In a conference called, Habil Khorakiwala, Chairman, Wockhardt, clarified the losses in revenue from the import alert could be up to $100 million in annualised revenue and the company should be able to restore most of that within six to nine months, by shifting production to other plants.
The clarifications helped the stock recover from the early morning panic selling that drove it 18 per cent down, to settle at Rs 1,229.7, down just 6.5 per cent. In the past two days, the stock had tanked about 25 per cent on BSE.
The import alert on the Waluj facility has wiped out 38 per cent of shareholder value, even as its market capitalisation dipped to Rs 13,475 crore (Rs 134.75 billion) from a high of Rs 21,979 crore (Rs 219.79 billion) in March.
However, apart from the $100-million loss, Wockhardt’s new generic drug launches in the US are likely to be hit. Of the 45-46 abbreviated new drug applications, pending at the FDA, half of these were filed from the Waluj facility.
The overall market potential of the ANDAs are not known.
“We have 45-47 pending ANDAs. Obviously, half of them have been filed from this facility, and the other half were filed from other facilities, so that is not affected at all,” said Khorakiwala.
Ranjit Kapadia of Centrum Broking said there might be further delay in getting approval from FDA for other facilities.
He said: “Though the sites are already approved, site transfers need additional approval, which may get delayed. ANDAs might take 24-36 months to get approval. In between, they can rectify the errors and we hope the developments might not affect the approvals, he added.
Khorakiwala made it clear that no drugs would be recalled from
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