Sai Life Sciences Limited (NSE: SAILIFE) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 08, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Krishnam Kanumuri — Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Karan Gupta — Analyst
Divya Agnihotri — Analyst
Nikhil Mathur — Analyst
Anandha Padmanabhan — Analyst
Vivek Agrawal — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Sa. Sat. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the SCI Life Sciences Limited Q1FY26 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Divakar. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Unidentified Speaker
Thank you so much. Good evening. Good morning to all the participants in this call. Before we proceed on the call, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward looking statements that may know known unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. It must be viewed in conjunction with our business risks that could cause future result, performance or achievement to differ significantly from what is expressed implied by such forward looking statements. Please note that we have mailed the results in the same available in the company’s website. In case you want to see the same, you can write to us and we’ll be happy to send the same over to you to take us through the results and answer your questions.
Today we have the top management of SIRE Licenses selected represented by Krishna Kanamuri, Managing Director and Chief executive officer and Mr. Shiva Chipsore, director and Chief Financial Officer. We’ll start the call with a brief overview of the quarter run past and then conduct the Q and A session. With that said, I’ll now hand over the call to Krishna. Over to you Krishna.
Krishnam Kanumuri — Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director
Thanks Vivar. Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We’re pleased to share that FY26 has commenced on a robust footing. The Q1 performance reflecting strong momentum across discovery, development, commercial manufacturing. This growth is a result of deep partnerships we have nurtured with global pharma innovators underpinned by scientific rigor, operational excellence and our ability to scale this speed.
Revenue for the quarter grew 77% year over year supported by broad based growth across businesses, particularly CDMO which grew by 113% year over year. This growth has translated to strong profitability with ebitda increasing by 3% year over year. With margins expanding significantly beyond the numbers, we continue to make significant strategic progress. We expanded our integrated discovery platform with the launch of State of our biology facility at Hyderabad campus. This will enhance our ability to support complex targets and deepen our role in large integrated programs. Looking ahead, we are commencing work to add two new production blocks by the second half of next year to further scale up operations and support future growth.
And we have also built a built just started building a new process R and D block which will nearly double our process RD capabilities, add clinical scale peptide capabilities as well early phase formulation capabilities. We’re also on track to add about 30 extra space coming by end of this fiscal year. So we are adding capacities across and this will really enable us to support both clinical and commercial supply programs aligned with increasing scale and complexity of molecules we work on Talent continues to be a core of our delivery engine. We have onboarded over 250 scientists and technical professionals during the quarter, expanding our team’s depth and bringing in capabilities aligned with new modalities and nextgen science.
I am pleased to share that during the quarter we successfully completed 11 client and regulatory audits across our sites, further reinforcing a consistent track record of quality and compliance. Our Digital plus Mindset integrated Quality systems continue to be key differentiator for us. As part of our Going Green initiative, we’ve expanded our Go Green plus initiative with dhl furthering our commitment to greener logistics. As we look ahead, we are closely monitoring the changes in the macro environment and remain confident of the long term project of our business. We remain sharply focused on scaling responsibly, investing ahead of demand and strengthening our scientific depth the evolving needs of our global clients.
With continued expansion of infrastructure, deepening our talent and increasing traction across modalities like peptides and adc, we’re well positioned for a sustained, profitable growth. With that, I would now hand this over to vivachiptur, our CFO who will provide an update on our financial performance.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor — Chief Financial Officer
Thanks Krishna and good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Q1 FY20 earnings call. We are excited to share our financial performance for the quarter which underscores the strength of our business fundamentals and the progress on our long term priorities. We are pleased to report that our revenue for Q1FY26 reached 496 crores, a remarkable 77% increase compared to 218 crores in Q1FY25. This growth was primarily driven by strong performance in our CDMO business which recorded 314 crores and impressive 113% growth from 148 crores in the same quarter last year. Additionally also showed solid growth with revenues of 182 crores.
