RPG LIFE SCIENCES LTD (NSE: RPGL) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated Apr. 29, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Yugal Sikri — Managing Director
Vishal Shah — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Rashmi Sancheti — Analyst
Sudarshan Padmanabhan — Analyst
Sajal Kapoor — Analyst
Aditya Khemka — Analyst
Deepak Malik — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to RPG Life Sciences Q4 FY ’25 Results Conference Call hosted by Dolat Capital Markets Private Limited.
[Operator Instructions] I now hand the conference over to Ms. Rashmi Shetty. Thank you, and over to you, ma’am.
Rashmi Sancheti — Analyst
Thank you, Puja, and good afternoon, everyone. I, Rashmi Shetty, on behalf of Dolat Capital, welcome you to the Q4 FY ’25 Earnings Call of RPG Life Sciences. We thank the RPG Life’s management for giving us this opportunity to host the call. Today, we have with us the senior management of the company, represented by Mr. Yugal Sikri, Managing Director; Mr. Ashok Nair, Designated Managing Director; and Mr. Vishal Shah, CFO.
I would now hand over the call to the company management for the opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Yugal Sikri — Managing Director
Hello. Thank you, Rashmi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us on this call. As always, it’s my pleasure to share with you briefly performance highlights of Q4 FY ’25, performance highlights of full year FY ’25 and a peek into RPG Life Sciences trajectory of the past six years, both in terms of strategy and impact, which also defines the way forward.
The story of RPG Life Sciences, as you know, is the story of robust and solid strategy, execution excellence in terms of priorities, projects and actions flowing from the strategy and the spirit of positivity and passion to make things happen on ground.
Both FY ’25 full year and Q4 delivered a strong all-round performance. For Q4, business growth has been 13%, to be precise, 12.7%, which is 1.6 times of the market growth. Profit growth also has been quite impressive. EBITDA grew by 37%, PBT grew by 41%, and PAT grew by 40%. This also had an impact on margins, which also surged. EBITDA surged from 17.6% to 21.4%, an increase of 380 basis points. PBT similarly surged from 14% to 17.5%, an increase of 350 basis points, and similarly, PAT from 10.4% to 12.9%, an increase of 250 basis points.
Coming to the full year performance. Business growth, again, was impressive 12% ahead of the market growth, 1.5 times, 1.6 times. Profit growth more than doubled. EBITDA, PBT, PAT rather, all of them grew 27% or so. Margins continued its upward trajectory. EBITDA moved up from 23% to 26%, an increase of 310 basis points. PBT moved from 20.2% to 23%, an increase of 280 basis points and PAT 15% to 17.1%, an increase of 210 basis points.
Cash surplus, which we have been accumulating over the years, also recorded a record level. INR163.7 crores is a cumulative surplus which we got from operations, and around INR266 crores if we include the exceptional items, which happened during the last year.
Coming to segmental performance. Domestic Formulation, International Formulation, API are the three business segments, as you know. Domestic Formulation contributed 66% and again grew higher than the market, 10%. International Formulations contributed 20%. It grew 24% versus the last year and API contributed 14% and grew at 6%.
The three businesses continue to be driven by the specific strategy, which I have been discussing every time. The good thing is we have maintained the consistency of the strategy. You will recall it’s a five-pillar strategy for domestic formulations, comprising of product portfolio rejuvenation, strategic asset building, increasing customer coverage, improving sales force productivity, and finally, the cost optimization.
And similarly, international formulation business got driven by the four-pillar strategy, which included building the immunosuppressant portfolio, focus on products with competitive advantage, increasing new products, new customers, new markets, and finally, making our plant approvable by making them state-of-the-art.
Similarly, API business got driven by another four-pillar strategy, almost similar to IF which is building API [Phonetic] portfolio, focus on niche products, increasing new customers, new markets contribution, and having a plant which is upgradable.
