Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Strides Pharma Science Limited Q4 FY 2023 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 stick the line 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 Singhal. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Yousuf. A very good evening, thank you for joining us today for Strides earnings call for the fourth quarter and full year ended financial results. Today we have with us Arun, Founder, Executive Chairperson, and Managing Director, and Badree, Executive Director, Finance and good chairman, to share the highlight of business and financial support. I hope you've gone through our results release and the quarterly method of addition, which have been uploaded on our website as well as the stock exchange. The transcript of this call will be available in a week's time on the company's website. Please note that today's discussion will be forward-looking nature and must be viewed in the risk relating to our business. After the end of this call, in case you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to the investigation team.
I now hand over the call to Arun to make his opening comments.
Thank you, Abhishek. Good afternoon, everybody, thanks for joining today's earnings call. I'm pleased to report a very strong performance from Strides, considering how we began this year with the market that we saw in the last all of last year. Not only did we come back very strongly, but we achieved many firsts. When we have now reported our highest ever annual sales, which is at INR 3,700 crores, about 20% over last year. At INR 990 crores, it's our highest ever recorded up 14% initially.
At $232 million, our U.S. business has increased from $157 million and has now surpassed the pre-COVID period sales quite significantly. We are delighted with the performance and also the calculated reset that we have achieved in the U.S. market. Also season to note, led by our U.K. operations, the other regulated markets have also achieved this highest ever quarter of $38 million. At $157 million, that again becomes the almost the best year we have done since we got into this market. In Q4, our gross margins inch very close to a historical peaks of 60%.
Our focus this year, while we were pulling revenues up quite significantly, we also get to our historic gross margins, and I'm very happy that in Q4 we are just a few clicks below that in terms of profit. During the year, important outcomes included a revenue growth of almost INR 600 crores, an absolute increase in EBITDA of gross margins for almost INR 500 crores. From INR 4 crores EBITDA in the whole of last year, we have grown quarter-on-quarter, focusing on costs, product launches, and the discipline that this business requires, to have increased our EBITDA to INR 436 crores and with Q3 EBITDA, INR 160 crores. While the percentage, however, EBITDA is not yet to our targets or our historical targets, which are about 20%-21%.
I'm pleased that we are inching very close to that and as we reset our business even further and complete all the work that we commenced in April of last year, I'm very confident that we will continue to build momentum from here on. We have reduced our gross debt by about INR 250 crores during the year, and that is a significant improvement on our debt-to-EBITDA ratio. Through all of this financial year, we started at 8.2x , coming from a very dismal at 5.2x, to an annualized fixed run rate of 3.4x.
We did call out that our target would be closer to 3x, but as you would imagine, bulk of the growth has come from the U.S., which all of us know is high capital and long gestation. Consequently, we are very close, and later you will see that we are guided in the 3 this year. Also important that while we had significant challenges in Sputnik vaccine in our Stelis associate, we have reduced debt by about INR 460 crores. Consequently, in the group, we have reduced debt by about INR 720 crores in FY 2023, and this will continue to be a focus for the company in the years to come.
In a very difficult regulatory environment, I'm very pleased to confirm that we have now received a closeout PIRs for all our sites that were impacted during the financial year, namely our checklist facility, our captured Bangalore plant, Singapore, and most importantly, the facility, which had a warning letter in 2019. We completed renovations very quickly, considering COVID and other plants does not deliver any significant shortage for us. We had to wait for the new regulations, which allows companies to request for inspection. We believe that the inspection happened, and we have now got official confirmation from the FDA that they are satisfied with the remediation that we completed and the warning letter has since been lifted in the last couple of days.
This will obviously lead to a few more product approvals on the site, but product approvals have never been a concern for the company, considering that we still have 280 odd products filed and approved, but we only have commercialized approximately 60 products in that region. That is because we want to have the luxury of letting go of a product or revenue when challenged for price. This way we become not necessarily the primary supplier most times, but in the U.S., that has allowed us to keep the margin and the price discipline that we want. We started off this year, internally resetting the organization, recalibrating our growth strategies, priorities, capital allocation methodology, focus on governance. All of that is going through.