This represents a 38% increase from the 132 crores in Q1 FY25. This overall revenue growth was fueled by continued traction in our fully integrated delivery model and deeper engagement with our global clients. The growth in the CDMO business is attributable to increased revenues in certain commercial products and growth in the early phase R and D revenues with pharma companies. The CRO business continues to grow on the back of integrated discovery programs. While we expect a strong start to the fiscal year to provide the momentum for the rest of the year, we would like to reiterate that the CDMO business by nature tends to be lumpy and is better reviewed on a longer term basis.
Our EBITDA for the quarter stood at 125crores, an increase of 305% year on year compared to 31crores in Q1.25. This impressive growth in EBITDA has resulted in an expanded margin of 25% reflecting a year on year improvement of 14% in EBITDA. This enhancement in margins is attributed to operating leverage, scale efficiencies and improved productivity across our site. As we have stated in our previous calls, we believe that this business can be scaled to achieve 20×30% margin as our revenues grow and our results for this quarter show a positive movement towards that goal. We are also pleased to report a positive turnaround on our profitability.
Our PAT for Q1.26 stood at 60 crores, a significant improvement as compared to a loss of 13 crores in Q1.25. During the quarter we invested 134 crores towards capital expenditures. This is in line with our planned investment to expand capacity and enhance our capability. We believe these investments are critical as we focus on supporting next generation and emerging modality including peptides, ADCs and all of those. Our commitment to investing in new R and D infrastructure and process development capabilities positions us well to meet the evolving needs of our clients as we look ahead. We remain optimistic about our growth trajectory with a strong foundation in place.
We are focused on scaling, execution, strengthening client partnerships and investing in technology and talent to deliver sustained performance and long term value. We believe that our strategic investments in operational efficiency will continue to drive our success in the coming quarters. In conclusion, I would like to thank our dedicated team for their hard work and commitment without which this all would not have been possible, as well as our clients for our continued trust in us. We are excited about opportunities that lie ahead and are confident in our ability to deliver exceptional. With this I turn this around for questions.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and one or their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while Asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is on the line of Dhara Shah from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi Tima, this is Abhinay. So my question is in the past we’ve talked about H2 being better than H1. Will that hold for this year also? And for both the segments CRO and cmc. So that’s the first question.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So without getting into the specifics of the year, that’s a general trend that we have seen across the years and we believe the trend will continue. But I’m not giving any specific guidance for this year.
Unidentified Participant
So there is nothing in a way that is lumpy in this quarter that will sort of break that trend. So that’s the understanding we are trying to get.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So there are no one offs that has been accounted in Q1 is what I can.
Unidentified Participant
Great, great. And secondly, one of the lines in the presentation we’ve added that the strategic investments will double our overall capacity by FY27. So that is basically taking us to 900 KL. Right. So we are doubling vers FY24 levels or so. Is is that the right understanding?
Krishnam Kanumuri
No, I think Vinay, we are talking about two doublings. We are doubling across the R and D capacity by next year and manufacturing capacity will go up by 80% by 27. So both are actually going up significantly.
Unidentified Participant
So we’ll reach around 900.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
I think the base reference number for the manufacturing is falling 1300.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, okay. And. And within that we are also saying that you know, we’ll be div. Diversifying our footprint and reducing concentration risk. So could you elaborate a little bit more on that? Is it more with new customers that you are going to work in the big pharma side? Is your share of new modalities which you’ve called out in this presentation that is increasing any few qualitative coins on that. Thanks Vinay.
Krishnam Kanumuri
Just to get like a continued momentum, we’ve onboarded several new large pharma customers as well as we expanded and depth of collaboration with customers. I think this is based on not only visibility of the existing pipeline but also the fact of a lot of new relationships which we have started and existing relationships are getting much broader and deeper.
Unidentified Participant
Great. Great team. I’ll come back in the queue.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Karan Gupta from acmi. Please go ahead.
Karan Gupta
Hello. Am I audible?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Yeah, please go ahead.
operator
Yes, please continue.