Sales force productivity, also on the full-year basis, moved up from 5.8 lakhs to 6.3 lakhs. In fact, in the specialty, we achieved industry-best productivity, which is INR13.5 lakhs. In terms of brands, which I alluded earlier, we continued the process of brand building.
Our Naprosyn continued its journey towards the INR100 crore target. We achieved INR76 crores. Portfolios continue to be built. Immunosuppressant also achieved a turnover of INR79 crores and which contributed close to 8.5%, continued to grow double digit. Another portfolio which we have been building, futuristic portfolio which we have been building is mAbs, which contributed 8.2%, also grew at 15%.
Apart from this, we have also been building new therapies, even augmenting the existing therapies. Rheuma contributed 5.4%, grew at 23%. Cardiovascular contributed 13%, grew at 12%. Oncology contributed 8%, grew at 15%. Nephro contributed 29%, grew at 12% — and similarly, urology basket also grew in its performance. That was brief about the strategic framework, the strategic pillars which we had identified for three businesses and the results which we got out of the strategy.
Now, as I mentioned, the third part of the initial talk, which I thought I’ll cover a peek into the past six years trajectory, both from the strategy and impact perspective, which will also give you the confidence for the way forward. We had a smart strategy well executed, which comprised of four. We worked on creating winning portfolio across businesses, which means building brands, building categories, building therapies. We also focused on certain projects, which came out of the strategy to transform our business in terms of revenue increase, cost decrease, quality improvement and even adding new businesses.
Third part of the strategic framework has been increasing our competitiveness. We adopted technology in our operations, both front end and back end, to make us more competitive. It helped us to increase our share of voice. It helped us to enter into new therapies without adding fixed cost. It also improved our margins by focusing on the re-engineering of decades-old product, and it also included the customer-customized marketing, which we followed in the specialty business. With the result, I’m happy to share with you the financials.
The sales grew from INR330 crores and mind well, I’m talking about the six-year framework, INR331 crores to INR653 crores, which is an increase of 2.2 times. EBITDA, INR36 crores to INR172 crores, an increase of 5 times. PBT from INR14 crores to INR150 crores, an increase of 10 times and PAT of INR10 crores to INR111 crore, an increase of 11 times.
Similarly, margins improved — EBITDA margin moved up from 10.4% to 26.4%, an increase of 1,600 basis points. PBT 4.6% to 23%, increase of 1,840 basis points; PAT 3.3% to 17.1% increase of 1,380 points. Business, which was 86% profit negative, all businesses are solidly profitable, in fact, competing with each other. We were accompanying the debt.
Today, we have a solid good cash surplus about INR266 crores, out of which INR164 crores is coming out of the operations after spending good amount of money in modernizing the two plants and investing in the new product development. This also has impacted financial ratios. ROCE has moved from 9.7% to 32.9%, an improvement of 3 times; ROE, 6.7% to 24.3%, 4 times; EPS, 6.5% to INR66.5 to INR67.5, 11 times; and cash flows which were negative, as I mentioned earlier. Now it’s all after investments made in the future of the company.
We have today modern state-of-the-art plants. We have a modern HO. We have productivity, which is comparable to the industry players. We were, in fact, Dun & Bradstreet took us in one of the top 500 value creators of the country and the investors’ wealth also moved up by 14 times. We are a benchmark company today amongst our competitor group, which is less than INR1,000 crores — up to INR1,000 crore turnover. And with all this, we were also blessed with a good number of awards and accolades, whether it was the best corporate or best brand or best patent or best corporate citizen or best value in action.
Now, what I just mentioned gives us the foundation for future. The big key positive out of whatever you heard is consistency, the consistency of the strategic framework, which we identified, the priorities we identified within the three businesses and the priorities we identify within the business — each of the business segments.
The entire story largely is the story of domestic formulation growth where we have consistently achieved sales higher than the market. And from negative PBT margin today, we have a good comparable or competitive EBITDA margin. Now with the two plants, we have an API plant at Navi Mumbai and formulation plant at Ankleshwar. These two plants being ready or modernized, as I mentioned earlier, with investment of 40 crores.
