Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this call to discuss Syngene's Q3 and nine-month results for FY 2025. To discuss the financial and business performance for the period, we have on this call today Mr. Jonathan Hunt, Syngene's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Deepak Jain, Chief Financial Officer. After the opening remarks, Jonathan and Deepak will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Before we begin, I would like to caution that comments made during this conference call today will contain certain forward-looking statements and must be viewed in relation to the risks pertaining to the business. The safe harbor clause indicated in the investor presentation also applies to this conference call. The replay of this call will be available for the next few days, and the transcripts will be made available.
With this, I now turn the call over to our Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Hunt.
Thank you, and thank you to everybody for joining the call today. As always, my remarks will cover an overview of the key financials and market trends for the quarter before getting into any operational or strategic highlights. I'll then hand over to Deepak to provide a more detailed insight into the financials and his remarks, both for the quarter and for the first nine months of the year. We're pleased with the performance in the Q3, returned to growth, and I think it sets us on the right trajectory for the rest of the financial year. Reported revenue from operations for the quarter came in at INR 944 crore, up 11%. We benefited from a favorable exchange rate between the US dollar and the rupee. That resulted in approximately an 8% increase in revenue from operations in constant currency terms, or 3% FX benefit.
Looking at the growth sequentially, revenue from operations increased by 6%. I think that's an indicator that things are moving in the right direction. Operating EBITDA was up 23% to INR 284 crore so we delivered good operating leverage with the operating EBITDA margin increasing by around 300 basis points so that came in as 30.1% for the quarter. Reported profit after tax, after exceptional items for the quarter, was up 18% year on year to INR 131 crore. This reflects good underlying performance and despite the tax-related one-offs that you'll hear more from Deepak shortly so during the quarter, there were signs, I think, of stabilization in the U.S. biotech funding environment. That said, the market didn't recover as quickly as we'd anticipated when we set our guidance at the beginning of the year.
So, while we called the return to growth in the direction of travel, I think correctly, the timing feels eight, 12 weeks off. So, we'll cover more of that when we comment on expectations for the full year. But back to growth in the quarter, directionally in the right way, took a little bit longer in the year than I anticipated when I first set the guidance at the beginning of the year. Discovery Services contributed to the growth in revenue in the quarter as well, marked by collaborations with mid and large pharma companies on pilot projects. Last quarter, we had quite a discussion around biopharma companies looking for alternatives to China as they rebalance their supply chains. They're partnering through pilot projects, and they're using these as a way to select their longer-term partners. And during the quarter, the initial pilots converted through for us into longer-term contracts.
Of course, they then have the opportunity to contribute to growth next year. The performance of development and manufacturing services remained steady, driven by biologics with repeat orders from existing customers and also through new collaborations on integrated projects that cover anything from drug development to clinical stage manufacturing. To conclude, performance in Q3 was positive with a return to growth, good momentum across the business divisions that puts us on the right track for the next quarter. We have made good progress on our strategic priorities, and I think we are moving in the right direction to gain in that longer-term China Plus One trend. With that, let me hand over to Deepak, and he will give you more detail on the financials.
Thank you, Jonathan. Good evening, everyone. Let me walk you through our third-quarter performance, followed by a review of the nine-month results and an update on our outlook for the fiscal. As we had indicated in the year, we expect growth momentum to build in the second half of the year, and Q3 marks the return to growth on a year-on-year basis. As highlighted by Jonathan, growth during the quarter was driven by performance across all divisions. Operating EBITDA margins came at about 30.1% for the quarter compared to 27.5% in the previous quarter and 27.1% in the same quarter last year. Operating EBITDA margins benefited from lower material costs during the quarter, which, as a percentage of revenue from operations, declined from 27.8% to 25.2% in the Q3. This was driven by a change in the business mix and some efficiency gains.