I'm very pleased with the results, especially during this quarter. I touched on the revenues and quarterly performance, I will leave that for questions later and get away to specifics in terms of the markets. Regulated markets continue to be leading the business. We currently classify our access/institutional business along with our emerging market play, therefore, you will notice the lumpiness of that, which is very dependent on the contracts that we win. It's not necessarily a steady state business. It's got lumpiness. Consequently, you will notice in future slides how we propose to mitigate or commenced about going forward from this year that investors can get a better view on how we present our case of our emerging markets.
In fact, specifically access market, emerging markets is a key focus area for the group and it continues to grow quite well. All markets do well. Emerging markets for the reasons that I explained a little while ago. C grew, but the core emerging markets actually achieved 6% improvements, although the base being fixed. At $232 million, we are somewhere in the middle of our $220 million-$230 million guidance up from $157 million. Obviously, that has been a backload because most of you know, the Strides focus on niche two therapies. Code behind us obviously means that the business will now come back to historical levels, but interestingly, we see the number of patients dropping in smaller two therapies where we specialize in.
It has been an exceptional growth from the other regulated markets because we are very determined to ensure that our other regulated markets catch up with the U.S. in terms of revenue, so that we have a myriad market opportunity. We like the growth, and we believe that we'll be able to continue that momentum. It has also been a fairly good year from the institutional business. You know, we have been awarded slightly higher share of wallet, but the world keeps in terms of pricing pressures and others in the antiretroviral business. It's always business. We come back to manufacturing recovery and overall absorption rather than possibly into a strategic large business concerning that we are not fully integrated unlike some of our peers.
Importantly, our emerging market play, especially in Latin America and Asia, is going through the filing, regulatory and offering phase. Towards that, we launched a new division within Strides called Synergize, which is our B2B business, to have partners with companies worldwide, especially in markets where we don't intend to come and sell ourselves, unless it's a frontier market like Africa, where we are heavily focused on building a large cancer business, considering that it is a market still unpenetrated and we have a lot of success and experience in such markets.
Because we have this very large U.S. portfolio of food products, we see with this recognition, because approval is coming our way, because we have to do a little more work in terms of different types of packaging formats that are sold in Latin America and Asia. We do see this private products to grow even stronger. These were traditionally markets that we shied away from earlier, but last year we consciously invested in building out the emerging market play. Current market subjects, the U.S. are $232 million. Most importantly, 19 of our 60 products are commercialized. We are number one in terms of market share.
This is something we specialize in defining very niche and small products and then take market leadership to avoid the price pressure that happens in chronic and large volume products. This was traditionally at in 2019 because we thought it was products, and that's playing out well. We have 60 odd products which are going through very aggressive improvements before we launch these products. We are very comfortable with the range of products that we have identified that will be launched in the near term. Most importantly, like our market share, price discipline, and also the ability to keep considerable of $50 million+.
That's very important because as we know that the U.S. working capital cycle is about 200 and 200+ days, and we wanted three or four steady state products before we step off the gas in terms of expanding the market so that we could use the pre-tax at Zenrich out of U.S. business storage store. The U.S. business wise is, one, you know, it's for almost $1 of new sales, including the working capital cycle time. From a working capital cycle time, it is, very capital-intensive business, working capital intense business. We continue to stay invested, energize business partner business. It's a larger part of our growth strategy, even in the U.S.
We combined with our very efficient front-end, we believe that we are poised for even more success with our strategy, which is highly differentiated from our competitors, especially India-based competitors. The other regulated markets was mainly led by research in the U.K. So we have trade leadership in the U.K. and in our partner business. Our partner business have bounced back to historical high. And we're delighted with the fact that in the rest of the order, we have now partnered with marquee names, and almost three of the top five companies are now our partners, which would never be the case when we were attending ourselves.