We have three new R&D setups, formulation R&D, API R&D and analytical R&D in place. And we have a good lineup of new products, both in the International Formulations API business, we expect the three businesses, all of them to act as good growth engines because we are out of three prerequisites I mentioned, we are through with the — we have the modern plant.
In fact, I’m happy to share with you, as I mentioned, API plant is approved by TGA and PMDA, which is both the Australian and Japanese authorities. And the Ankleshwar plant, the formulation plant, is approvable from EU, and we will have the entire plant approved by EU shortly, which means from the infrastructure plant perspective as well as the new product lineup perspective, we are all set to make all the three growth engines run.
And I hope this narrative would give you the confidence that we are on a solid footing to embrace the future, albeit with all the three segments, bracing, competing with each other to grow. I thought this much background would give you some kind of understanding or recap of what RPG Life Science has been doing and how RPG Life Science is set for future.
One additional clarification I wanted to put before I take up the questions is, you would have seen certain exceptional items in the results. One, if you recall, I had mentioned even last time, is we did a very smart move in the API plant in our bid to have efficiency enhancement we did the API plant redesigned so as to release close to about 15,000 square meter area out of 35,000 square meter area and monetize that piece of land. And you will be happy to know that we also achieved modernization of the plant, so that we got the TGA approval and PMDA approval.
We also increased the capacity by 27%, and we also could part monetize the land and that is added to our surplus. As I mentioned, we had a surplus from operations coming from INR164 crores, and added this monetization, which we got monetary value which we got from the plant for the land sale, land reassignment, we have now cumulative cash surplus of around INR266 crores.
So, the exceptional item includes the plant land sale. And there was also an unfortunate incidence of fire. And so, the exceptional item includes that fire impact also. Let me assure you that we have set up three work streams to make sure that we get back the plant as good as the new plant, which we had earlier, by September end or October.
And the teams are working hard to see that we are ready. Second is also that we will have no losses. In fact, we will have adequate insurance to cover and get back the money which we’ll spend on plant restoration. I thought this was another exceptional item, which I should explain before I take up the question.
Thank you so much, and I look forward to questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Sudarshan Padmanabhan from ASK Wealth Advisors. Please go-ahead sir.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Thank you for taking my question. Sir, taking your point on building the domestic business across various pillars, can you give some color with respect to — I believe we have growing, like you mentioned about cardiovascular doing well. What would be the proportion of chronic at this point of time? And what is the speed at which chronic is growing in the proportion of overall business?
Yugal Sikri
Thanks, Sudarshan, for the question. I think it is a relevant question. You would have seen, I mentioned that cardiovascular business is growing at a double-digit digit. And we have good launches in that business. We have Nephro and Onco, those businesses are also chronic in nature. If I even exclude them, today, the chronic, which was contributing 14% to our sales earlier, today, it’s contributing 20% to our sales. So in fact, it has moved up by 6 percentage points in the last few years. Does that answer your question?
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Sure. Yes, sir. And this, I mean, would that mean that the institution part of the business would actually become a little higher proportionately because I would assume that mAbs, and a portion of oncology would be more towards institution.
Yugal Sikri
No, no, no. The CVM, which I talked about, does not include the institution and the mAbs. This is the pure chronic. I actually mentioned that it is excluding Nephro and Onco. It does not include Nephro and Onco.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Sure. And I mean, just on an independent basis, how big would our institution sales be to that size?
Yugal Sikri
No, it’s not that significant, frankly speaking. Institutional business is not that very significant. See, we have been focusing on profitable branded business. And the story of the domestic formulation is largely the story of the branded business success. The institution it doesn’t contribute much.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Sure, sure. And just on the — if I look at the balance sheet, there has been a kind of a reduction in the inventory and slight increase in the receivables, while the number of days largely is more or less stable. I mean, that would primarily be because of the mix changing, right? I mean, there shouldn’t be much of reading into that.