Material costs are likely to be in the range of 26%-28%, as we had guided earlier. Staff costs increased by 14% year on year, primarily driven by salary increments and recruitment in skill areas needed to build capabilities in the business. With a focus on deployment of energy efficiency measures, renewable energy now comprises 96% of our total energy consumption. Other direct costs remained flat during the quarter as compared to the same quarter last year. Moving on to other operating costs, which increased by 18% year on year, largely driven by investments in digital initiatives, maintenance, and upkeep of expanded facilities and infrastructure. This broadly remained the same as percentage of revenue through this year, at around 13%. Turning now to treasury and our hedging performance, revenue for the quarter was hedged at around INR 85.3 per dollar.
The average spot rate during the quarter was lower at about 84.8, resulting in a hedge gain. As a reminder, we hedged most of our sales for a 12-month period. Hence, any change in spot rate, while it is reflective of in the revenue, gets adjusted in the hedge rate as a hedge gain or loss in the P&L. The company saw a hedge gain of INR 2 crores against a hedge loss of INR 12.4 crores in the Q3 of the previous year. Operating EBIT was up 42% year on year, supported by a stable depreciation cost of about INR 109 crores, similar to the last year. Interest expense increased by 15% year on year due to an increase in lease liabilities.
Other income for the quarter was 18 crores compared to 29 crores in the previous year, which included a one-off item relating to income tax refund amounting to 15.8 crores in the same quarter last year and 2.5 crores in quarter three through FY 2025. Moving to income tax, during the quarter, the company chose to settle income tax dues for prior year amounting to 9.5 crores under Vivad se Vishwas scheme. With facilities coming out of the favorable tax base created by the SEZ status adjusted for prior year taxes I mentioned, the reported effective tax rate stood at 22.2% against a 19.3% in the same quarter last year. Reported profit after tax, before exceptional items, increased by 14%. After exceptional items, grew by 18% to 131 crores.
Turning to performance in the first nine months of the year, the revenue from operations was up 2% year on year in reported currency, flat in constant currency, as early softness in the first half of the year was offset by the recovery in the Q3. This growth was marked by return to growth in Discovery Services division, as well as continued growth in the Syngene CDMO divisions with increased traction in biologics. Despite decline in revenue and EBITDA in the first half of the year, the Q3 revenue growth and improvement in margins enabled us to report flat year-on-year EBITDA for the nine-month period. The operating EBITDA margins stood at 26.6% compared to a 27.1% in the same period last year.
While raw material costs benefited from gains in efficiencies in biologics, investments in people, digitization initiatives, in addition to decline in revenue in the first half of the year impacted margins. The trend of operating expenses in the first nine months of the year broadly reflects that of the Q3. Reported PAT after exceptional items decreased 3% year on year to INR 313 crores due to an increase in depreciation on account of investments made in the last 12 months and a decline in interest income due to lower cash balance as we utilized the cash to acquire biologics unit from Stelis Biopharma in quarter three of FY 2024. We continue to invest in the expansion of capacities and capabilities and technological advancements to drive long-term growth.
Over the first nine months, we invested a total CapEx of around $34 million, approximately 50% in research services and approximately 25% in biologics to upgrade unit three, the manufacturing facility that we acquired last year. We continue our investments in digitization and automation, which we believe are essential for increasing efficiencies in our business. We maintain a strong balance sheet, and after meeting our CapEx for the quarter, we have a net cash of INR 838 crores as of December 2024. Finally, let me say a few words about guidance. Revenue trajectory in the first half of the year was as anticipated. The Q3 performance was back to growth after three quarters of decline. The growth observed in the quarter indicates that market dynamics, particularly within the U.S. biotech sector, are stabilizing.
As mentioned by Jonathan, the recovery in demand, which was expected in the second half of the year, experienced delay of approximately 8-12 weeks. We saw initial pilot projects with large and mid-sized pharma companies starting to convert in the longer term into longer-term contracts. We also see positive momentum in the CDMO division led by biologics. We expect the growth momentum to continue in the fourth quarter of this financial year. Despite challenges faced in the first year, we expect to close the full year with single-digit revenue growth and a flat EBITDA. As communicated in the last quarter, we expect operating EBITDA margins recovery to continue in the fourth quarter, which should lead to a full-year margin around the same as last year in the high 20s, as we have guided previously.