Karan Gupta
Yeah, I have one question regarding the revenue split. Now we are targeting that our CRO space will be close to 40 something or 50 something. The overall price was considering the lumpiness in the CDMO as we are also seeing the other peers, they are reporting numbers. So what’s, what’s the target for the CRO to take?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So sorry, you’re not very clear, but I’m assuming that your question is about the CRO CDMO split. Our broader guidance is somewhere around, you know, the 2/3, 1/3, you know, in a quarter or in a year there could be specific movements that could be slightly not matching the two thirds, one third, but would broadly remain in that index territory.
Karan Gupta
Okay. So in the CDMA space we are not seeing any demand scenario where the customers are not maybe not expanding or not giving the orders. This kind of scenario we are not expecting in the CDMS space. Okay. Any large customer contributing to the major portion of the cdn. I mean number of.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So we reported our client concentration and we do this on a full year basis and I think the client concentration that we reported, I think top 10 customers is around 40%. And we do this on a full year basis. We don’t have these numbers every quarter because the quarterly numbers will not make sense. But we are generally a very diversified platform and that’s what we believe in from a concentration perspective.
Karan Gupta
Okay. Okay, thanks.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, you may press star N1 to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The next question is on the line of Divyansha Agnihotri from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Divya Agnihotri
Hi, am I audible?
operator
Yes, you’re audible.
Divya Agnihotri
I just had one question. I think I just saw your customer split for your CRO business, which was around 38% for big pharma and 62 for biotech. So I just wanted to ask a question around the biotech funding environment. I know you give these numbers sort of annually, but where do you see sort of the funding environment shaping up in terms of the customers or in acquiring newer customers? So are you moving towards Big Pharma? So just I wanted to understand that scenario from your end.
Krishnam Kanumuri
I don’t think there’s any specific strategy to grasp a Big Pharma versus Biotech.
We’re engaged in the market. It depends on the market cycles, how they go. I think right now obviously Big Pharma is building a footprint in India for the long run. So you will be probably more traction. Big Pharma in the immediate term, I think biotech funding is coming back, but it’s really focused on more later stage assets which are more on the CDMO side. And the amount of funding on the discovery side definitely is coming back, but the level of investment is less. So I think what you will see is you see biotech is coming back, but not with very large contracts.
They’ll be coming to what they were doing probably four or five years back with maybe 20, 30 FTE programs, not the 150ft programs they were before. So end of the day we basically sell to the whole market and everything goes through the cycle right now. So we don’t specifically target one customer.
Divya Agnihotri
Okay, that’s all Tamaya. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhav from Fidelity. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi, good evening. Thank you so much for your time. First question was on the six molecules which you mentioned are in phase three or in the pre registration phase. Could you give some color in terms of, you know, the sort of phase three readouts or when the client plans to launch? If it’s already in the pre registration phase? Are there any such molecules which could be up for launch in FY26 in the rest of the year?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So we’ve had two of the phase three molecules that have provided a positive readout at least. You know, the news reports suggest that there is a positive readout on phase three. They were slightly earlier in the year, a couple of months ago. We don’t have a very specific date on when. You know, once the phase three is done they will have to sample data which will then they will have to go back and file with the FDA which would then enable them to get approved by date at this point in time. I don’t have very specific information but we’ve had movements on two products that are in phase three that have seen a positive.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, got it. And any of them in the pre registration side like which are maybe already filed and due for launch, is there any molecule in that sort of part of the pipeline as well?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
There was one small molecule I think that just got in approved but it’s not a very, very large. At this point in time it doesn’t seem to be a very large revenue, but it just moved very recently.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, okay, understood, got it. And then in the presentation you mentioned that the dedicated CRO client has seen 30% growth or 30% expansion in the business that we do with them. Could you give some more color in terms of like has that already started showing up in the numbers for us or that that comes through in the coming periods. And how large is this client within the CRO business? If you could give a broad sense that will be helpful.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So not so malav not commenting on the individual client because you know, just given restrictions. But the expansion in terms of that 30% has already happened. Just happened a month, month and a half ago. So it will start, you will start seeing that flow through, you know, immediately.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, so Q2 onwards, you see that benefit, right?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Yes.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, understood. And just one last question goes on the, you know, how is the sort of RFQ RFP flow through from clients especially for more late stage assets? Like I remember from earlier tractions, we had indicated that we are seeing good client requests for late stage molecules as well. So how is that traction going for us?