Yugal Sikri
Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, it’s the change of the product mix. Now, we have a strong control on inventories. Inventory levels have actually come down. The receivables, which you see a little increase is, our domestic business continues to be under control, absolutely no problem. In case we are expanding the international formulation business, you would have seen international formulation business has grown by 24%. And generally, the receivables in the institutional business are a little higher, which is the norm of that business.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Sure, sir. And on the cost, I mean, glad to hear that chronic is doing well and Naprosyn is more or less closer to INR75 crores or way in the direction towards INR100 crores. Now, with all this happening, can you talk a little bit more about MR productivity and link it with the cost? See, the context of that is we’ve seen a huge, margin expansion in the last three, four years.
And I would assume that with the chronic doing well and as we hit mAb INR100 crores and Naprosyn INR100 crores and probably chronic doing much better, the yield per employee as far as MR productivity will continue to drive. So, I mean, if you can give some color about aspirationally, where do we see our margins even from here?
Yugal Sikri
Interesting question. I get asked always, and my answer is pretty standard there. Let me address first the point which you mentioned about the sales force productivity. I’m happy to share with you that year-on-year for the last six years, we have improvement in productivity. Now as I mentioned, I made that mention in my opening remarks, it has moved up from 3.4 lakh to 6.3 lakh. Last year productivity we recorded was 6.3 lakh. And in fact, the specialty business productivity is really remarkable. We have touched now 13 lakh per rep productivity in the last year. So that’s about the productivity.
Regarding the margin, yes, as we improve our chronic business, it should add to the margin. But you also know that there are cost pressures also. And there are also the sort of the DPCO hanging on your head, which you can’t predict. So those are somehow get balanced. However, the last six years, you would have seen there has been an increase in the gross margin year after year after year. We have — if I tell you broadly, whatever margin improvement we have got, almost 66% or two-thirds of that comes from opex measures and one-third of that comes from the COGS measures.
In COGS measures, largely, it comes from the manufacturing overhead reduction. We have taken up special projects by virtue of the manufacturing overhead reduction has been happening, which include best size optimization, expiry controls, the turnaround time at the assembly line, to be reduced. All of that has contributed to improvement in the manufacturing overhead part.
And somehow we have been able to manage the raw material, the material cost component. And despite the inflation, I think that component also remains under control. So, I hope on the margin front and on the sales force productivity front, I have been able to give some color.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Sure. So, one should probably not expect the same amount of benefit on a lower base, but probably the benefit would continue, if I can summarize that.
Yugal Sikri
Yeah. All the measures, I keep saying that the cost reduction measures, which we have taken are all structural in nature. What do I mean by structural in nature? We have done product re-engineering, which means we have reformulated our decades old product. Cost of goods have gone down. We will not go back to the old formula because we have developed a new formula.
We have simplified the manufacturing processes. We have done the best size optimization. We are not going to go back. So, those benefits will continue. We have done alternate vendor development that has helped us to save costs. We are not going to go back to the old vendor. And so all these measures will continue to be there. That’s why I call them structural and the benefit coming out of that will continue to be accrued.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Perfect. One final question before I join the queue is on the tax rate. I mean, going forward, one should expect, say, in the next two or three years? Would it be similar or how would that change?
Yugal Sikri
I have my CFO, Vishal. He would answer this question.
Vishal Shah
Yes. So going ahead, we should be in the range of between 25% to 26%.
Sudarshan Padmanabhan
Sir, thanks a lot. I will join back the queue.
Yugal Sikri
Thank you, Sudarshan, for your questions.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sajal Kapoor from Antifragile Thinking. Please go ahead.