Our CapEx program for the year remains on track at around $60 million by the end of the year. While we remain cautiously optimistic, we continue to focus on executing in line with our strategies and are investing in the right capacity and capabilities to position the company for future growth. I will now hand it back to the operator, and we will take a few questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We'll take our first question from the line of Shyam Srinivasan from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good evening, and thank you for taking my question. Just on the revenue guidance cut, right? So I think earlier we had high single-digit growth. I know it started with a range, high single-digit to low double-digit. Now we have come to, say, can I assume it's like mid-single-digit dollar, like 5%? I'm not asking you to pin down a number, but just trying to see this trajectory of revenue revisions downwards. If you could help us understand, I know the qualitative comment around 8-12 weeks, but in terms of when we started the year versus now, what's been the biggest miss for us in terms of expectation versus reality?
And two, also, if you could also help us give the split of the businesses between CRO and CDMO, like research versus CDMO. Has there been a mixed shift in the nine months or maybe in the forecasted 12 months so that we can get a sense of where the weakness is, higher or lower? So those are my two questions.
Yeah, no, good, Srinivasan. I shall try and color in a bit more and help you think about it. I mean, what I was trying to get at with my comments, our guidance at the beginning of the year is two sets of forecasts, really, isn't it? Because I have to take a view on what we think the rate of recovery in the U.S. biotech funding and then flow through to expenditure market is. And then I have to try and take a view on what we think our share within that market is. And I think the comments I was leading to you too is the rate of stabilization in the biotech funding took longer in the year than what we'd included in our original guidance. I was hopeful that it would stabilize clearly in 2Q, and I think it stabilized more in 3Q.
If you actually look at our ability to win share in that, it looks on plan to what I originally expected, just phase shifted out by those 8-12 weeks. So that's what the coded language, if you're decoding what we're saying in the press release and in the comments, was exactly that. It's good to be back into growth in the Q3, plus 11%. I just think that the external environment stabilized a little bit later in the year than I'd originally baked into our guidance when we gave it, and then I'm sure as the earnings seasons go through, you'll read that across into the performance of others and other comments, and we'll all piece together the big picture at the end of the earnings cycle. As to the split, I think, and again, this is intuitively embedded in it.
If it's U.S. biotech funding, it's more likely to be in research because that's what they spend their money on when they raise it. And I think that's probably true. Does that help?
Yeah, so maybe you put this number out only once a year. So fair to assume like 100-200 basis points of that 60% has actually come off, right? I would imagine. We're trying to assess the decline in the CRO business. I think that's what we're trying to assess, Jonathan.
Yeah, and it's growing. It grew in the Q3.
Understood. And last question, just macro, there's been a delay in the whole U.S. Biosecure Act being cleared by, so I'm not asking you to comment on legislation, but from a conversion of these projects, like you said, there's a pilot project that has been converted. Has there been any behavioral change or are people now reluctant to kind of, or there is the urgency to move things out of China, let's assume, has that reduced? So any comments on that?
Yeah, I will. And again, I don't know what a terrible thing to do, the CEO asking the analysts a question rather than the other way around. How would you interpret all the comments I've made throughout the year and the year before around things like biosecure? I think I've been fairly constant in saying at best, it's the cherry on the top of the cake. It isn't the cake. It's as much or more so about pandemic learning, COVID supply chains. It's around structural rebalancing around it, about risk committees. I think I and many other CEOs have not placed the emphasis of single-point emphasis on it's the Biosecure Act. Now, if you're using that as a shorthand for the whole thing, I get it.
