Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Strides Pharma Science Limited Q3 and 9M FY25 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 dial operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Abhishek. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Very good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for Strides' earnings call for the third quarter and nine months ending financial year 2025. Today, we have with us Arun, Founder and Executive Chairman, Badree, Managing Director and Group CEO, and Vikesh Kumar, Group CFO, to share the highlights of the business and financials for the quarter. I hope you've gone through our results and press releases and the quarterly investor presentation that have been uploaded on our website as well as the stock exchange website. The transcript for this call will be available in a week's time on the company's website. Please note that today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and must be viewed in relation to risk pertaining to our business. After the end of this call, in case you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team.
I now hand over the call to Arun to make the opening comments.
Thank you, Abhishek. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining the Strides' Q3 earnings call. I appreciate your time today. So, by far, this has been one of our better quarters, especially after we carved out our high-margin soft-gelatin business. In spite of that, we've come up with very, very phenomenal results. And across all parameters, be it revenue, gross margins, EBITDA in absolute terms, PAT, and many of you will be pleasantly pleased with the fact of the lack of adjustments, considering that we now don't carry any costs related to underlying investments in erstwhile Stelis, now OneSource. So we now have a very clean set of data points for us to work on.
Most importantly, this quarter has been compelling from the point of us having very successfully delivered, once again, tremendous value by unlocking the soft-gelatin business and discovering its true value while it was jostling within the generic space at a suboptimal valuation. We discovered its true value of a niche business through OneSource. I'm also very delighted that Strides shareholders, including especially institutional investors, have now benefited close to about a $900 million incremental value, which all of you as shareholders are benefiting from your holdings in OneSource. So that's been a great outcome, a very pleasing outcome. I know we do this not very often, but when we do this, we do this in style, if I may.
It's a very pleasing time of our when we came back to reset and regrow this group. It's a very pleasing testimony of our continued enduring value of our stakeholder value creation. Importantly for us, in our first year under Badree's direct leadership, over two and a half years, we have spent time building our sustainability metrics, and we had an initial and very, very pleasant outcome for a stellar debut, the ESG rating at 76,000 on the S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, which was recently announced. A very significant uptick in comparison to industry standards across all three parameters of environment, social, and governance. Something that we pride on is obviously governance, and we're delighted with the score. Not that the other areas are not important. We make our impactful work on social and environment.
We have more work to do, but we're very delighted by the fact that for a first attempt, we are by far significantly better off than our industry peers. Having said that, we don't lessen our roles, be it on our ESG score or on our compliance score. So we are only as good as our next outcomes. So we are very focused and tightly organized to ensure that we get to the next big outcomes on both these on compliance and on ESG. I'm also pleased to welcome Mukta Arora on our board for the strengthening the deep pharmaceutical knowledge that she brings to our board, our larger board. I'm also delighted by the fact that we now stand out with five of five of our eight directors being independent.
That gives us a lot more inputs as we get diverse and very valued inputs from our board, which we obviously play a very significant role in our operations. We do have my colleagues, Badree, who's been toiling away in the last so many quarters. So I don't want to take anything away from the great work that he has done across the P&Ls, and I'll request Badree to have his commentary on the business. And then Vikesh, our CFO, will take over with his commentary on the balance sheet and P&L, after which we'll open the call for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I just want to say that we had a fantastic quarter. Just as a recap, when we started the year, we had four goals. One was to get a revenue growth of 12%-16%, 12%-15%. As we speak, we have done about 13.3% year-on-year growth at a company level. Second goal was to get a EBITDA of 750-800 crores. As we speak, we believe that we'll be at the top end of the guidance as we end this year in FY25. We did about INR 584 crores , so it's 585 crores in the three quarters in this year. The third goal we kept was in terms of the debt by EBITDA ratio, which we said that we'll be under two.