The strategic alliances and partnership and leading in several markets that we go into content is key to our growth strategy going forward. We're also investing most of our energy strength in markets away from the U.S., considering that we have very significant group portfolio. Having said that, we announced a partnership with Aviclar to develop a range of complex vaccine use case from our technical trust, which we have those agencies to produce these complex products and use case. We are very excited about this partnership and look forward with product filing in a few weeks in advance. Our Planet Africa business maintained the growth trajectory. It is upscale, but we think that we have established a long range plan to take that business to an important place.
We at this time are not in a position to exactly give details around it because a lot is still work in progress. We're very excited about the opportunity, the margins that business provides us and also the position, the IMS leadership position that we have in many markets, specifically in East Africa. We have now also embarked into the English-speaking Africa, not only in selected markets and we are also happy with the progress that this will need. Now, reflecting, we have decided going forward to restate our markets into regulated markets, African emerging markets and office markets.
For the benefit of our investors and the analyst community who follow us, we have restocked the numbers, easy reference, and going forward, we will be using this format, so that, we will have more granularity and on both our strategy and the numbers going through. We normally don't do a guidance, but we are considering we're coming back from a very difficult period. A, we want to give all our investors the confidence that leadership and I are very committed to build Strides, to a very significant player, mostly focused on niche portfolio and, margin expansions. So we want to give comfort to our investor community, that and we have given a framework g uidance, where we say the continuing business will grow quite significantly.
Our emerging markets will grow faster as we get more and more products approved. We are confident of increasing our INR 87,736 crores to about INR 750 crores in upper range, and about INR 750 crores in upper range, and INR 700 crores the bottom of the range. Between price and products, we intend to reduce another INR 500 crores of debt. We are now very confident that Strides net debt will be under 3x .
All of this will be achieved through emphasizing our network optimization, new product launches, market expansion, branded business increases in Africa, and improved cash flow generation, which will lead to a seller, a strong, if I may say, outcome code. We're very excited about our current order book and our confidence level. On a high level, I will also take you through the debt hook, and then I will leave the house for questions. Debt, as you can see, we have given a little more granularity around debt. Our long-term loans have reduced by about INR 750 crores. Our working capital has not increased in spite of a INR 600 crores increase in revenues. Our gross debt consequently has come down.
We had pricing our revolver, because two months ago, it was about $35 million, but due to onwards, we have been hitting approximately $65 million. Ideally, the revolver has got no recourse to India. This could be akin to a short-term facility, but we, considering our loan agreements, we are obliged, not obliged to, but we are doing as reporting them in that our debt versus the like things to do. We're simply doing that. We just want to call out to the revolver, which was renewed a couple of months ago for another five years. It has got no guarantees or recourse to India, and our focus would be to reduce the long-term loans.
Now, the ironic situation for us, our long-term loans have got a repayment of only around $15 million-$16 million a year. Even as our cash generation is much more than that, we are now concentrating on working capital loans, considering, some of these loans are at good costs. Where liability is today, obviously, the cost of money has increased quite significantly. Our high cost of debt is what we would produce through a combination of strategies. So justice and products on currency, there hasn't been any significant, net debt increase, while the business has delivered, almost INR 450 crores of incremental gross margins.
overall, a very solid outcome, and we continue to be very bullish about the cost versus price, and the continued focus on optimizing the business. I will also address product as it's material. Most importantly, during the year, we reduced CapEx from INR 1,200 crores to now INR 660 crores at the end of March. This is in spite of a very significant impairment, mainly on the specific. While we have commenced arbitration in London, given the geopolitical situation, we have no clue or idea when this is get done with, but we keep the investor community updated on progress. We have taken the hit, moved on, focusing on building a world-class CDMO business, and we have several highs, including 2 U.S. inspections.