But the big change in the Biosecure Act was the moment that they took the implementation deadline from, "You've got to get it done in 12 months," to, "You've got to get it done in eight years." But that happened over a year ago. And again, that's the Q3 I've made that comment, I think, or it feels like it anyway. So I don't think it's that. I think it's more structural. Here's a good word for you. It's more tectonic. You know, like plate tectonic. It's going in one direction. It's powerful, but it's slow-moving, steady-moving, however you interpret tectonic. That's what I've been trying to say to you all year. I've said it on public daises. I've said it on conference calls.
In most industries, that would be considered to be a reasonably positive structural tailwind that was going to play out over, again, I'll go back to the last two quarters. This will play out over many years, not over weeks. So there you go, Srinivasan. You've got me in a talkative mood, and I've colored in as much as I can.
Okay. Thanks, Jonathan. Yeah.
Does that help?
Yeah.
That's what I think is going on across the industry, and that's good. That's a positive for the Indian industries to have that sort of structural dimension to it.
Got it. Thank you. All the best.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Chirag Dagli from DSP Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
You are.
Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Jonathan, you've talked about positive momentum in the CDMO division led by Biologics. Does this mean that the new facility which is going to come on stream, you already have customers for that? And how should we think about ramp-up of that capacity as in when it comes on stream?
Super question. No, it doesn't mean that, but no, it doesn't mean that. As in, I made no comments on it. The whole point we were telling you about the acquisition of that facility, we were running out of capacity because of the rate of growth we'd seen over the last two or three years in our Biologics. We were getting close to me being concerned if we continue at this growth, we will have to turn clients away because we won't have capacity. That prompted us to think, do we accelerate our internal build-out? And that still left us with an overhang risk, which was you can't build plants that quickly. And then we saw a good opportunity, which I think was good value. We paid cents on the dollar for that facility, and we've invested. And then we told you, "Look, don't start plugging anything into your models.
It's 12 months just for us to do the renovation and the retooling and the re-engineering," and that 12 months is not here. That ends this quarter, and we're on track, so all that happens probably in April is that that facility is ready to do work for clients that want to place work there, and then we're into the selling cycle, but I'm going to look across at my finance colleagues and know if I'm getting this right, the life cycle on a plant like that is 20, 30 years, so we'll start showing it, and we'll sell it, and we'll try and sell capacity, but I don't know. I'm not a big believer in hockey stick moments in any sort of business. Does that make sense?
Understood. No, no, fair point. Fair point. Other question was, Jonathan, we've seen two years now with single-digit kind of growth, FY 2024 and 2025, and you've always articulated resilience well. The question is, the next two years or maybe three, how different should they look versus the last two where we've seen single-digit while we continue to invest in the business for the longer term? But revenue growth.
No, no, no. I get it. And you know I'm not going to give you a two-year guidance outlook at the Q3 results. But let's just minimize it to quarters, shall we? Minus two last quarter, minus two the quarter before, plus 11 this quarter. You can triangulate as Srinivas did from Goldman's in his first question. What does it mean for the full year, the fourth quarter? I think feels like the Q3. So there you go. I'm not prepared to go into next year, but at least I told you a bit about what I think's happening this quarter and next. We're back into growth. We'll update you in April when I've had a chance to really have a look at the annual operating plan. But I see very similar patterns.
If I look across either our Indian peer group or I look more broadly, we don't look dissimilar. If anything, we went into the slowdown a little bit later than them. We've come out of it maybe a quarter earlier than many of them, but we've all largely experienced the same, I think, slowdown in research because of slowdown in biotech funding and therefore slowdown in expenditure, and I think it's stabilized. We'll see how much it rebounds.
Understood. And the last is, Vukil investor, if I may, what is your employee strength and scientific talent pool?
Oh, I'd need to look it up, but we publish it once a year in the annual report. It's largely unchanged. There's some very good scientists, though.
So it's largely unchanged on the March 24 number as on today?