As we speak, with the run rate, we are under two, just ahead by one quarter. And US revenue, we gave a guidance between $275-$290 million, all in line, exactly on track to achieve within that range. I'll focus on some of the growth metrics that are very important from a company perspective. One is in terms of revenue growth, 17.3%. Gross margin growth has been faster than the revenue growth, 21.4%. And EBITDA growth has been much faster than the gross margin growth, which is at 43%. And of course, all this relating to an EPS growth is much higher than all of this. And as we end this quarter, our gross margins for Q3 have been at 58.4%, and EBITDA margins at 18.2%. And Vikesh will cover all the efficiency metrics in his speech.
Coming to the US business, we closed the quarter at $73 million, and year-to-date at $214 million. We are on track to get to $275-$290 million. We launched five products. We had five product approvals and launched four products. And additionally, we launched three products from the acquired Endo portfolio in nine months FY25. As we speak, we have got total commercialized products at 71, and we are ranked among top three in 36 products. This is something we continue to enjoy the position in the last three to four quarters. We also have the industry-leading customer service levels, which is also a highlight of the US business. And we have a very long-term outlook in terms of the US business for up to 2027, 2028. We believe that we are on track to achieve the same.
Coming to other regulated markets, it has started to fuel growth. We had a 7.8% year-on-year growth in other regulated markets. We believe that we have made enough investments for it to grow in the coming years, and the other strategies are intact to grow the business in future. As far as the growth and access markets are concerned, we had a healthy growth of 32.4% year-on-year, and we believe that we have made enough investments in regulatory, and a lot of work is happening across the geographies, including the growth markets, and we believe that in the future years, that will add new dollar value in terms of revenue and gross margins to the group, and as far as the ESG is concerned, we're very happy with the result. In the first year of operations, we have been tenaciously working for the last two to three years.
We believe that we have got best-in-class processes, and we continue to work on these processes as we go along in the future. The last statement is that we continue to believe that our group levers are intact across the business, and our focus will be on execution operationally and also improve PAT and also the EBITDA to EPS conversion. With this, I'll hand it over to Vikesh for the comments.
Thank you, Badree. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a very pleasing quarter, and this quarter captures a very significant milestone in our journey. It's a milestone of value creation and resilience. As Arun mentioned earlier, we demerged our very high-margin soft-gelatin business to help create a unique specialty CDMO platform, and with the listing of OneSource, we have delivered a significant value to our shareholders. All this while, we also continued with our persistent efforts on building the quality of our retained business, the resilience of which is reflected in today's results across all the key financial metrics. Since the financials have been restated to incorporate the impact of this demerger, I just want to take a minute to explain them. As you're aware, the appointed date of this demerger was set at April 1, 2024.
And therefore, the financials for the quarter and year-to-date, starting right from April 1, are now representative of the retained business. Q1 FY2025 and Q2 FY2025 have also been restated from our previously reported financials to incorporate the effect of this appointed date. All the line items of the P&L, even for the comparative periods for FY2024, have also been restated so that they can be made comparable to the current retained business that we've published for FY2025. Moving to the operational performance of the retained business, our reported PAT for the quarter is at INR 90 crores with a reported EPS of 9.56. It reflects one of our best quarterly performances despite the demerger of a very profitable soft-gelatin business. Our EBITDA for the quarter is at INR 210 crores with an EBITDA margin of 18.2%. With this, our year-to-date EBITDA is at INR 585 crores with an EBITDA margin of 17.3%.
Our operational PAT for the nine months is at 232 crores with an operational EPS of INR 25.2. Our reported PAT is much higher for the nine-month period at 324 crores with a reported EPS of 35. This is on account of 102 crores one-time gain that we recorded on account of the continuing investment that Strides holds in OneSource post the demerger. On the efficiency metrics, our cash-to-cash cycle has further improved to 190 days. It reflects a very strong operating cash generation. This has helped us invest growth capital for both our working capital needs and also CapEx using the cash generated from operations. Our net debt as of December 2024 is at a very comfortable level of 1,571 crores. Additionally, the investments in OneSource are now valued at 300 crores.