EU, GMT, our first product approvals for PDH. We have now partnered in over 19 countries, covering almost about 80% of another opportunity, and we would soon be closing out our partner in Europe and expect to launch the product within this financial year. We've added 5 new partners in our CDMO business, and I'm pleased to let you know that 3 of these 5 new partners are amongst the top 10 companies globally. We have now some total of around 20 partners. We've changed the business.
We have more graphical explanation, but we start off with what is called a master services agreement, where we start work for a partner, and then, a master services to a commercial sale can be, can take as little as one year for the product, which is already approved, three years, which is high, and the approved product, should be approved product, and if it's an ND or a biosim, can go up to 10 years in some cases. It's that we can now confirm that we will be even faster. We will still have a little bit of challenges around the mismatch on customers. We're resolving for many of those things and, we sell as both, have completed, have appointed, strategic advisors for research.
We will announce all of that outcomes with our Q1 results in a couple of months from now. Also importantly, we just completed installing additionally 8,000L of this 4,000L of commission of plus substance and, of course, multimillion contract for an MSP for the biologist of being secured, while we also have other customers that we have signed up. Post our FDA approvals, our average size of RFPs have increased dramatically. Like I said, onboarding of a customer takes anywhere from 18 months because it's not only GMP audits, but it's several other audits in terms of computer systems, PHG, EHS, all that. I'm very optimistic this time that once they're onboarded, it's obviously is a very exciting business to be.
We are committed to this business, we are heavily invested in this business, and we'll stay invested here as we believe that the upward opportunities for stakeholders are significant. Based on now, I'm also pleased to let you know that our first commercial sales will start in June, as one of the partners are now receiving two product approvals from this site, this product registration. Consequently, while our revenues will be lumpy because our revenue recognition is a function of work done, we should be able to have a complete coverage of our operations. From an operations standpoint, we will be not very cash positive, I mean, slightly more than this, but we still will have to work on finding the last leg of the solutions related to sales, and we're working very hard to ensure we succeed.
Bear with us, last week of July, first few days of August, is when we believe that we should finally be able to tell you to sell those, what we think would be a very exciting outcome for a business which is significantly valuable in the medium term. With that, I will, we will take questions. I have with me, please, Badree, our CFO, and Vikesh, and we're more than happy to address your questions. Like always, if you want the time or if you have follow-on questions, please do write to us on our emails, and we'll be more than happy to address them. Thank you all, and most importantly, to many of our investors who stayed invested, believing in us and believing in the story.
We're delighted with our future numbers, and we look forward to pleasantly surprise you with more good news in the near term.
Please proceed with the questions, please.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star and one on their 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. First question is from the line of Mr. Dhruv Maheshwari, Individual Investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, just have a few couple of questions. First one, frequency, our U.S. business has maintained its quarterly run rate in line with the last quarter and our guidance. Could you give the growth outlook for the same over the next two, three years? What would be the key drivers of growth for the $200 million base?
Yes, we do have a guidance. We have mentioned that we will grow the business at around 15%, with the emerging markets growing greater. That is the benchmark guidance.
Okay. The second one is, has the Endo facility achieved, which even had an operating profit level during the quarter? The last one, from a portfolio builder perspective, how should we look at the R&D investments for the business going forward?
Well, considering we have such a large portfolio of group products, we have redirected our R&D spend to emerging markets and Europe. Consequently, our R&D spend, which historically used to be about $20 million-$25 million, has dropped to about $12 million-$13 million.
Got it. I understand.
Thank you.
Thank you. Before we move to the next question, a reminder to the participant, anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star then one. Next question is from the line of Cyndrella Carvalho from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Can you help us understand the U.S. market, not what has changed which is allowing us to sustain the ongoing market quarterly run rate? If you look at our gross margins, are they primarily by the U.S. market today, are you expecting them to come from other markets as well? Can you tell me your thoughts and tell us a little bit, our strategy?
Cyndrella, you're not very audible, so I would appreciate if you could speak up on the phone, especially with regards to first question.
Okay.
I got your second question.
Is this better?
Yeah.