It is. I think so, but I'd have to go and look it up. It's not something that we report quarterly.
Understood. Okay. Fair point. Thank you so much.
Those are good. All right. Super.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, we'd like to remind participants to press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Alankar Garude from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, one question on the technology bit or the capabilities bit. Now, out of the various capabilities, technologies such as, say, lyophilization, flow chemistry, column chromatography, which we offer, which ones would you say are our forte? And similarly, I mean, which would be the technologies where you think that there is some catching up to do in terms of the depth of our offering?
You broke up. Which was our word? What was the?
Forte.
Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. No, it wasn't you. It was the phone glitched, and I couldn't figure out what you said. Forte. Well, clearly, we think we do a good job in large molecule biologics, whether it's discovery, development, or manufacturing of those. In the small molecules, actually, all of the things that you listed as sort of core competencies were right in the middle of the pack where I think we're very solid on our small molecule development and manufacturing. And then once you go into the research services, remember, research is still the historical resource of the biggest part of the business. You're right on the frontier of many things, whether it's some of the advanced techniques in biology or in chemistry. I think we're doing some really good innovation work.
But if you roll it back to strategy, our intention is to be broad enough on our scientific capabilities that we can meet the needs of a large proportion of the market, particularly recognizing that a lot of our customers also have large scientific footprints. And they don't want to be managing a multiplicity of partners. They're quite like that bit of one-stop shopping. They can align culturally, operationally, and then they get everything they need. So we're intentionally broad scientifically.
Understood. The second one is more of a clarification. Now, last month in December, there was this FDA letter which came for Librela. This is not really a new issue, but just wanted to understand, get confidence from you, whether that $50 million annual number, do you foresee any risk to that at all?
I couldn't comment on the FDA letter. I mean, that's a question for Zoetis. I'll go right the way back. The $50 million, I think what I actually said at the time was, as an answer to a question, "Hey, how do you want us to think about this?" And I said, "$500 million over 10 years will average around $50 million a year." Beyond that, we don't collate individual quarters or months of production, partly because it's really competitive-sensitive for our clients. I don't think they would want us disclosing that to their competitors. But yeah, my understanding is it's doing well in the marketplace, and we're very happy with our relationship.
So essentially on that $500 million number, you don't foresee any risk as of now?
I don't think I said that. But then I don't know. As a CEO, you're not a professional risk. I don't know what it would be. I spend a lot of time worrying about what could go wrong to make sure it doesn't go wrong. Please don't misinterpret that. I'm not making any suggestion around that. But you did ask me a question to prognosticate for another eight years. I don't think I could do that. But today, the relationship's good. The product's doing well. I understand. Certainly, our delivery and manufacturing has been good and continued to get better. I'm very happy to have that relationship. I hope to do a lot more with Zoetis, with other animal health companies, and with human health companies.
Understood. That's helpful. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Madhav Marda from Fidelity International. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you so much for your time. My first question was on, if I understand right, and correct me if I'm wrong, that we have two facilities. One is the one which we acquired, and one is the Mangalore API facility. Both of them seem to be running lower on the utilization side. So just what I wanted to understand is how much of a drag does that have on our profitability, given that there might be operating deleverage that we are facing with those sites currently? So if you could give us some sense to probably understand the underlying business.
Just the basic construct of the question. No, we don't have just two facilities. We have an entire manufacturing campus facilities here on our main campus in Bangalore. Around the corner, we've got unit three, which we've added, which is a large molecule one. We've got a campus with more than one block over in Bangalore. Yeah. So to some extent, your question is a derivative of the construct of the question.
No, my point was that these two facilities are the ones which are a bit underutilized currently, right? One where we are renovating the site and one where.
Super. Well, it's not unutilized. One of them hasn't opened yet.
Exactly. So what I meant.
It's not unutilized.
My simple question was, how much of a cost, very broadly, are we incurring at these two sites? So we can get a sense of the underlying business profitability, given that initially, as you scale up the plants, you might be incurring some OpEx at both the facilities, right?