During this year, in this nine-month period, we have reduced debt by INR 464 crores, and this is after spending INR 134 crores in growth CapEx. During this quarter alone, apart from the INR 283 crores of debt that we transferred to OneSource as part of the demerger, we have reduced debt by an additional INR 48 crores. With this reduction, our net debt to EBITDA is at 2X, and with this, we have achieved our full year outlook one quarter ahead of time. As an update on the guarantees further to the release, all the guarantees that were given to OneSource from Strides are now fully released, and we do not have any outstanding guarantees as of date. Our ROC metric has now improved to 14.7% compared to 12.8% for FY24, and our fixed asset turnover is now at 4.8 times.
Covering specific cost line items, our expenses for the quarter have remained steady as a percentage of sales, and we're very happy with the reduction in our borrowing costs. With the reduction in debt and improvement in our borrowing costs, our gross interest costs have significantly reduced during this quarter. Our net interest costs are at INR 47 crores for the quarter and at INR 152 crores for year-to-date, which is representative of our current run rate on interest costs. Our effective tax rate is at 18% year-to-date, and it is in line with our estimates, and we expect it to remain in this range of 18%-20%. We have also accounted for the gain on account of the demerger, and this is at INR 3,188 crores, and this is reflected as part of our discontinued operations.
It has been a very comprehensive performance, and we remain focused on achieving the higher range of our outlook for the year across all our financial parameters. Thank you, and we are happy to take any questions that you may have.
We're going to open for Q&A, please, now.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the 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. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Akash Jain with Moneycurve Analytics. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you so much, and congratulations. I think a very, very pleasant set of numbers, and I think the biggest surprise has come on the margin side, frankly. So Arun, my understanding clearly was that the soft-gel business is a high-margin business, so I was not very sure of what will be the margins of the remaining business, but we have had great margins in this quarter and even 17.3% for the full year. So I just want to understand from an overall perspective going forward, what should we think of the overall margins? And now that over the next three years, we are guiding for certain revenue growth, is there levers on operating leverage side to further improve the margins from 17.3% that we have achieved for nine months? So that's the first part of the question. The second question is regarding the U.S. business.
I think we have earlier guided. I think last quarter guided for about $400 million of revenues in the US business by FY28, which broadly is about 11%-12% revenue growth. We also mentioned that we will reintroduce 60-odd products into the US market. So I just want to get a little bit of insight from you in terms of other. Are there any meaningful products in that basket that can really move the needle? A little bit of insight into how we are going to go this journey from $280 million to $90 million or to $400 million. Yeah. Thanks.
Okay. Thanks, Akash. Thank you for your kind words. And firstly, I mean, ever since we announced the carve-out of the soft-gelatin business, we've been looking at the retained business and then working on those levers. We had the pleasure of having Badree with us, and we compounded our actions around this last several quarters, which obviously you were not seeing it as they were embedded in our consolidated results. So we had a conscious strategy to improve our working capital optimization, improve our sales, reduce our costs, and you'd see a lot of those parameters to be steady state while our revenue is going up. I just want to give you a comfort that you would see absolute growth in our EBITDAs as we strip out the larger soft-gelatin business of high margin.
Look at Strides for the next several quarters as a company that will be able to deliver on its growth and continue to grow on its absolute EBITDA numbers. I don't think that we can in the next immediate near term. Technically, we have brought up, if you look at the restated numbers, we have added about 350 basis points of margin expansion in the EBITDA level in the last nine four quarters. So we will have this slow and steady focus, but you have to now start looking how this company is able to deliver a lot more free cash, reduce debt growth significantly. I think, so we are not necessarily worried about the percentage of EBITDA. It will not be lower than where we are now, but it will not be significantly higher also from where we are. But I think the absolute percentage, absolute quantum will increase.
Our cash-to-cash cycle will reduce with all the actions we have taken, delivering significant new cash. Coming to your U.S. question, we have continued to retain our guidance. No change in spite of the soft-gelatin business going off, and that's because of our strong belief that we have enough products to take us there. We have been consistently meeting our guidance for now 14, 15 quarters. What we tell you is probably not as guided at least in the calls, and we think that we will continue to go that trajectory. We don't specifically talk about products. There's a lot of products that you can pick up from the IMS, but we have this principled approach of not launching a product unless it meets a certain profit margin and a market share philosophy.