Sajal Kapoor
Yeah. Thank you for taking the questions. And Yugal sir, grateful for all the wonderful transformation and execution since you took charge. And I wish you all the happiness and well-being going ahead. My question is, what would you like Mr. Nair to change? And what would you not like him to change from here on?
Yugal Sikri
Mr. Kapoor, you are always very, very generous in your comments. So I thank you so much for the initial part. And the second part, I think, is a bit tough one. You asked me, what will you like Mr. Nair to continue and what will you like Mr. Nair to change? What I like Mr. Nair to continue, I think, Mr. Nair is an accomplished professional by himself, and I like him to bring his version of business enhancement, his version of COGS improvement, his version of the — adding to the business into RPG Life Sciences.
And what I would like him to do is to continue with the strategic framework, which we have created. I talked of five pillars, four pillars and four pillars. And the six-pillar transformation agenda, which we have put in place, I would like him to continue. And good thing is that, I don’t know whether you’re aware that we are working together for the last three months, and there is a complete understanding between both of us, and he has complete agreement with what we are doing.
He’s convinced — and I’m sure he’ll continue to do all the good work which is happening in the organization and add his flavor, his color of experience into the organization. And I’m sure with all the three business segments firing now together, we have a great time ahead.
Sajal Kapoor
Sure, sure. No, definitely look forward to it. I’ve got a couple of more questions. One is on the upgraded API unit. There was zero liquid discharge ZLD that was supposed to be installed. Is that in place now?
Yugal Sikri
Yes. I think the new plant, Mr. Kapoor, is absolutely the — from the EHS perspective, quite compliant. We had an ETP, which was underground. We have brought it up ground now, which is functioning. All the compliance measures are very well taken care of. And the ZLD part, which you talked about, also has been put in place. So it’s become a state-of-art plant now.
Sajal Kapoor
That’s helpful. And finally, one kind of a cash flow/balance sheet related question. So it’s to do with the debtor days. If I look at our trajectory over the last two, three years, so March 2022 onwards, we were around about 30 days — debtor days that is around about. And this time around, that trend of high 20s and low 30s has now changed to 48 days, give or take. So, is this because of the exports and the way the working capital and the receivable cycle will work? I mean, what I’m trying to understand is, are we going back to our older 50, 60 days kind of a debtor days? Or this is more like an aberration and it will correct from next year?
Yugal Sikri
Mr. Kapoor, I touched upon that point when Sudarshan asked me the question. See, the business mix is changing now. As far as 30 days is concerned, it is 30 days earlier, it is even now 30 days for domestic formulation business, that we continue to be maintaining the same account receivables in our domestic formulation business. It’s just that the international formulation business and the API business, which is largely international, their component is increasing. If that component increases, we should expect the account receivable numbers to move up.
And because that’s a norm in the markets we operate, and we take conscious decisions there as well. Whatever terms are fixed up with our customers are complied with. And to answer your question straight, yes, you should expect some increase in the account receivables going forward. What is critical now is that we should have higher business now in those segments.
Sajal Kapoor
Yes. No. So even 50 days is good enough, Yugal-ji, because looking at some of our comparable competitors, we would still be well below the industry benchmark, even assuming that the 50 days is the new normal. So, I just wanted to get some color to your perspective on that one. But yes, that’s all very helpful.
Yugal Sikri
Yeah, I think you said it. This would be the range going forward.
Sajal Kapoor
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s all I have for now. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Chheda from InCred Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Aditya Khemka
Good evening sir. Can you please break the domestic formulation growth for FY ’25 into volume, price and new launches and also comment on the new product contribution?
Yugal Sikri
Okay. So, first, the breakup of domestic formulation in the volume, price and new introduction. Volume, the price is around — we have around 2.3%. New introduction is 1.1% and rest is volume, which is around 7.3% or so. That’s the breakup of three. You’ll be happy to know that our growth continues to be driven by volumes, which I think is a good indication of demand generation, which is, I think, a solid part of the DF business.