Yeah. Love the question. Not sure we've ever given that level of detail. I'm looking at my finance colleagues. Is there anything helpful I can do? I mean, you've got turnkey operations in there. So whatever you need to bring a facility up to speed, it won't be an enormous amount. But beyond that, I'm not sure I can give you that level of color.
Okay. Sure. Understood. Understood. Yeah. That makes sense. Thank you so much.
Okay. Thank you. You're very welcome to have another question if you wanted because I don't think I gave you the answer you were looking for.
Thank you.
Should we move on?
Yeah.
Go on.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Bharat Sheth from Quest Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I just want to understand how do we integrate currently AI and?
Bharat, I'm sorry. There's a lot of disturbance on your line. Can you use your hands a bit more?
I want headset. Is that clear now?
Yes. Please go ahead.
Hello.
I want to understand how much we integrate the IT on the research side to expedite as well as AI part side. So if you can give some color and our roadmap for the same.
Oh, super question. Gosh. We could be here till midnight if we really talked about it. It's quite an exciting area. We do do it. So we have within the company, of course, our own AI informatics and sort of digital research, if you think of it that way, group. What we try and.
I'm sorry, sir?
Hello?
I'll say you're not audible. Yeah. Bharat, please stay connected.
Yeah.
Jonathan, sir?
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes. Yes. Please go ahead.
All right. Super. As I was saying, good question. Oh, there's an awful lot of excitement, and the commentary is being written every day around GenAI, AI applications in all walks of life. And we're making good progress on that journey. We have those sort of decision support tools already operating in the company, whether it's use of things like AlphaFold. You'll have read about that to help you predict how proteins fold and therefore help you in drug discovery. Whether it's AI augmentation of scientific decision-making. We have algorithms that will go and look at all of the scientific literature in the world and help our scientists understand what's already known so they can add to it with new innovations. We have digital ways of helping us predict DMPK distribution properties. So it's real. I don't know.
I think it's a little bit like the moment where the world started talking about the internet and then just not being able to live without it. Certainly, I find in my home life with my youngest son, he can barely breathe unless he has access to the internet. And I think that's what we're going to see in the world of work. We'll build those AI tools into everything we already do scientifically. Does that help? I'm not sure I told you anything specific other than we're doing things.
Yeah. If you help to think of from, say, two years per se, how do you think that can really benefit on the efficiency side or bringing down the cost? So any color do we have at this moment, or will we have to wait?
Yeah. Certainly, if you find ways of doing things quicker, I think the real issue in innovation, I split it between the innovative bit of the company, finding new drugs, creating new knowledge, and then the rest of it. And the innovation bit, you just want to help you make the right decision more often, make the right decision quicker, have a higher degree of confidence in your scientific decision-making. So it won't necessarily make it cheaper, but it will make it more value-creating because those are the magic moments in drug discovery. It's an intuitive breakthrough that you validate. It's proving that something works. So it's a lot around decision support. And then I think if you come into the rest of the business, like many companies, I don't know, you'll end up with AI bots looking at your finance, your accounts, your press release, your admin, your contracts.
And there you'll just try and industrialize white-collar work and augment it digitally, and that will drive up speed, drive down cost. But I think that's a journey that all businesses, yours including, I would imagine, would go through and those sort of things. And then the last bit for us, actually, scientifically, it bridges from manufacturing into the labs. It's around automation. How do you try and link various machines together so that you don't have that human intervention and therefore you can go a little bit quicker or with certainty? And we do that sort of thing every day. That's now sort of a business-as-usual task to see how we can try and automate various processes within the business.
Okay. Thanks a lot, sir. I have one question for Deepak. So in the initial remark, you said that.
Go ahead.
Yeah. Hello?
Yeah. Please go ahead.
Yeah. We said that we take the hedging for the 12 months. Is it fair understanding? Is rolling 12 months or for a financial year only?