So yeah, so we have this nice range of products that help us support, and our newer launches are a lot more than our historical $5-$10 million products. They are now more in the $20 million range. So every time we launch one or two products in the 60 product basket, the trajectory changes quite significantly. Thank you, Akash.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Anant Mundra with Nippon India Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Hello. Thank you so much. Sir, congratulations on good results. Sir, my first question is with respect to gross margin. They have expanded significantly on a sequential and YoY basis. So I wanted to understand what are the key drivers for this expansion and what is a sustainable gross margin? And the second question I wanted to understand about debt to equity, net debt to EBITDA. We have already achieved 2X net debt to EBITDA as we guided. And so when we can expect to be debt-free and what are the CapEx requirements over the next two to three years?
Yeah. We can sure take that.
Yeah. So the gross margin, what we gave for the current quarter at 58% is more representative of the business going forward. I think it should more be looked at from a nine-month perspective, and the ups and downs were more because of the soft-gel and non-soft-gel within. Now we're really focused on the retained business consistently, and the current quarter is a more representative quarter of our gross margins. On the net debt to EBITDA, like you rightly said, we've met our targets ahead of time, and we are focused on continuous debt reduction from free cash generation over the next two to three years. And if we continue this trajectory, we should be debt-free. In terms of CapEx, we are only looking at INR 150-200 crores of CapEx every year, and that should sustain for the next couple of years.
Our investments in R&D are going to be significant as we build our portfolio pipeline for the future.
Sir, wanted to understand more about gross margin. So for nine months, we did 56%, and for this quarter, we did 58%, 58.4%.
I think the commentary was, "Look at absolute increase in gross margins." And as Vikesh you did, we would be in this kind of a range. 300 basis points is not necessarily a very significant uplift. We'll have quarters of 300. We'll have some quarters of 200, but that 55-58 range, which effectively means our revenue growth will be a lot quicker and faster from here.
Understood. And sir, the last year competitive number of 54% and 53% for nine months and third quarter, is this including the soft-gel business or this is without soft-gel business, the gross margin?
No. It's restated.
Yeah. It's all restated. The numbers do not have the soft-gelatin numbers in it. It's all restated for the continuing business.
Okay. Thanks, sir. Thanks a lot, sir. Congratulations once again for good results, sir. Thanks.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Nitin Agarwal with DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
All right. Thank you for the question. On the point that you mentioned about the newer launches being more than $20 million per product sort of range, some of these newer products. So are we talking about the post-28 sort of the post-400, as we call them, beyond generic launches, or even within the portfolio of 60 products that you're looking to relaunch over the next two, three years, there could be products like these?
Nitin, your voice is cracking a little bit.
I was saying the point that you mentioned about $20 million product launches happening incrementally going forward. So does this pertain more to some of the beyond generics products that you're talking about, or even in the current sort of?
No, not beyond generics. So for example, we have Suprep, where if you look at IMS, we are over $20 million. We have sucralfate, which is very close to that trajectory. So there are a lot of new products. This year has been a good year for new product launches. We have some more coming our way soon. The controlled substances from our portfolio that we acquired from Endo now are more than $10 million per product kind of. So yeah, there have been significant new shifts. The beyond generics, the 505(b)(2) and the nasal sprays, you'll see that in 2027 onwards. FY27, we expect those two products, that domain and the 505(b)(2), to be a very significant upside. And that's why we're going to change the numbers in spite of the soft-gelatin business moving away.
Right. And given some of these dynamics you've discussed, Arun, is there a probability of probably exceeding the U.S. guidelines for $400 million for F28? Is it possible to sort of exceed that, overachieve that, given where the dynamics are?