Now the new introductions is 1.1%. That’s largely because all the new launches, majority of the new launches rather happened in quarter four. So you will see the impact coming forward in the next year. And I missed — any other point which, Aditya?
Aditya Khemka
Regarding new product contribution. And also for the industry, we have noticed that price contribution is the driver for the domestic business. How have we able to deliver higher volume growth? If you can comment on that?
Yugal Sikri
I think I talked about the five-pillar strategy in domestic formulation that is largely contributing towards the volumes, which — just to refresh, the first component is product portfolio rejuvenation. We have good launches. Currently, the new products contribute about 31% of the sales cumulatively. And we have the focus on medical marketing, demand generation, and we have focused on sales force productivity by a variety of measures. All of that put together have helped us to increase more volumes in the domestic formulation business. And that’s how the business is growing.
Aditya Khemka
Got it sir. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Now the next question is from the line of Deepak from Carnelian Capital. Please go ahead.
Deepak Malik
Yes. Thank you, sir for taking my question. So first question is on the domestic market, sir. So domestic market growth has — if I see your last year and if I see this year, growth has come down. And what is the reason for that?
Yugal Sikri
Okay. So, yeah, growth compared to the last year is a little less. Good thing I mentioned to you is we continue our growth trajectory on volumes. I just mentioned to you that we have a 7.3% volume growth. We are a little down on the new introductions and the price front. You would remember that last year, the DPCO products gave — or the government granted 0.0055% only less than — almost negligible price increase and 35% of our business is DPCO. So that, to some extent, impacted the price growth. If you see earlier, our price growth used to be in the range of 4%, 4.5%, 4% to 5%, in fact, 4% to 5%. And since last year, this component was very low. It has impacted.
Second, some part of our business had a pricing pressure. We have done much better than others, but some part of the business had a pricing pressure. But largely, it came from the DPCO, which is a large component and the price growth was hardly anything there. That is what has contributed.
And third, I mentioned new introduction, which was in the quarter four, and we have a good line of product identified. In fact, I’ve been mentioning that we have a three-year product ready. Next year launches are planned. And the quarter four launches, which happened this quarter would also add to the new introduction growth next year. So that I think we should continue the trajectory which we have set up for domestic formulations earlier.
So the confidence you should get is the volume growth should not go down. Bulk of the business is volume growth. That should not go down, and we continue to register healthy volume growth. And you would recall that industry volume growth is just 1.1% last year, 1.1% last year, and our volume growth is 7.3%, which is almost 7 times.
Deepak Malik
Yeah. Sure. So, thank you sir for the answer. I think this is a very commendable thing, the 7% volume growth against 1%, 2% volume growth for the industry. So sir, next year, what is the kind of price growth will be there in the DPCO, because this year, inflation was high. So, there will be 3%, 4% kind of price increase next year?
Yugal Sikri
I wish I was the government to tell you what would be the price increase. It all depends upon the DPCO. But we are expecting not this bad price increase. Industry is not expecting this bad price increase. We expect it could be low single digit, very low single digit, but we expect some kind of price increase the government should give.
Deepak Malik
Because this is linked to WPI, and I think WPI was positive this year.
Yugal Sikri
That’s why I’m saying that we should expect some kind of improvement much better than, single — my guess, as I mentioned, is single digit, low single digit.
Deepak Malik
Okay. And sir, suppose if we assume a single-digit price increase and new product introductions, which we have done in the fourth quarter for which the benefit will come for next year and volume growth, which we are doing around 7%, 8%. So if I assume these numbers and take this assumption, so next year, is it safe to assume that around mid-teens kind of volume, mid-teens kind of value growth will be there in the domestic market?
Yugal Sikri
Yeah, been consistently mentioning you must look at the trajectory and then accordingly make the projection. Generally, I don’t give forward-looking statements. I just don’t give the forecast. But I keep mentioning you have the trajectory in front of you in six years, and you can make your own assumptions and estimates. But…
Deepak Malik
Yeah. So, this year means FY ’25 was a little not a normal year because there was a DPCO price increase was less. But if I normalize that, then the trajectory which was there in the company for the business will continue going forward in the next two, three years as well.