I'm trying to understand the U.S. market from our product basket perspective. Like, from our product basket, how is the scenario today? What changes have happened, and just with us to sustain the ongoing run rate and grow apart from the new launches, is there any change? Is there any supply issues which are helping us through, you know, maintaining our market share in the existing products? How should we see this? From overall, our strategy in the U.S. market has been a pretty smaller size product, but higher in number. Is that work for us or do you plan to change it?
No, we are not. In fact, we went back to that strategy, and I think some of our challenges were that we panicked during COVID as an organization and focused more on chronic, where there's a bunch of players losing some market share. Considering during COVID, the tube globally dropped over 50% in terms of volumes, because surgery was not happening, electro surgeries were not happening at that time. Considering COVID is behind us, and probably we have all been traveling and doing all the things that we normally used to do, appear to come back quite strongly.
What has probably changed for us, to be very specific to your question, is we see that the number of players have actually reduced in the smaller molecules, because all companies rationalized their portfolio, because it's expensive to produce small products. It requires a great scale in terms of how you keep your manufacturing facilities changing over time, doing validation. These are all very expensive cost centers, given the current expectations of the regulators globally, but we are specialized producing these kind of products. The most important thing for us is I can now proudly say when I tell you that in 19 products, you know, we are number one, we are number one by a very large margin, so we're talking like 40%-50% market share.
We also cherish the fact that more than 70% of our number one portfolio have got no Indian competition for several years. That is a key advantage, so you can set price discipline. I'm not suggesting, it just makes life a lot easier when price discipline is there. If you focus on supply chain, we ensure that customer service is great. We just got all of that things, and it's not to blame anybody, but COVID ensured our logistics got very, you know, out of whack and costly and we got all that organized. Our failures to supply dramatically started coming down. We never used to have one for almost three or four years before COVID. We had less than 0.5%.
It changed it for us and for a lot of companies. Supply chain is back to normalcy, so it's more regular. All of this says a lot of gross margins, clearly, have a combined gross margin of 60%. The U.S. is a gross margin leader historically for us. If the business grew in the U.S. back from this, higher industry COVID level, then it's just a logical reset of a business that we did well for several decades, which is doing the same things. I think there would be always competition in specific products, we are not shy in giving away market share also when we think it's rational.
Okay. Arun, on our injectable filings, what's the update? Do you see any of them coming over if I can file this year? Can you tell us some of, at least the number, which are not.
Strides doesn't work in this business at all.
We were planning to come back, right? For 41.
We have plans, but just hang on to the deeper conversations around Stelis and the CSU, and then maybe that would be more an appropriate time to have this discussion.
Okay. overall time erosion, right now, how much for our portfolio and do you see the overall industry where we are having...?
If I say zero, you won't believe me, but I'm sure I'm going to put money back.
For rapid portfolio, right?
Yeah.
Okay, thank you. In terms of overall thoughts for highly and beyond, how do you think we should wait for one or two more quarters to ask the question?
Yes, good idea.
Thank you. Thank you, Arun. Have a good day.
Have a good day.
Thank you. Reminder to the participant, anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star then one. The next question is from the line of Tarang Agrawal from Old Bridge Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. mine's a bookkeeping question. I'm unable to reconcile the changes in working capital that's been provided in the cash flow with the numbers on the balance sheet. For instance, increase in trade and other receivables is about -INR 3,473 million for financial year 2023. When I go to the balance sheet, the receivables have not grown by that amount, it's grown by maybe less than INR 100 million. Similarly, when I go down and I look at increase decrease in trade payables about INR 1,022 million, I'm unable to reconcile. Can you just help me figure out what I'm missing there?
Tarang.. that Vikesh also needs to, probably need to address this, please.
The major difference that is coming is on two accounts. One is we had deconsolidated UCL in Q2, end of Q2. That is reflected in opening financials, but it's not there in the closing financials. That is having one impact. In the cash flow, it is part of the INR 300 crores impact that you see on receivables and also corresponding on inventories and able. There are certain assets that have been identified as held for sale, and those assets held for sale is also forming part of the cash flow base. Those are the two major items that are causing the that are impacting the difference between the balance sheet and cash flow.