But I think we need to wait for the next couple of weeks to see how things kind of pan out specifically under the new political shifts in the U.S. and how, if there's any duties and stuff like that, which are bearing on the industry, we don't think so. Having said that, you will also probably know by now that a large part of our now U.S. sales comes from products manufactured in the U.S., so that, to a very large extent, we have mitigated over time with the acquisition of the Endo facility and the portfolio, but yeah, I mean, it's an aspirational number. If you look at our current path to success, Nitin, we've been ahead of everything we said a couple of quarters, so I would like to believe that could apply for this.
But at this time, we would not want to change anything upwards or change the dates by when we get there. I think it's a couple more quarters and some more big launches. We should be in a position to give you more color on that.
Thanks. And so we just pushed that a little bit, Arun, in terms of the beyond generics part that you mentioned in the presentation. So there are these controlled substances space we talked about and the 505(b)(2)s. I mean, qualitatively, are there any other verticals or domains that you would want to get into over a slightly more longer period of time that you are already working on?
Yeah, so we're doing a lot more in the nasal sprays. We are now becoming an important player in the liquids and the unit dose business. That's a new niche that we are developing. We have invested significant CapEx around those capabilities, and we've already got product approvals. Yeah, so yeah, we have been picking up niches and domains and working through them, so you'll see that panning out. But I think the big new domain would be the nasal sprays.
Second one on the other regulated markets, what's been a year of consolidation for this business. What are the earlier expectations? I mean, when do you see this business sort of breaking out from the current $40 million quarterly range?
Yeah. I know we've been stuck at these numbers for quite some time, Nitin. It frustrates us as much as it does people like you who cover us. But the point really is that this is a pure B2B business. We work with very large partners who insist on getting their labels and MAs approved in every single EU market before they launch because we don't work with national champions. We work with a champion in the continent, and the anticipated launch is pushing out. The products are approved, but these companies take much longer than what we hope for. I think the breakout of this stagnant kind of bar chart would happen in the second half of next year onwards, and you'll see that coming out quite nicely with some of the so we have got all our products approved. We got our contract signed.
It's just a launch to us from our partners. And that's just because they're so organized with their priorities that when they launch, they do a good job. But until then, we wait.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Rupesh Tatiya with Intelsense Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. I had two or three questions. One, sir, is this transfer pricing tax order that we received on, I think, January 20? I mean, you said the financial impact cannot be assessed. But can you give some tentative range, Arun, that would be very helpful to just determine whether it's a material and materially large amount, or it's just something we can manage? That is question number one. Second question is, I mean, in the past, you have said that nasal sprays and control technologies, these two kind of like beyond generics, will be able to replace 150 crore EBITDA that has gone off from the soft-gel oral technologies. So this process, I mean, when can we start to see this additional 30-40 crore quarterly run rate?
Can we start seeing this from FY26, or we have to wait till FY27 for some of those gains to come in? And then the final question is, I think Icosapent ethyl or Vascepa, that was, I think, a very good product that we had, but I think it got entangled in litigation. So do you have some update on that? Can this product make a comeback in FY26? Those are my three questions.
I think on Icosapent, I'll answer that on the rest of what we will. Icosapent, effectively, you're right. It's more not a deep issue with us, but it's also to do with the class action suits in terms of supply chain squeeze-outs. And we hope that there would be a positive resolution around that in favor of the generic companies. That's our belief. And that should then open up the market again. But remember that this product now is in the OneSource portfolio, and it's not so relevant to our conversations at Strides.
Thank you for asking. It's all in the normal course, and the amount is very, very material. It's so large we have to make a disclosure because of some new disclosure norms that have come, and that's a very, very immaterial impact. Thank you.
Yes, sir. Hello.
Yes.
Yeah. One more, sir, about that INR 150 crore EBITDA that we are expected to recoup from these nasal sprays and controlled substances. When can we see that process start?
We can get that INR 150 crore EBITDA from nasal sprays.
Sorry?
We didn't understand your question. Can you repeat?
No, no, no, sir. In the past calls, you have said that INR 150 crore EBITDA we are losing because of the soft-gelatin business moving from Strides to OneSource. But you have also said this INR 150 crore EBITDA we can make up from nasal sprays and controlled substances verticals. So my question is, when can we see this?
Making up happening in the last two quarters?