Krishnam Kanumuri
I think pretty healthy. Lifetime.
Unidentified Participant
Sorry sir, I can’t hear you.
Krishnam Kanumuri
Pretty healthy in terms of what we’re seeing in terms of RSPs coming in.
Unidentified Participant
You want me to repeat the question? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.
Krishnam Kanumuri
I was just saying it’s pretty healthy in terms of what we.
Unidentified Participant
It’s pretty healthy. Okay. Yeah, yeah, got it. Okay, perfect. Great. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nikhil Mathur from HDFC Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Nikhil Mathur
Hi Gura. Good evening all. Many congratulations to the management for such great numbers. So my first question is slightly higher level SAI license is doing phenomenally well. We are seeing it last quite a few quarters now. Also we are seeing the industry overall, many other companies also doing pretty well in terms of new customer base and that is starting to get reflected in numbers as well. So just wanted to revisit the broader thoughts on the industry. What’s happening? Is it really China plus de risking that is kind of starting to play out or Indian industry itself has gone to an extent or they built capabilities over the years that irrespective of China platform or not, the companies are starting to win more contracts and are able to demonstrate better visibility in global CDMO space.
Krishnam Kanumuri
Okay. I think to be very candid right now Apple China is closely ahead of India. I don’t think India’s capability wise yet caught up with China both in scale or technology. That’s just an honest fact I think. But the reality is China plus one or not, I think diversification is real. The one issue which has come up in China, which is actually moving customers away is IP issues have come up in China primarily because China has become a competitor for them on the discovery side. All the China deals, if you follow the news that the number of Biotech deals China are doing have gone up.
So I think at least what we’re hearing more and more is that the fear in China is the IP aspect of it. I think the Indian industry is set to benefit, but I think pharma is taking a long view that we will build these partnerships and it’s going to take years for us at least reasonable time to build partnerships. So they’re going step by step to ensure that they have a reliable supply chain outside of China. They don’t want to be too dependent on one country. So I think this broad trend will continue because customers are investing in us and the company which are proactively working with them are setting China.
That’s as honest to answer.
Nikhil Mathur
Okay, so the current road that your company is kind of on the path on which your company is on, were you always fully confident, let’s say two, three years back that this growth will emanate or something has changed in the last 12 months which is kind of accelerating this growth?
Krishnam Kanumuri
We’ve always been very confident. If you look at the investments we made was in 2018-19 when we really changed our focus to really become a science driven high end manufacturing and company. And that thesis played out well for us. And if you look at the reason I think we’re winning business today is because we’ve made investments ahead of time based on what we saw customers are looking for based on their existing partners. And as the market has opened up we’re probably a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of the depth of the team we have built, the way we’re thinking about it, systems we built.
I think that forward looking approach has given us that little bit of an edge in terms of able to scale up from here.
Nikhil Mathur
Okay, got it. Slightly more micro questions now. I missed the capacity enhancement program. So are you doubling the overall capacity including manufacturing and research by FY27, FY28 or. You mentioned that research is doubling and CDMO will go up in steps.
Krishnam Kanumuri
No, actually research is doubling and we’re adding obviously formulation services, early phase formulation, also peptide capability in the research building which we’ve already started working on and manufacturing itself. We’re adding two new blocks which will double capacity. I think both of them will probably the R and D is going to come up little sooner but end of next year we should always look at. You should be on that.
Nikhil Mathur
So let’s say till now or in the past like you mentioned, that you have been trying to invest ahead of curve so as to win orders. Can it be assumed that now your utilizations will be more matching the order book in the sense that given that you are at a particular scale now, there is visibility with multiple clients. So now the capacity buildup is more in anticipation of the orders that you might see over the next 12, 24 months.
