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Listed pharma firms shine in first half

Gazi Towhid Ahmed
Listed pharmaceutical companies saw healthy profits during the first half this year thanks to a growing demand in the local and international markets.
Of the 11 listed firms, six registered a rise in their profits ranging from 4.36 percent to 35.49 percent in January-June compared to the same period last year, while one witnessed a decline in its profits. Others are yet to release their reports.
Square Pharmaceuticals reported the highest profit at Tk 133.18 crore with earnings per share ofTk 3.59 in January-June as against Tk 98.29 crore andTk 2.65 in the same period of the previous year.
After Square, GlaxoSmithKline's profit rose to Tk 34.65 crore with an EPS of Tk 28.76 in the period compared to Tk 22.36 crore and Tk 18.56 respectively in the same period last year.
The pharma industry recorded a double-digit growth in the last one decade, said Maruf Matin, managing director of Alliance Capital, an asset management company.
The sector registered 12.1 percent growth in sales in 2012, 23.6 percent in 2011 and 23.8 percent in 2010. Sales dropped last year due to escalating raw material prices.
Pharma is the most developed manufacturing industry in Bangladesh and the third largest sector in terms of its contribution to the state coffers, Matin said.
The pharma companies are also offering healthy dividends to their shareholders, he said.
However, some big players, whose sales growth was 40 percent in 2012, are notinterested to come to the stockmarket, Matin said, adding that the market badly needs good quality shares.
The industry now meets 98 percent of the local demand and exports to more than 88 countries, he said.
Foreign companies are also showing interest to invest in the sector, he said. "Pharma is an excellentsectorforinvestment.”
Under an agreement - Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -the World Heath Organisation in 2001 allowed developing and poor nations to produce generic drugs without any licences or paying the patent holders till 2016, he said.
The sector has a huge potential in the upcoming years as the WHO extended the tenure of the benefit until 2021, he added.
Retail sales are expected to reach Tk 12,000 crore this year, riding on people's health consciousness and booming hospitals and clinics, according to the Pharma World, a pharma magazine in Bangladesh.
The market size was Tk 8,404 crore in 2011, according to Intercontinental Marketing Services, the global intelligence agency for the industry.
The listed pharma companies are doing much better than the firms in other sectors, said Mohammed Rahmat Pasha, managing director of BRAC EPL, a stockbrokerage.
Increased life expectancy, medical coverage and private healthcare services, and people's growing income are pushing up the growth of the industry, Pasha said.
Healthcare expenditure is estimated to reach 5 percent of GDP in the next five years and the domestic market is poised to grow by more than 15 percent a year during the period, he said, citing a study by BRAC EPL.
Some big pharma companies are yet to get listed on the stockmarket as the regulator does not allow them to give premium in their initial public offerings, he said.
The regulator should give them the opportunity for the sake of the market, he added.
gazitowhid@gmail.com