Here are my takeaways from the last conference call.
- Biosimilar business
o Insulin glargine (semglee) market share in US is still below 1%: It’s a formulary driven business and Biocon is trying to get its drug on the formulary list; Ramp up will happen next fiscal onwards
o Muted performance because of operational issues; CEO of biologics unit removed probably because of muted performance of biologics division; hospital patient visitation has gone down because of COVID
o Approval of Bevacizumab delayed because of FDA’s inability to travel to their site
o $1bn revenue target for biologics by FY22 will be revised not because of regulatory (US + EU) market growth but because of lackluster performance in developing markets where strategy needs to be revised; hints that the revenue target maybe delayed by 1 year
o Lot of emerging markets are tender driven which were adversely affected by COVID; Instead of new tenders being floated, a lot of older tender contracts were extended
o Price erosion in biosimilars is close to 10% every quarter in US (according to Nitya Balasubramanian; IMS data): Biocon has already accounted for these in their projections
o 3 of their biosimilars is close to entering clinical trials
o Dilution in biologics unit will go down to ~75% during IPO; will be similar to how Syngene was handled - Generics business
o gCopaxone: Will respond to the CRL in the next few months
o For the 3 statin products, market share is between 20-50% in US
Disclosure: Invested (position size here)