The entire transactions pertaining to these two items will be presented in the notes in a much more detailed manner.
Okay. I'll have a look and I'll probably drop an email. Thank you.
Thank you. Reminder to the participant, anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star then one. Next question is from the line of Nitin Agarwal from DAM Capital . Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the question. Arun, congratulations on the turnaround. I'll start with a couple of housekeeping questions. One is, A, you know, there has been a pretty sharp Q3 increase in our other expenses. Any expected drivers for that?
Nitin, just to answer this question, the overall operating cost of today, that we had some changes, that we have seen increase in sales in the Q4. Primarily, we have seen increase in expenses, plus, there is also an exchange impact at the same.
Arun, how much is the exchange impact be?
For Q4, it is INR 15 crores.
Given, Arun, where the business today is achieving, you know, at this run rate of about INR 1,000 crores revenues, this INR 250 crores more or less is the general expense number to go with or is there a scope for rationalization over here?
Overall, we have said that it will be in the region of $200 million, plus or minus debt. It will be in that range.
$200 million.
$200 million.
This is across staff cost and other expenses?
Yeah, correct. Both together.
Okay. Arun, on the on the other regulated markets, there's been a very sharp downtime in Q4. Is there some seasonality in this business or this is a base on which business growth will follow?
No, there is a positive impact from our Australian business, which is mainly, you know, the post-COVID. The Australian government mandates a certain level of stock keeping by the leading players in return for better previous pricing. We are seeing a significant uptake in Australia. We are not sure if this is a yearly function, but will it kind of be, you know, a Q4 event every year? We are not so sure. We are very confident to grow from the numbers that we have achieved in the regulated markets at $167 million.
Australia did play a very significant role, you know, the exit run rate is $200 million on a $157 million business, which effectively means that the average last three quarters is about $35 million. It'll be hard to beat this quarter. We have very strong pipelines. Over the year, we will still achieve the company's guided growth, even in this quarter.
On the, on the U.S., you know, you talked about the fact that the U.S. business, currently the calibration seems to be almost negative on the current portfolio. 2 things, one is, hey, you know, is there again, a little seasonality in our U.S. business?
Nitin, I'm not suggesting that there is no consideration. We don't act as consideration. We have the luxury of portfolio and choice on what we want to achieve. If you get challenged for a $10 million product or a $5 million product or a $1 million product, which is where the challenge is happening mostly, we're happy to let go because we have 14 to 15 products being launched every year. If you say that we have not lost business on our base business in the last year, that is not fair. We have, because we have given away business, but we've also added business because we are now very focused on going back to our historical numbers, which is business levels closer to 55%-67% gross margin.
This also reflects the previous 14. Just there, sometimes when you're challenged, you have to let go of business. I'm not suggesting that consideration. Consideration is when you want to keep your market share. I'm saying we have the luxury of letting go when challenged.
Right. That's understandable. Secondly, on in terms of, you know, the pipeline which is not launched yet, versus you already have in the market, in your assessment, is there a qualitative difference, in the, you know, in the quality of products you could potentially launch versus what we already have in the market in terms of when I mention qualitative, I mean, revenue for product potential?
Again, the key element here is that the Endo out of the 288 products, almost 100 high quality products came from the Endo portfolio. The challenge we had in the first 2 quarters of this transition was that Endo was still marketing the products for us, so we didn't have control on product on portfolio and pricing, because that's how the deal was structured. Now that we have, we obviously have brought the same level of hygiene and discipline that we are generally known for in the U.S. market. That's also led to an uptick, because we were needing money in different places. If I was interesting, the previous question, like, did you make money in Q4? The personal answer is yes.