Yugal Sikri
Deepak, I think I answered that question already. You can make your own assumptions and estimates. I simply don’t issue the forward-looking statements.
Deepak Malik
Yes. And second, sir, in API business also, we have done the investments and renewed the plants. So where are we in terms of filings, approvals and when we will see accelerated growth in the API piece as well?
Yugal Sikri
Yeah. I think that’s an important point which I covered in my initial talk. We have the plant in place. We had a little bit of unfortunate incident of fire, which is getting sorted out by September. And we have close to about 12 new molecules being developed by the R&D now. They should see the light of the day by end FY ’26 and FY ’27. And that’s where we see the API business picking up the trajectory.
Deepak Malik
Okay. And last question from my side, sir. So what is the outlook on the capex and investment in the business over the next two years?
Yugal Sikri
Yeah. The capex, I think I mentioned earlier that we have spent INR140 crores in upgrading or modernizing our two plants. So that part has been done. The next capex will happen this is the new product opportunities we get. Many times, we be in the generic business, we get the specific kind of product. Just for example, I’m giving it could be sublingual tablet, it could be a bilayer tablet. It could be enteric-coated tablet. Now for those kinds of new product versions, whatever investments are needed in machineries or in the quality systems, we will do that.
And those kinds of investments will continue. And I’m pleased to share with you almost around 75% to 80% of our capex has been going in growth, and which is what will continue. So I can’t give you any precise answer because it depends upon the product opportunity we get. I’ll give you an example. We had a product which needed the low RH, low temperature from one of the customers in Australia.
And in a period of around eight months, we set up the additional facility for Ankleshwar plant, and I’m happy to share with you that we have a great business now in Australia for our international formulation business. So with these kinds of opportunities coming, we will definitely invest in capex, but it will be difficult for me to give you exact number of how much would be the capex.
Deepak Malik
Okay. Thank you very much sir. All the very best.
Yugal Sikri
Thank you. Thank you, Deepak.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Rashmi Shetty from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Rashmi Sancheti
Yeah thanks for the opportunity. So sir, on International Formulation business, you gave the reasons and the four-pillar strategy has actually worked out and you added new markets, you launched new products, and that is driving the growth. Now on this space, whether the growth will normalize or there is more to come and the growth will continue at the same pace?
Yugal Sikri
Yeah. The International Formulation business, I talked about the four pillars. It had the first component of immunosuppressant; second, the component of niche product; third component was new customers and new markets; and fourth component was the approvable state-of-the-art plant. Now we are done with the state-of-art plant. We are developing new products in case of the we are developing newer variants of, say, example, in case of mycophenolate, we are developing 180 milligram and 360 milligram version. So — and we are also developing, as I mentioned earlier, around 12 to 13 new formulations, new formulation.
I mentioned earlier that those will see the light of the day by the end of fourth quarter FY ’26 or FY ’27 onwards. So it will definitely have its impact on the international formulation business. You see the accelerated growth of international formulation business, which is 24% now, close on the heels of around 20% last year, is also driven by the two new products which we had Sodium Valproate and Sertraline.
Two new products which has been added earlier, we also add Nicorandil, also a strong contributor to our international formulation business. So as we add new products, we add new markets, the contribution of the international formulation or the growth of the international formulation business should continue to be healthy the way we have seen this year.
Rashmi Sancheti
Understood, sir. And in domestic business, you said that you had seen some pricing pressure in some of the products. Was the pricing pressure in your immunosuppressant portfolio in Azorean or in Mofetil on an annualized basis?