Sorry?
Haven't you already seen the making up happening?
Controlled substances are already contributing, sir, in our revenue?
Yes, it is.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Sarvesh Gupta with Maximal Capital Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir, and congratulations for a good set of numbers. Sir, my first question is on our overall guidance for FY26. So we understand that we have an aspiration of growth of 11%-12% in the US business, and then we were hoping for second half to be good for the other regulated markets. But probably that has got pushed out to maybe the H1 of next year. So how do we look at overall growth guidance for next year?
Excellent. We'll have to get into that.
We don't have to give a deeper next year.
Yeah, so why are we discussing next year's guidance now? He's asking, what is the growth guidance for the next year?
Oh, we don't.
Yeah. So we.
We gave a specific guidance because of the carve-out. Right? So now don't already push us for what's going to happen next year. We will talk about it when we finish our year.
Specific to the other regulated markets, sir, do we expect some growth to happen in the fourth quarter itself, or do we see that pushed out to maybe the first half of next year?
I did respond to the earlier question where we said that we can see, to Nitin's questions, that the other markets will be probably steady states for another two, three quarters, and you'll see the growth trajectory or the playout happening in H2 of next year for the reasons that I explained.
Thank you. Mr. Gupta, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Aniket Nikumbh with AVN Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. I'm Arun.
Yeah.
Sir, thanks for taking my question and congratulations on a great set of numbers. I just had a follow-up question, I think, with respect to one earlier participant. What was your comment regarding the debt paydown, and if you could just repeat that, that would be helpful.
Debt paydown.
Okay. So what we mentioned is that the focus is on free cash generation, and that trajectory will continue in terms of the operational cash flow to free cash generation. And whatever free cash is generated will go to debt reduction.
Got it. And would you be able to tell us what's the amount of CapEx you expect to do over the next couple of years?
No. I think we have spent close to about INR 250 crores in the last two years. And then typically, that's how the industry works, that we invest, and then we get that capacity utilized. So our CapEx over the next two years will be relatively light. We can't put a number to it, but it will be relatively light.
Perfect. Thanks again, and all the best.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Sufiyan Mansuri with Avendus Capital. Please go ahead.
Congratulations on a Q3 result. My question was following the OneSource demerger, could you clarify the Strides' current subsidiary structure?
We don't have any subsidies related to OneSource.
No, no. I'm asking about subsidies related to Strides.
But we have plenty. Why don't you just send us an email, and we'll give you a long list of them?
Okay. Another question is, you have 250 product portfolio? So this new 60 relaunched dormant products are included in it?
Yes.
Thank you. Mr. Mansoori, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Nihad Karodia with Abakkus. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening, and thanks for taking my question. So I basically wanted to understand about the R&D investment. So we have said that there will be significant going forward. So just wanted to understand, one, whether it will be more of directed towards product development or dosage form or technology, just to have more qualitative understanding into that. And when we say significant, can we quantify the magnitude, let's say, annual R&D spend that we'll be doing for next two to three years?
We don't need to spend any R&D dollars for a generic portfolio. We have plenty of ANDAs, and as long as we clean them up and bring it to high standards, cost competitiveness, we launch them. When we say significant, our typical R&D spend, because of the fact that we had acquired a lot of ANDAs, was quite low. We were spending less than about 3%-4% of our US sales in R&D. We were doing portfolio maximization using the same portfolio for other territories. Our R&D spend was low. It is significant enough to quantify it as doubling our R&D from this year, mainly targeted towards the domains that we scope, 505(b)(2)s and nasal sprays.
Understood. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Deepak Poddar with Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you very much for this opportunity. So just wanted to understand, I mean, you did mention, right, in three years, we are looking to make our balance sheet debt-free. Is that right?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Okay. And so it will be fair to assume, right? I mean, this quarter, our interest cost was close to about INR 52 crores. So on a quarter-on-quarter basis or on an annual basis, we will see a downward trend in that number, right?
Fair to assume.