Krishnam Kanumuri
We definitely have a lot more visibility than when we built in the past because the past investments also were kind of changing our technology platforms. But now I think what we are seeing is with much more visibility and I think we’re much more confident about utilization levels going forward.
Nikhil Mathur
Got it. And one final question on the new modalities, the four new modalities that you talk about in your presentation. I mean I would imagine that most of these work for you is in a discovery stage or maybe some bit of under development stage. I’m not sure how far are we from first project or two projects that can be commercial in these new modalities? Is this two years out, three years out when can be that inflection point for the company in terms of new modalities. On the manufacturing side,
Krishnam Kanumuri
there are four. Key modalities if you work. So I think as far as oligonucleotides goes, we are close to commercial. We are fairly far ahead than a lot of people on the oligonucleotide side. ADCs we are working on late phase assets today which are actually commercial with all the coming as second source disposal. So these both are close to commercial, not ADCs in terms of at least the linker payload piece. We’re not talking about the conjugation piece. Those are very close. Peptides are still very early, I think peptides we probably will very early in the clinical stage. ADCs Again we talked about ADCs in terms of the last modality, which is the fourth one.
We’re talking about. Lipids. We have been supplying lipids for a long period of time. So we have the capabilities. We have a lot of clinical assets when they were commercial we don’t know. But lipids we’ve been working on the last seven, eight years. So except for I would say pure ADC conjugation and peptides which are relatively early right now in the chain. I think most are commercial right now or in the next, next, probably a few quarters.
Nikhil Mathur
Okay. And whatever projects that you foresee going into commercial from your end, would the revenue per project be much higher than what a typical run rate is for small molecules that you have been doing till now?
Krishnam Kanumuri
Hard to say. Every product has a different cycle in terms of volume. So you can have the greatest modality but if the volume is low you can never, you cannot put a modality and volume together. It really depends on the product class and the target you’re going after.
Nikhil Mathur
Okay, understood. Got it. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Binay from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi team, just two questions. One on the broader side. You know we’ve seen this new slow on most favored nation policy letters going to you know like 17 big pharma. So in that context, what will be your read through on R and D spend on outsourcing? Do you think it will be neutral for Indian CDMOs or it will be positive because cost cutting moves to low cost location or negative because some of the research project gets pushed out? So any initial thoughts on how big Pharma and their plans and where India fits in into that?
Krishnam Kanumuri
Look, it’s almost impossible right now to figure out the the year full day angle of what that means from a revenue standpoint with pharma. But purely from a CDMO standpoint, the fact of the matter is R and D is really going to be in Asia. I don’t think there’s any pressure to do R and D in Asia in the US or that kind. It’s really about products. And if you look at the net target for the US administration is to put whatever facilities which are in Ireland or Switzerland or other parts of Europe in the US.
So just like pharma is manufacturing using us as a supplier into their European facilities, my anticipation is we’ll be supplying to the US facilities. So I don’t think the fundamental dynamics will change in terms of in terms of the customer demand or what they will do. The geographies we supply to might change and how tariffs affected. What it is is too early to comment at this point. Early days. But I don’t think the basic reshoring to the US of Pharma is going to make a significant difference in terms of the supply chain into there at this point.
And R and D itself I think is still going to be overreached. So I think there will be short term bumps but long term in this time cycle I’m still fairly positive that there won’t be a fundamental shakeup in what we see in earnings.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks, thanks. And secondly, just on the financials, we had talked about interest cost coming down in the coming quarters and we know this year it seems like CapEx versus FCF, CapEx versus operating cash flow. There will be sort of a negative gap. So is it fair to Assume that interest cost decline that we were talking about is largely now happened and is reflected in this quarter.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Yes.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, great, great. Thanks.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Karan Gupta from acmil. Please go ahead.
Karan Gupta
Okay, so again, the question on the CRO side, what kind of growth we are expecting for the next two, three years in the CRO space And if you can, just highlight the margin side for the CRO and CDM side if you can.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Karan, can you repeat your question? Sorry, the voice is a little unclear. If you can repeat.
