Dr Reddys to spend up to $300 million on R&D

Hyderabad: Dr Reddys Laboratories is planning to spend up to$300 million on research and development (R&D) during this financial year, a senior official of the company has said.

President, CFO and global head (HR) of Dr Reddy's Saumen Chakraborty, during an 'earnings call', said the drug- maker spent $226 million during the last fiscal against $264 million in FY18.

The R&D spend for the quarter (January-March FY19) is Rs 366 crore, that is $53 million and EBIT 9.19 per cent of the sales for the quarter, he said.

The spend is lowered by 16 per cent year-on-year and is flat on a sequential quarter basis. The spend for FY19 is Rs 1,551 crore. That is $226 million as against $264 million in FY18,Chakraborty said.

"We expect the overall R&D for FY20 would be in the range of $250 million to $300 million," he said replying to a query.

The company would continue to focus on R&D for some interesting pipeline of proprietary products.

But, on an overall basis, the R&D spend would be lower in proprietary products when compared to previous year, he further said.

Speaking at the meeting, COO Erez Israeli said, "Now that we made the R&D organisation more efficient andcould handle more products with less cost, we want to continue with this plan of productivity to increase the R&D.