No. We're just talking about the financial year.
Financial year. Okay. So again, I mean, say next hedging will be at a little higher rate than what we already have, correct?
You're talking about hedging or you're talking about the financial?
No, no. Hedging. The question was, do you hedge once every 12 months or do you hedge every day for a rolling forward view of 12 months?
We do a rolling forward view hedging. I thought your question was around financial.
No. Sorry.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Yeah. No, but just let me summarize. There's no confusion that we caused. Hedging forward view 12 months, but rolling. So we update it in real time. We're always looking at our forward book goes 12 months out. Thank you, sir.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Bharat, yep.
Hello.
Thanks.
Hello.
Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one on your phone now. We'll take our next question from the line of Neha Manpuria from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Jonathan, based on your comments that there is a structural need by innovators to look at alternate location to China, is there any investment you think we need to make to increase our commercial footprint in order to get that business with the competitive dynamics changing globally?
I think we've done quite a bit of that. So if you look at two levels, either at a capacity level, and I'll go back to the earlier discussions where you were asking me about when is Unit 3, Stelis coming online. That's just making sure we've got the capacity headroom in place to enable future growth because we were running out of capacity. And on the commercial piece, and I assume the earlier question about what's the latest headcount was digging into this. The 14%, if I'm looking, I've got the right, a 14% increase in the salary bill. Some of that is going into new capabilities, and some of that will be in commercial. Our sales force structurally over recent years, we now have more of the staff living in the West close to clients. And I think that's advantageous for us.
Net net, it's more expensive on a per-person basis, but they spend less time traveling to the U.S. because they live there already, and they're much closer to their customers, and that gives them more selling days in a year, and often, it gives them the opportunity to build closer relationships, so I think we've done some of that already.
Would this addition be more in the recent years? Or I understand you would have been obviously investing this, but has that focus increased, that investment increased, let's say, in the last few quarters with this entire noise around Biosecure, etc., whether it happens or not?
No. No. Again, you're going to take me back to what you said, that entire noise about the Biosecure. I tried really hard at the beginning of the call. It's more structural than the Biosecure. It started over the last 24 months and certainly was in place over the last year. You can see that in our margins and our costs. But it's good. It's the right thing to do. If we want more connect, more face time with customers, we've got to be prepared to invest in it.
Just an extension to that question, some of our peers have argued that it's an advantage to have, let's say, manufacturing or R&D facilities closer to customers. Would that be a direction that you could think at from a capital allocation perspective in the next few years? Or that's something that you think the way we are structured now with our capacities in India makes more sense for Syngene?
Good question. I'm going to give you a strategic answer, but as long as you promise not to misinterpret it as because I would never comment on an M&A. I've never known any exec say, "Oh, yes. Look, let me tell you about the secret thing that we're working on." So don't misinterpret that. I think there are elements where if you can get unique talents that you can't get in one geography of the world that are in another. And that doesn't necessarily mean Europe. It could be, "I can't get this in Japan, so I buy it in Europe. I can't get it in Europe, so I buy it in the US." That would be one strategically sensible reason.
The other one, if there were particular requirements from a customer point of view, and you'll know this if you look across the pharma industry, particularly on innovative drugs, customers historically are much more comfortable doing drug product final formulation in region. So you tend to get more of the drug product made in the U.S. for consumption in the U.S. You get drug product made in Europe for consumption in Europe. Once you go back to API, so drug substance, then into intermediates, RSMs and KSMs, people are less concerned around where it's made as long as it's made to quality and standard and cost. And you can see that. I mean, the whole Indian generics industry and the Indian API industry has been founded and has benefited on that. India tends to do well on KSMs, RSMs, intermediates into some drug substance.