Yugal Sikri
No. Actually, Rashmi, all of these immunosuppressant, which is Azathioprine, Tacrolimus, Mycophenolate and Cyclosporine are mature molecules. In the domestic business, we don’t see any pricing pressure because these are mature products. When I was talking about the pricing pressure, one was, of course, the DPCO. And the second one was there are some quality products where some kind of pricing pressure built up because the nature of the product portfolio is such that some kind of pricing pressure builds up.
But there also, we focus on the customers which are able to take better, higher-priced products from us and for which we are doing the customer customized marketing. We are building relationship with them. And I think with quality on our side, the relationship on our side and the marketing C3MP, which we normally call it on our side, we get the support despite the price being a bit higher compared to the competitors.
Rashmi Sancheti
Okay. And on the API side, in third quarter and fourth quarter, we have actually seen a decline. And in first two quarters, there was a good growth. So in first half, we have actually shown a growth of 13%. And we do have good pipeline in the API segment. So what has led to really a slowdown in the second half in the API segment? And how should we see forward?
Yugal Sikri
Yeah, Rashmi, I did mention about the exceptional part. There was an unfortunate incident of fire in our API plant. Okay, there were three blocks, two blocks are functioning very well. Everything is functioning very well. There was no loss in life, but one block got impacted. So what you see here in this year is the one quarter impact on that API business because it happened which I think going forward from H2 onwards should normalize.
Rashmi Sancheti
From H1, it should normalize, you’re saying?
Yugal Sikri
No, H2. H2 onwards. See, what we have done quite a lot of risk mitigation and business continuity strategy. We have reached out to third party. We have CDMOs, part we are manufacturing ourselves, the end stage we are manufacturing ourselves and the earlier stage is being manufactured outside. So, that has helped us to contain the losses. But to some extent, we will have that which has impacted quarter four, which will also impact the first half H1 this year.
Rashmi Sancheti
Understood. And sir, would you like to quantify the loss to sales in quarter four?
Yugal Sikri
Quarter four loss sales in the vicinity of around INR8 crores to INR10 crores.
Rashmi Sancheti
INR8 crores to INR10 crores. Understood, sir. And one last question on the operational side. How much is the R&D for the year?
Yugal Sikri
Okay. So, good news on R&D is that, as I mentioned, we have around 13, 14 products international formulation side, on the API side are under development. In terms of the R&D spend as a percentage of sales, we should be close to about 2% or so, should be in the range of 2% to 3% to my mind. How we have been able to develop these products at the cost which I’m talking about is we have a very unique R&D process in place, which helps us to reduce the cost and avoid the wasteful expenditure in R&D, which happens in most of the R&D labs.
So it’s efficiency even within R&D, we are working on, which is how we have been able to contain the R&D costs as well. Whatever R&D cost, which we do is largely on the bioequivalence studies are in-house. The development costs are not as high as the other companies actually spend. So I hope that answers your question.
Rashmi Sancheti
And this will more or less remain in the same range only, right?
Yugal Sikri
It might move up a couple of percentage points as we develop more molecules. Currently, we are developing, I said, around 20 molecules, 20 products in both the businesses put together. As we expand from 20 to 40, it might move up a couple of percentage more.
Rashmi Sancheti
Understood. Got it. That’s it from my side.
Yugal Sikri
Thank you, Rashmi.
Operator
Thank you. This was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to management for the closing remarks.
Yugal Sikri
Yes. So, I think what I mentioned in the beginning of the talk was summarizing the quarter and the full year and the six years and the strategic framework, which has been put in place and how the growth trajectory of RPG Life Sciences going forward is being taken care of. And I think those measures of focusing now on all the three businesses, domestic formulations, International Formulations and API should drive our business going forward.
We have solid strategy in place. We have demonstrated execution excellence and we have also demonstrated a very good team, which is a mix of the experience and the fresh blood. I think all of these three should drive the RPG Life Sciences business going forward. I thank everyone for having the patience and attending the call. I’m sure you are leaving this call with more information to your credit and more confidence in RPG Life Sciences. Thank you so much.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]