Karan Gupta
Okay. Okay. Yeah. So my question regarding the CRO, what kind of growth we are expecting from CRO side. Yeah, now it’s clear.
operator
Much better. Please continue.
Karan Gupta
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my question regarding the CRO side, what kind of growth we are expecting from the CRO side for the next two, three years, we can notice from Alpha 23, 25, it is close to around 17, 15, 17% as the CDMO is growing. But in last five years we can see 35%. You’ve mentioned. So what kind of growth we can expect for the CRO side for the next two, three years, is it in line with the CDMA or it will grow much faster than that.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So what we have presented and what we have told over the last couple of conference calls, and I’ll reiterate that I think we’re not presenting a separate growth number for CRO versus SPDMO. What we are committing is a 3 to 5 year, 15% average growth rate. That’s really what we are presenting and that’s what we are focusing on. We are not presenting a separate data at this time.
Karan Gupta
Okay, okay, okay. Because the thing is, the CDMO is very lumpy in nature. So it’s very hard to, you know, think about as you’re seeing 15, 16%. Okay. So margin side, if you can give this fit between two.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
No, not really. I think our fundamental belief is at a steady state, maybe the CRO side will have a few pips more than the CDMO side on a steady state. But that’s just the general model working. We are not presenting the splits in the numbers.
Karan Gupta
Okay. So I mean, few BIPs will be higher for the CDO side, CRO side. Yes, you’re saying. Okay, okay. And. And any new projects which not mentioned in the CDMO side on the late stage three, stage three or commercial stage?
Krishnam Kanumuri
No, not mentioning this thing. Also.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
We are not. We don’t provide any molecule details of phase Three or.
Karan Gupta
Okay. Okay. And just one last question. How you’re seeing this CRO space going forward? Just talk about the CRO research side. What? What? The antibarier emphasis space in India. Domestically. What are the players? How many players are in this space? If you can just give some color on that. Understand this space.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Karan, I think we don’t generally comment about other businesses. I think there is enough data available in the public space for you to figure out who does the CRO business. I only want to say that we have a very strong traction in the CRO business. Our revenue growths are what you have, what we have presented. And we continue to believe that that business will grow. But I would stop short of commenting on others.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jiwani from iasl. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Sir. Sir, on the CDMO manufacturing capacity expansion last quarter let’s say we were at 600 kilolitres which this quarter we have added around 90 kiloliter. And on top of that we have announced another hundred. Oh sorry. Another 200 kiloliter by third quarter of FY27. So that would imply let’s say a 50% kind of an increase versus FY25 capacities. So is that understanding correct? And why I’m asking this is because at one point in time you also indicated that the CDMO capacities actually are going to increase by 80% by FY27.
Krishnam Kanumuri
I think what we meant. Rahul, we are working on two production blocks with a total capacity of closer on 450 kilo. So if you take that from the capacity at the end of last year which was around 600 KL and then you add 550 ADP close to. You know it’ll be more than 80%. Close to 90% capacity addition. That’s what we meant.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, so 450 KL addition on this 600 KL base of last year.
Krishnam Kanumuri
Tell me. No, it’s 550 plus 600
Unidentified Participant
show. Show, show. And let’s say of this 500 and 50 incremental you have talked about plans for. Let’s say 100 K got commissioned. You are working on another 200 KL. So the rest. When do you. Let’s say plan to start the commissioning.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So we expect the 450 kg to be commissioned around the second half of fiscal 27th with some gap between each other. But 450 KL will. Will get commissioned by the end of fiscal 27 the second half.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sure. Sir. And sir, on this CDMO pipeline, phase three pipeline where we have six molecules. Now if I number if sorry if I remember the numbers correctly this number used to be 8 to 10K three projects let’s say last quarter or end of FY25. So have a couple of projects gone into commercialization?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Couple have gone into commercialization, couple have dropped out.