But most of the drug product in the world is made in the regions where it's consumed, so whether it's Japan or in Europe or in the US. So you can get, I think, there are good reasons why sometimes you'd want to be in one region. Equally, don't miss that there are a lot of Western companies at the moment thinking, "I wish I wasn't in the West. I wish I was in Asia." India looks good. Large population, supply of talent, labor cost arbitrage, good knowledge around chemistry and science in general. So I think our industry group, whether it's Syngene or my peers here in India, will also benefit. Sometimes it's good to be in a particular region. Does that help you?
Yeah. Yeah. That's helpful. And one last quick question, if I may. Our Baxter dedicated service contract was supposed to get over in 2024, expiring 2024. So is that renewed? Is it up for renewal? Any update on that?
I just would never comment at an individual client level, but we have a good relationship with Baxter, and I know we've done good work for them over the recent year. But there's an element of proprietariness for each individual client about not commenting on what they do and don't do.
Sure. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Kunal Dhamesha from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.
Hi. Hi, Jonathan. So first question is on the momentum of RFPs, which used to be quite high, at least in the first half of the year, while we were seeing some conversion or we'll see some conversion of those RFP. But how has the RFP momentum behaved in Q3 for us and, let's say, at the start of the year?
Good question. I'm really hesitant. I'll tell you what's going through my mind. When I answered that earlier in the year, I said, "Let me give you a point of color because somebody asked me a question, but please don't expect us to report on this like a statutory reporting item from now on." And you all promised me that you wouldn't do that. So no real change particularly. I'm trying to get away from. It's a leading indicator. It was meant to give you a sense that there are people that are looking to rebalance their supply chains, whether it's from China or whatever, or coming out of the U.S. because of the Inflation Reduction Act, and that we are out there in front of the client. I'd go back to our revenue. Third quarter was up 11%. That's after two quarters of decline, -2%, -2%.
We called it that we would return to growth in the second half of the year. Took a little bit longer than I expected, largely around the stabilization in the biotech market. After that, it's business as usual.
Sure. But would it be fair to say that the RFP momentum that we saw in the first half has continued in Q3, or is there some change there? And a related question is, after, let's say, probable delay in U.S. Biosecure, have you seen any change in the competitive intensity or strategy of our competitors with their focus on maybe?
Yeah. So, but let me say a bit about the second one, although I'm in danger of repeating the conversation we had at the beginning of the call. ATA perspective, I'm sharing my view. Biosecure, if you're using a shorthand for global restructuring of supply chains, patent expires in the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act impact, risk management in a geopolitical world, learnings from COVID, and balancing supply chains so you have resiliency. If you club all of those things together, I think it's more structural than one piece of legislation, the Biosecure Act, crafted, directed at five companies. So I'm not, and I've been consistent over the year, I'm not hung up on the Biosecure Act. I'm just looking at my clients, think about how they manage risk and resilience in their organizations, and they've been doing it for one or two or three years.
So I think that's real, and I think that'll play out over multiple years.
Sure. Sure.
Is that?
Yeah.
You're getting that?
Yes. Yes. Yes. And then one more of a business-related question. Since we are right now at the CRO end of activities, we do manufacture, but still primarily we are levered to the CRO end of activity versus CMO. In your client set, what's the kind of churn that you see over a five-year period? Let's say maybe the number of clients that you have right now, how many were there five years back?
Yeah. Good question, and somebody's going to get me the number. I don't have it to hand. But intuitively, I'll give you a gut feel. Not a lot of churn. It's very simple. And I can get that just through the lens of I meet the same customers multiple times over five years. It's the same people, the same faces. The only thing I would say about your characterization of the company, about 60%-40% split now. 60% of the revenue would be research, 40% would be development and manufacturing, so CDMO, not pure manufacturing. But it's less pronounced towards research than you might have appreciated. It's about 60%-40%.
Sure. Sure. Great. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take that as the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Nandini Agarwal for closing comments. Over to you.
Thank you, everybody, for joining the call. If you have any further questions, you can get in touch with the IR team. Thanks, and have a good day.
Thank you. On behalf of Syngene International Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.