Laurus Labs Ltd shares extended fall for the fourth consecutive trading session on Tuesday after the company reported a weak set of earnings for the second quarter ended September 2022 (Q2 FY23).

Share Market Live

NSE

The Laurus Labs stock dropped as much as 6.1 percent in intra-day trade on Tuesday to hit a low of Rs 450.30 apiece on BSE. Before that, the stock had dropped 0.5 percent on Thursday, 7.3 percent on Friday and 1.6 percent in Monday’s Diwali Muhurat trading session. Cumulatively, the Laurus Labs stock has registered a decline of nearly 15 percent taking Tuesday’s low into account.

At 11:35 am, the shares were trading at Rs 451.40 apiece, down 5.9 percent from their previous close, while the Sensex was down 175 points, or 0.29 percent, to 59,655.93. Interestingly, the Laurus Labs stock has fallen over 15.6 percent in the last one year compared with a 2.2 percent decline in the Sensex during the same period.

Laurus Labs on Friday said that profit after tax (PAT) in the September quarter stood at Rs 233 crore, an increase of 15 percent compared with a year ago. The company’s revenue increased 31 percent to Rs 1,576 crore during the quarter.

The concerning point was the company saying that it will manage to achieve only 90 percent of its revenue guidance for the current financial year. Laurus Labs had earlier guided to achieve $1 billion in revenue by financial year 2023.

Although it said that it will achieve only 90 percent of its $1 billion guidance for the current financial year, it is counting this figure with the USD-INR rate at 72. From those levels, the currency has already depreciated 15 percent.

Satyanarayana Chava, Founder & CEO of Laurus Labs told CNBC-TV18 that the company expect to see a recovery in the anti-retroviral formulation business in the first half of the ongoing fiscal year.

“In anti-retroviral (ARV) segment we saw good recovery in API but in the ARV formulation segment there was a sharp decline in prices. We also did not recalibrate our pricing for the in-country tenders, which led to significantly lower sales of ARV formulations in Q2. However we expect a recovery in the segment in H2FY23. So we have given this guidance to the market that we will be falling short of revenue target by 10 percent," Chava said.

After the results announcement, brokerage house Motilal Oswal said it was bullish on the Laurus Labs stock and recommended a ‘buy’ with a target price of Rs 610.

(Edited by : Anshul)

First Published:Oct 25, 2022 12:34 PM IST