It means that we have now solved for a lot of things. Most importantly, Nitin, we reduced our check average costs by almost $15 million during the year, and that complete flow-through will only happen from April. Has happened only from April end. That's almost about 8%-10% of quarter, almost $1 million-$1.2 million per quarter. I mean, as in the residual cost that we are bearing in Q1. That also will give you an indication of what Stelis could do. Yeah, for me, if you look at us today, you will see us in market leadership on several products. In many products, we are the sole supplier, but we are disciplined with pricing. We don't do anything irrational.
We have several products where we are the sole player in the market. They are so small products.
Last question. When did the Neuraxpharm portfolio that we partnered recently on some stuff come into the market?
It's going to take at least about three years because it's a very complex controlled substance on a very special device. It's a lot of work, including eventually clinicals, if required.
Nitin, the interest cost seems to be very high for the quarter. Any specific drivers for that?
The interest costs are there between the later part of the Q3, the coming quarter. Second thing is, while we close the transaction on Arrow on December 24, December last week, because of the procedural matters, we determined the low time, for that reason, the interest cost is likely high. Overall, you can say that the 65 to range is what we expect going forward.
65 to roughly range what you should work with.
It's also to do with LIBOR, right? Our line is linked to LIBOR. It's LIBOR going up. There is a 3%-4% increase that line cost too.
Right. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sarvesh Gupta from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead.
Congratulations team on a good set of number on the pharma side. First question on this, just to get some more clarity. I think, you've written that, you know, we are expecting some outcome to come from the strategic options. Are we the next, by the next quarter or so, are we completing a transaction or planning to conclude a transaction, or are we just going to be deciding what is the way forward on what to do, what needs to be done for a strategic mistake that we have?
It's a more definitive way forward and how to ensure that we become a very important CDMO company, of scale, and the strategic options include that amongst other things that you mentioned. That is what is only two months away.
Okay. In the last quarter commentary, it appeared as if we wanted to conclude a strategic sale or something like that, wherein we sort of get out of our shareholding of Stelis.
You reading between the lines, but I can't blame you for that. When a board appoints advisors for strategic options, it effectively means it could be anything. What I'm trying to tell you is that anything but up in this case is how do we build Stelis to become one of India's leading CDMO companies, and what does it take us to do that?
Understood. That is what we are expecting, maybe, by the time we have the results for the next quarter, right?
Yes.
Okay. Secondly, what is the current level of corporate guarantees that Strides has given to Stelis?
The outstanding debt in Stelis is about INR 600 crores after cash, the cash and cash equivalents. I think the outstanding liabilities related to Stelis is in the range of around INR 500 crores because you don't need to give guarantees on all the COVID loans. Yeah, that gives him that well. Although, if among the strategic options, the refinancing is what we want to do, then we have shareholder approval to issue guarantees up to INR 70 crores.
Understood. Now coming to the rationalization of the cost part, we can see that, you know, our other expenses have come down, but at the same time, some normative expenses would have gone up. To the extent to which, you know, we have taken stock to manage removal of the other expenses from our cost structure.
Yeah. You have to, you have to assume, Q4 as a base and, like we said, $200 million run rate in, for the whole year, so $50 million. We are very close to those levels. There is still a little more opportunity for us to reduce, but they don't increase them.
Understood. I think, related, there were some higher expenses related to our, U.S. facility also, which we were carrying till, end of April 2023.
Yeah. That was when we issued a warn notice where we right-sized more than 50 people. There are certain regulations that lead to fair, significant amount of severance. All of that has been taken into account, that ended as of end of April. That's all done with now.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Zaki Nasir], from [Nasir Investments]. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir, and I think congratulations on fantastic set of numbers. The company looks at the cusp of a turnaround in 2024, as you rightly mentioned in your presentation. My question, sir, is, right, it is around INR 1,000 crores from the top line this quarter. Going forward, do you think this could be, I mean, this will become like a normalized quarterly run rate for Stelis?
