Biocon chairperson and managing director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw on Friday said Biocon Biologics is looking forward to raise $200-300 million through an initial public offering (IPO) over the next 18-24 months.

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Shaw told CNBC-TV18 the company, which reported its Q3 numbers on Thursday, has just received a $75 million injection into Biocon Biologics from a private equity funding.

The Bengaluru-based company's revenue was in-line, up 13.5 percent, but margins took a hit because of higher R&D and remediation expenses on the Malaysia facility.

Shaw said: “The EBITDA margins this quarter are at 27 percent and core EBITDA margins have been retained at 33 percent. If you look at it, this is an improvement over last fiscal."

"So, I would say that at a 27 percent level, this actually factors the R&D spends that we have been incurring in terms of our pipelines. So, yes, at this 27 percent levels, it is an accepted norm for this kind of business because R&D is very much an integral part of the growth story.”

From an accounting point of view, R&D is always considered as an expenditure, but in my view this is an investment for growth and it has to be a very important indicator of the growth prospects of the company, she added.

"On the contribution of Trastuzumab, she said: “What you are seeing this quarter is not really reflecting the true value of Trastuzumab launch as far as Biocon is concerned."

"So, I think what you are going to see is that Q4 onwards will reflect the growth and expansion of Pegfilgrastim as well as the performance of Trastuzumab in the US market. However, this also means that we can now start looking at expanding Pegfilgrastim in other markets which until now we could not do because of capacity constraints.”

Speaking about the target of $1 billion bio-similar revenue by 2020, she said the company has very good optics in terms of how it wants to deliver on $1 billion target.

"I think it is very important for us to understand that while US continues to be the main growth driver, we do have large opportunities in the emerging markets as well as Europe, and we haven’t even factored China into this $1 billion target which could be a huge upside."

She said the company has a very good pipeline of products to demonstrate a $1 billion performance.

First Published:Jan 24, 2020 2:39 PM IST