Okay. That's it from my side. All the very best to you. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Sandeep Dixit with Arjav Partners. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a clarification. This is regarding EBITDA margins. In one of your earlier responses to the earlier question, you mentioned that the margins will be pretty much around the current levels going forward, that is FY26 onwards. But your presentation last quarter said EBITDA margin to be in the range of 20%-22%. I'm not sure which one of them is what I should work with.
You're looking at the guidance including soft-gelatins.
Okay.
Yeah, and we said the soft gelatins are a high-margin business, and that is why Strides Shareholders received a little over $700 million for that business, right? Yeah, so you're looking at a guidance which has not been adjusted for the soft gelatins.
Thank you. Mr. Dixit, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Kiran D with Tree Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Two questions from my side. One, from a U.S. of $400 million, should we expect an equivalent amount? Right now, we are about $250 million from other regulated markets and growth and access markets. Is it a fair assumption that the management at least trying to do a 50/50, U.S. of $400 million, and the rest of the markets, other regulated and growth access is $400 million as well? That's my first question.
Yeah.
Second question.
Sorry. Go ahead. We can't hear you. You must be on a speakerphone or something so that we can't hear you.
Sir, is this better?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay. Sir, my first question essentially is, right now, we are at $400 million, sorry, in FY28, US probably will be $400 million. The other regulated plus growth and access markets, can we reasonably assume right now we're at about $250 million? Can we reasonably assume that also will go to $400 million as well? That's my first question. Second question, what are the possible risks over the next six to eight quarters where we cannot maintain, for some reason, an EBITDA margin? Essentially, sir, in the last few calls, we were talking about 1,000 crore EBITDA in FY26. So I'm just trying to understand what are the risks or that number not being achieved. It can be in terms of EBITDA margin or revenue degrowth. So those are the two questions, sir. One is $400 and $400 split, is it possible?
Two is risks over the next six to eight quarters that you see for revenue or EBITDA margins to be losing out?
We understood your question. On the ORM, your numbers of 200 is wrong. We currently are at around $160-$165 million. And we did mention that this business will take off only after about two, three quarters from now, so it will lag the US several years to get to that $400 million size that we have. That is what we had suggested earlier too. As far as the US is concerned, we don't see any issues in getting to those numbers. The risks are always getting product approvals, regulatory compliance, the standard nine yards in our business. Will we achieve INR 1,000 crore EBITDA? We currently are at the current quarter exit run rate of almost INR 825 crore. So to add another INR 150 crore to get to 1,000 looks very realistic, and it is quite possible.
That's not a guidance we are providing you at this stage, but it is something that we think we are confident of delivering in spite of not having the soft gelatin business. Thank you.
Thank you. Mr. Kiran, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Vivek Gautam with GS Investments. Please go ahead.
First of all, congratulations for an excellent number coming from a pharma veteran of India, leading-up pharma veteran, Kerala. It produces various little entrepreneurs, but you have one exception. So just wanted to know about the headwinds in the U.S. market. Have they reduced so that the earlier competition intensity or generic price erosion that is going down, and so the prospect looking good for our company and the Indian pharma sector in general? Thank you.
Now, we don't see so much of a price erosion that was prevalent three to four years ago. I think there's a little bit of sense in the buying group and in the supply set of people. So I think there is reasonability, if I may use that word, in pricing strategies, and therefore, it becomes a lot more. I will not say attractive, but it's a lot more reasonable market to stay invested.
Thank you. Mr. Gautam, please rejoin the queue for more questions. The last question comes from the line of Akash Jain with MoneyCurve Analytics. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Just one follow-up question. I just want to understand the working capital that the soft gel-
Sorry. Working capital loss?
Working capital days for Strides overall?
The working capital days for Strides overall is at 119 days. That does not have it. It is part of the deck, and that does not have the soft gelatin business. It is not.
No, I know. My question was, is there also a path to further bring it down and optimize it? That is where I was coming from.
We are already best in class. It's going to be hard to bring it much lower than where we are, but we keep trying.
Okay. No problem. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for your time today. And please feel free to reach out to us if you have more questions. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Strides Pharma Science Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.