The pharma sector continued the growth momentum with sales growing at 9.8 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) in October compared to 4.7 per cent in September. At least six leading companies such as Glenmark, Cipla, Ipca, Zydus Cadila, Alkem and Torrent recorded double-digit growth of 23.9 per cent, 22.9 per cent, 16.8 per cent, 15.7 per cent, 12.9 per cent and 10.8 per cent, respectively every year.
“The strong growth for Glenmark, Cipla and Cadila can be attributed to COVID-19-related products such as favipiravir, remdesivir and tocilizumab,” said a Nomura report. Ex favipiravir, remdesivir and toclizumab Cipla, Glenmark and Cadila grew 12.5 per cent, 7.8 per cent and 7.8 per cent, respectively. Despite having an anti-infectives dominated portfolio, Alkem outperformed the market, driven by robust growth in gastro and vitamin therapies. A few — Sun Pharma, Lupin, Dr Reddy’s and GSK — underperformed the broader market.
The jump in the pharma market was supported by price and new product growth of 4.9 per cent and 2.3 per cent, y-o-y, respectively. The average price growth over the past seven months has been 4.6 per cent, whereas the average new product growth over the same period has been 2.1 per cent. The volume decline moderated to 3.2 per cent, during the month, compared to 4.0 per cent and 9.2 per cent decline in September 2020 and August 2020, respectively. Over the past seven months, volumes have declined by 8.3 per cent, on an average, the report added.
The acute segment recorded a y-o-y growth of 8.2 per cent in October, showing improvement from 2.4 per cent in the previous month. On the other hand, the chronic segment grew by 13.1 per cent and 9.5 per cent, respectively, over the last two months.
“The top 20 companies have gained market share of around 215 basis points (bps) over the past two years but the pandemic has further fast-tracked the consolidation process, with these top 20 expanding their market share by around 100 bps over the past nine months — their market share in October 2020 stood at 67.7 per cent, versus 67.3 per cent in September 2020,” the Nomura report said.
