment which we made is that peptides go beyond GLP-1. Peptide as a modality has expanded, right? Without peptides, you only talk about GLP-1. Now peptides, look at this year, three blockbusters of peptides which have been launched. We have the Merck Lipfendra, which is basically for cholesterol. You have basically Amgen peptide, Otezla peptide, which is launched for basically neurology. You will see peptide as a modality going up dramatically with blockbuster potential. It goes beyond GLP-1, and you're seeing PDCs as a big part of the pipeline going forward as well. What we're saying is we are not solely focused on just the GLP-1 space. We are taking a very big position. We will support peptides across the therapeutic window. That's the comment we're making.
That we're not just changing the treatment modality, we're really building broad-based capability in peptides and developing a significant technology platform in peptides.
Clear. This will be across discovery, development, and at some point in time, commercial manufacturing capability?
Absolutely.
Got it. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Karan Gupta with Asit C. Mehta Investment. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. My question regarding the number of molecules that we have in the late stage and the potential revenue out of that. What will be the completion period of the molecules that we have in the stage, let's say one or two?
We've mentioned this before, but the number of exits at phase I and phase II is fairly huge. Given that while we work on a large set of molecule, and we've actually given data as much more than 150, 160 molecules. We believe we should treat them as projects just given the amount of failures that happen at that stage. That's why we track only late-phase and commercial and present this as data because the probability of success on the commercial side is higher. With respect to the late-stage commercialization and potential, I can answer data with respect to commercialization as we know. You will appreciate it, this is a material non-public information for the pharma companies that are disclosing this information.
We also pick up information from publicly available sources, and we presented data for the four molecules that we are aware of, and we put that as part of I actually talked about it in my speech. Potential is kind of very difficult to say. We are still in phase III. Assuming pharma, you probably should have a decent size is how, otherwise pharma would not pick up a molecule and go to phase III. That's broadly what we think. I'm not able to give you more specification on this.
Okay. One question on the growth guidance of 15%-20%. Just wanted to have some clarity on this. Basically, the number that you said, 15%-20%, how we are come to that 15%-20% only as we have a huge pipeline of late-stage I and II molecules. Why we are constrained on 15%-20% or is the conservative guidance that you are giving? Because sequentially, quarter four and quarter one we have slowed down the growth as compared to the previous quarters. Just wanted to have some clarity on the guidance side.
First of all, one is we keep saying is, our guidance is over a just given how the industry has its own lumpiness in terms of how the business functions. We've given a three to five-year guidance of this 15%-20%. That's really what we've stated. Now that said, we're not going to constrain business for growth, right? If you look at the last year growth, while you talked about Q4, if you look at our last year growth, we grew close to 30% on an annualized basis. Your shipments and dates of shipment and when your order came and when you need to deliver will decide what is revenue. I would personally would like to receive the business on a longer term basis.
That's when you will actually get to see the trends. We demonstrated last year, we demonstrated a 30% growth. Our midterm growth guidance is 15%-20%. Is this have I put all my bets on it and every last dollar to get the 15%, 20%? Obviously, we will also want to kind of make sure we will meet and beat guidances that we give to the market. That's the broader thought process. I'll not be able to elaborate this more, Karan, on this one, but broadly look at it from a direction perspective and what we are trying to build is our way of looking at it.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and then one. The next question comes from Rajat Baldewa with Kizuna Wealth. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. My question on-
Sorry to interrupt. Rajat sir, your audio is slightly muffled. If you're using any other mode, I request you to use the handset, please.
Am I audible now?
Yes, sir. This is better.
Yeah. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. My question on the CMOs are, in this quarter we have been doing 6% YoY. Can you throw some outlook for FY 2027 and FY 2028 given that CMO is a lumpy natured business?
We've not split our growth guidance. We've given you a 15%-20% growth guidance over a mid term. As you've rightly pointed out, business is lumpy based on how the deliveries and orders, purchase orders come in. We've also stated that our H2, the H2 of this financial year will be better than the H1 , with given more capacity is also coming on stream by the end of Q2 or early Q3.
Okay, sir. Just one last question. Just to confirm, we are in line with our capacity building to reach 1,150 KL by FY 2027, right?
Yes.
Okay, sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Thirumala Reddy, an Individual Investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Hope I am audible.
Yes.
Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
Is there any particular reason for not entering into monoclonal antibodies or mRNA space?
Can you please repeat your question? My voice was not clear.
I think we will discuss that at the time when we will announce. We will discuss this probably at a later point.
Okay. Thanks a lot. What is the contribution of this fermentation capacities building in the current CapEx spend?
We don't do fermentation at all.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Participants, you may press star and then one to ask a question. The next question comes from Siddharth Nigandi with CWC. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the follow-up. Just, sir, if you could give us some color on how the two offshore facilities in Boston and Manchester are shaping up. Currently, we are obviously seeing the difference in the standalone and consolidated revenue reflecting from one of those facilities. If you could give us some color around how are those shaping up, and is that commercially adding to our revenues?
