Solara Active Pharma Sciences shares plunged on Thursday, a day after the drug maker reported its financial results for the October-December period. The stock of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturer ended 20 percent lower at Rs 775.1 apiece on BSE.

Share Market Live

NSE

On Wednesday, post-market hours, the company reported a net loss of Rs 139.8 crore for the quarter ended December, as against a net profit of Rs 65.8 crore for the corresponding period a year ago.

Solara Active said a change in its commercial business strategy impacted its revenues and profitability on a one-time basis.

Its quarterly revenue dropped 87.8 percent on a year-on-year basis to Rs 100.3 crore, according to a regulatory filing.

Rajender Rao Juvvadi, MD and CEO, Solara Active Pharma, said the October-December period was a challenging quarter for the company as it took a major decision to reset its commercial business strategy.

"Solara has pursued a change in the commercial model from distribution-led to direct sales to customers in the less regulated markets. While this decision had a one-time impact on the revenues and profitability, we are confident that the new model will deliver a significant long-term value for the Company and enables a higher focus on customer centricity," he said.

He also said that besides this one-off impact, Solara’s quarterly performance was muted mainly due to subdued regulated market demand and higher costs, on account of a volatile material pricing environment and increased logistics cost. "That said, we believe that the situation has bottomed out on the demand side, and the business would start seeing normalcy from the Q4FY22," he added.

The company posted Rs 96.9 crore in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and ammortisation (EBITDA) loss for the third quarter of the current financial year. Its EBITDA for the year-ago period had stood at Rs 105.2 crore.

Catch latest stock market updates with CNBCTV18.com's blog

(Edited by : Sandeep Singh)

First Published:Feb 10, 2022 1:04 PM IST