Unidentified Participant
Okay so, so, so, so the number was 10 which has come down to 6 or was it 8 which has come down to 6.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
It is 10 I think now there’s a. There is a few movement in, few movements out. So essentially net net we moved couple to commercial. There are a couple of entries and there are a couple of. I can give you a, you know a detailed summary separately but it’s a list of addition and deletion.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sure sir. And sir, you pointed out that the CDMO business obviously has this quarterly volatility. So just to get some color around the fact that this quarter we saw very significant growth on the CDM business. So was there any inventory stocking related to let’s say some of these early commercial projects which might taper off going forward or let’s say we can work with this 1Q CDMO revenue as the base for growth going forward.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So as I mentioned earlier there is no one off which includes any one time launch related stocking.
Unidentified Participant
Okay.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
I won’t comment on how you do the modeling for basic Q1.
Unidentified Participant
Sure. So thank you. And just last one from my end you indicated that you have onboarded 250 scientists during the quarter. So if you can call out the total number of scientists across both the the CDMO and the CRO businesses. Thank you.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
I don’t have that data Rahul, we can, we can add that and you know send it out separately.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sure sir, I will join back with you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is in the line of Anandha Padmanabhan from PGIM amc. Please go ahead.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. Sir, I had two questions. One was on the capacity utilization what is the capacity utilization at the end of Q1? And second thing I wanted to have on clarity on the 550kl additional capacity that you mentioned in the earlier question. So in the presentation you’re given that 200 KL will be coming by Q3 FY27. And in the earlier statement you said that 400 would be coming by in the second half of FY27. Just wanted to understand, understand get a bit clarity on this aspect.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So I Think so what we are saying is that the second production block, the first production block will come on Steam by Q3FY27. The other one will come, you know towards the end of fiscal 27. That’s why we said 450 will come towards second half of the year. That’s why we said what will come.
Anandha Padmanabhan
In Q3 other will come probably towards the end of Q4. That’s what that’s the one should understand this. Okay, fair enough
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
on your question. The first question on capacity utilization our capacity utilization for the last quarter was. Around 77%
Anandha Padmanabhan
and what is the peak. Capacity that you can typically go up to?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So see we brought 100kl capacity end of, you know end of Q1 so it was not completely utilized. But I think 77 to 80% is probably full capacity and it and the question reason why I’m giving you a slightly roundabout answer Andaman is that it all depends on the mix of projects whether it’s commercial development. So 70, 75% is a decently fully utilized plant.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Okay. Okay. So with this 91kl coming online at the end of Q1 the next capacity that will be coming would only be in the second half of FY27. So in the interim is there a chance that you would have some issues of capacity in case you get better projects or higher growth visibility? Would you, how prepared would the company be to address that?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So there are the plants on place to kind of take that period. We’re working through our internal capacity. We’re using certain external agencies to kind of do some work that will kind of help us right through, you know, any shortages of capacity at this point in time. We don’t believe that will be an impediment till the next capacity comes on.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Okay, and the 700 crore CapEx that you have mentioned is for the entire 550 KL new capacity that is going to come online or that includes only the 91 plus 200 odds or 200 KL that you said that will come by 27.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
So it’ll be portions of whatever. So it’s accounting wise whatever gets accrued for the particular year. It’s not only that we are working on a discovery capacity addition, we’re working on process R and D capacity addition. We’re adding peptides development capability, a lot of them spread over more than one financial year and also more than one physical 12 month period. So it is combination of everything over a period.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Okay so the 700 capex is for this year or 700 capex would be for this entire capacitation that would spread over two years.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
For this year.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Okay. And you could have a similar number next year as well.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
We haven’t put a number down but you know, there would be, you know, capex for the next year.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Okay. And typically on the manufacturing side, when you are working for new, new capacities, what is the typical asset terms that you typically work with when it reaches peak utilization.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Are not distinguishing new versus old with the way or incremental versus existing, but the way we look at it is our belief is that we’ll be able to do on a net basis between 1.2 to 1.4. That’s broadly our internal metrics that we use to track ourselves.