I think, yes, I think the way to look at Boston and Manchester, they're independently at this time. I think we mentioned this. I think if you look at the Boston P&L that you would see, it's a red flag relative to the business. The way we look at both Boston and Manchester are satellite centers that help us kind of bring larger business back to India. If, for example, on the CMC site, on the discovery side, there have been many instances. One of the reasons we've been consistently growing on the discovery side, and one big reason is that we are able to actually cultivate customers even before they actually have a need for a discovery service or for Medicinal Chemistry or DMPK at a later stage.
We are talking to these customers much before they would need to seek out an Indian operation. By the time you actually help them do a target identification sitting at their backyard, you have probably developed relationships. They understand your business, they understand how your teams function. I think that kind of gives them that comfort to get business, and that's kind of borne out in the overall numbers, right? We established Boston in somewhere around the end of 2020. Assuming 2021 is a little bit of washout for COVID, if you look at the discovery revenue, it's probably in the last four or five years, it's grown at a CAGR of close around 30%-35%. On Manchester, I think the skill sets and the requirements are different.
What we've brought in is a set of individuals who've worked in large pharma, look at things very differently. I think the way today we look at these two teams function together, but then they bring in very complimentary skill sets. Both the teams kind of helped us to be where we are, be it in terms of getting our relationships, be it in terms of deliveries and scale-ups. That's how we look at all of the India and the U.S. teams for the respective businesses as one single team, and they kind of work in tandem.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, please press star and one now. The next question comes from the line of Yasir Lakdawala with M3. Please go ahead.
Hi, Krishna. Just to sort of get some qualitative understanding. I think when we say that we've got about between 4%-5% of our revenues from new modalities, is it mostly on the CRO side, or are we doing anything on the development and the commercial aspect?
We are not doing it on the commercial side. We are doing on all the development and the discovery side.
Development discovery side, right. Fair enough. Typically, when we have some biotech customers, and if they're acquired and you're in different phases, be it phase I, phase II by a pharma company. Historically, have we seen those orders post-acquisition? Does that project necessarily stay with us? What percentage of those projects stay with you? Do the pharmas have their own CDMO networks, and they tend to shift those projects? If you would just help us understand that.
I think Krishna actually addressed this as part of his opening remarks. I think one of the biggest advantages that we have is we work with 19 out of the 25 pharma companies.
Our pipeline today, as Krishna mentioned, is growing on three different ways. We're building our CDMO pipeline specifically. We are seeing our biotech customers acquired by pharma companies that we work with, that continue to remain in our panel.
We are seeing pharma companies putting something on the FTE development deals, which progress into our late-stage funnel. We are also seeing situations where pharma acquires a biotech company, with whom we've not worked before, the product gets transferred to us, primarily because we are one of their preferred vendors. That's how we work. Finally, just given the pharma relationship, this is what happens.
Sure. Anyway, thanks a lot, and wish you guys all the best. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. The next question comes from Dhawal with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to get few more details on the peptide program. Can you inform us how many different projects are we working on within the peptide space, and how many different customers are there? The facility which is coming up in 2028, that is the pilot scale facility that you're talking about or is it something different?
Dhawal, at this point, majority of the work we are doing is in the early-stage discovery space, multiple customers, almost every significant number of large pharma customers, as well as biotech.
We have one lab which has come up, which is dedicated to a pharma company. There's one much broader facility right now, which is coming online, which will do GMP pilot supplies for chemical. It will support both development, GMP supplies, as well as discover support. What we're building out for 2028 is a true commercial capacity asset. Clinical capacity is coming online sooner and commercial capacity is coming online in 2028.
Okay. I understand these are still initial years, but based on your experience, what kind of work are customers willing to give on the manufacturing side for peptides? Are they willing to give out the manufacturing of longer chains, like eight, 10, 12 amino acid kind of chain, or is it restricted to maybe dipeptides or chain length of four, five amino acids? What's your initial sense? Is it going to be something that they want to start with smaller chains and gradually are very much willing to take it up into the higher value chain work?
I think it depends on who you ask. Right now, because we're doing development technology, people are doing longer chains with us. If you go commercial, probably people are starting with smaller chains, which are already mature pipelines. We are seeing customers working with longer chains right now rather than small chains.
Okay. Just last one on conjugation. Do you think the next steps on the conjugation side will be to establish a pilot scale facility, and then if everything goes well, go deeper on a larger scale? Are those the next steps if the program continues to do well on the discovery side?
We already are building a pilot scale facility. We do have more plans there, which we'll give you more details once we have clearer specifics on the plans we have in terms of that area. We already have a significant footprint we're building, which spans both discovery and development for all XDCs.
Okay. By next year, what would be the total spend that you would have done on the peptide side, let's say towards the end of 2028, when the facility is coming online, ballpark?
Dhawal, it's probably going to be less than INR 300 crore.
Okay. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants, you may press star and then one to ask a question. Participants, you may press star and then one to ask a question. There are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference call over to the management for closing.
Thank you everyone for joining the call. I'd like to reiterate that we continue to remain bullish on the business. The trajectory that we have set for ourselves seems to get validated quarter-on-quarter as we work with our customers. We continue to believe the path that we are taking with respect to building a development-centric business that helps us build the science capability first before we build the capacity is the right way to go for us. We continue to believe that this will help us deliver value over a longer-term period. Thank you all for joining the call.
Thank you. On behalf of Sai Life Sciences Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you everyone for joining us, you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.