Thank you for your commenting on our numbers. I appreciate that. We did have a good bump up on our institutional business, but we called it out in our in our deck, where there is lumpiness in that business. That's why we agreed on a restatement on how we, I mean, how we would present numbers going forward. I think that the institutional business is lumpy in nature for the whole industry, for those of us who are in this business. If you take that off and we guided numbers, then on that number, we could safely add 20%. This is a, this is a good kind of guardrail number, if you wish.
I would be cautiously optimistic on the institutional business, because it's not a business in a hand, it's dependent on donor funding, on the ability for you to deliver a short notice and stuff like that. At this time, we are building businesses which are more in our destiny, in our strategy, and while the donor business is extremely important from a manufacturing recovery standpoint, it's not a business that is predictable or guidable like the rest of the business.
Sir, I mean, like you, the word you rightly used, like the guardrail number. Could we safely assume it's 7% from here on the lower end in terms of if you subtract the institutional business also?
If you subtract the institutional business, you can safely count 15%-20%. If you add the institutional business, 7% is also very comfortable.
Sir, in terms of Stelis, the net number is INR 7 million odd crores. What would be right, and what would your comfort level for going forward by the end of 2024 and 2025, what would you want these two numbers to look like, sir?
not over 3.5x EBITDA.
One last question, sir, in Stelis, have we taken the total write down from the problems of the specific, or we still have some carry power from that?
None.
Is there any possibility of something coming back on the books?
No.
I mean, in some kind of impact from the authorities or things like that?
No.
Okay. Thanks a lot, and best wishes to you and team Strides for 2024 and a fantastic success.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Siddhant Chaudhary, individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. I just have a quick question. For around revenue here, the target is around 10. Could you highlight the key drivers for and margin expansion for this fiscal year?
One is costs, obviously. Second, continued success in the U.S., that is key. Synergize our B2B business, you know, converting to, I mean, customers that we converted, moving to revenue recognition. Those are some of the key drivers.
Well, thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Shankar, individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Am I audible?
Yes.
Thanks for taking my question. Congratulations to Strides teams for good gross margin improvement and margin improvement. My first question is, Strides has delivered $63 million revenue in U.S. As far as QOQ performance is concerned, there is no improvement in U.S. revenue. Any specific reason for it? How many products you are introducing this financial year from Endo? In Q3 results, 10 products got launched from Endo in U.S.
It's not launched, it's actually relaunched. Like I said, if we get challenged on pricing, we are happy to let go. It's not how much we want to grow in the U.S., it's about margin expansion. With that discipline, we have got to 60% of margin expansion, almost 59.9%, we want to focus on that. This year is all about improving our gross margins and EBITDA and further reducing our debt to a comfortable level, which is what our focus is. We are not so much concerned if sequentially we didn't grow 10% or 15% quarter-over-quarter. We grew 58% year-over-year. If we end up the year 15% growth on $232 million, that's what we need to look at.
Are we improving our gross margin beyond 59%? That will be a good indicator.
Okay.
Hello?
The next question is from the line of Jason from Private Limited. Please go ahead.
I just wanted to know what % of promoter space is there?
Sorry. We can't hear you well, Jason.
Your voice is low. We are not able to hear you. Please keep your headset closer to your...
Yeah. Can you, give us the what % of promoter stake is placed or is there any guidance to reduce it?
Yeah. See we did guide back our idea of to reduce our pledges quite significantly. By considering, we had a choice last year to keep the lights on in Stelis. Promoters have invested over INR 500 crores, which to ensure that nothing is stalled from the guarantees that Strides has delivered, that was key to our strategy. Absolute loan book on the pledges are not increased, that is a function of the share price. We believe that we will be able to reduce the pledge levels by about 33%-40% during this financial year.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Thank you, gentlemen. This was the last question. I would now like to hand over the conference over to the management for the closing comments.
Thank you. Thank you all for joining today's call, and like I told you, a little thanks for your confidence in Strides, and thank you for your support.
Thank you. On behalf of Strides Pharma Science Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.