Anandha Padmanabhan
Okay. Okay. Thank you sir. That’s all from my end. Thank you for answering my questions.
operator
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Madhav from Fidelity. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the follow up. A couple of more questions. One on the question, you know, where you said that the capacity announcements happening in the US is more, you know, shift from Europe to US Is my understanding, right, that the kind of work that happens at these facilities is anywhere more, let’s say free finished work or you know, the last step formulations kind of work and where, you know, the Indian companies, including sai, we come in more at the intermediates and probably the API stage. Is that a fair understanding of how the supply chain works? So even if there’s more capacity expansion in the US it doesn’t really impact the kind of work that we do.
Is that a fair way to think?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
That’s a fair assumption.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, so even if like Big Pharma announces capacity in the U.S. i don’t think they’re going to be planning to do these advanced intermediates per se. Right. I don’t think that’s in their CAPEX program. I know there’s no specific right answer, but is there like a big picture?
Krishnam Kanumuri
As far as we have our thoughts so far, every large farmer we talk to has no intention of doing intermediates in house. I think they’re focusing on either late stage GMP stages generally. If you look at most new products, used to be candid, they’re anywhere from 15 stages, 30 stages. I think they’re probably focusing on the last four or five stages at best and source intermediate outside and the final formulation they would do in the U.S. correct.
Unidentified Participant
Exactly. So in that sense that our time is not really impacted. Right. That’s what we just want to clarify.
Krishnam Kanumuri
On paper right now it doesn’t look like impacted. It’s just a way to shift to change.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, exactly. Got it. And the second question was, you know, we’re doing a fairly large capex this year, 700 crores. Just wanted to understand that when we decide to take like a large capital allocation decision like this, is it like you know, with some visibility from the client for let’s say a late stage project or late stage projects which would come in the next few years? Is that when we sort of decide to announce Capex it could be obviously two, three years out but is that how it usually works?
Krishnam Kanumuri
It’s the combination of two factors. There’s a combination of existing products which we see the volume will scale up, which we see have. And in terms of early stage pipeline this is based on forecast plus the number of clinical inquiries and the number of programs we’re doing in development with the larger pharma collaborations and what we see they’re going to be going forward as well. So I would say right now at least visibility is strong at this point. I don’t know, it’s always going to be the case but this investment is based on a better visibility than we had in the past.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is in the line of Vivek Agrawal from Citi. Please go ahead.
Vivek Agrawal
Hi, thanks for the question sir. Congrats on the exceptional quarter. If you look at the. In your earlier commentary, right. You indicated that couple of, couple of products have moved into the commercial stage, Right. So is it the growth in this quarter has been driven by some impact of the all the products moving into the commercial stage or is it that existing molecules that have helped you help in the growth in this quarter? Thanks.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Combination of both.
Vivek Agrawal
Okay, so is it possible for you to quantify for example how much the growth that is coming from the new products?
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
No, we don’t provide the data, so.
Vivek Agrawal
No problem at all. Just one more question. You indicated that couple of molecules that have been also been dropped out. Right. So is it that the products have been failed into the late stage trials etc. Any particular reason for that?
Krishnam Kanumuri
So there are. So it is, it is a clinical trial failure. See, I think clinical trial failure is a chapter by itself. We as a CDMO is one cog in that whole wheel. There are multiple reasons and decision points. Whatever is available in the public data. We believe there are certain clinical trial related failure. But you know, customers don’t give you that kind of data because you don’t access everything with respect to a molecule when you are working with a customer there are enough things about everything from a patient selection to deciding their clinical endpoint, there are many things we are not part of.
So at this time, we know that was based on a clinical trial failure, but we don’t know exactly why.
Vivek Agrawal
Understood. Thank you sir. That’s from my side.
operator
Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Krishnam Kanumuri
Thank you everyone. Really appreciate you taking the time to attend the call today. We continue bullish about the business and appreciate the support.
Sivaramakrishnan Chittor
Thank you.
operator
On behalf of SCI Life Sciences Limited Q1 FY26 earnings call. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.