Caplin Point Laboratories Limited

Caplin Point Laboratories Limited

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Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 14, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Caplin Point Laboratories Q4 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call hosted by 361 Capital Market Private Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode.

There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during this conference, please signal for an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone telephone.

Please note that this conference call is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms.

Julie Mehta from 361 Capital Market Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.

Julie Mehta

Thank you, Farah, and good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of 361 Capital, we would like to welcome you all to the 4Q FY '26 Conference Call of Caplin Point Laboratories Limited.

Today, we have with us senior management of the company represented by Mr. CC Paarthipan, Chairman; Mr.

Vivek Partheeban, Vice Chairman; Mr. Ashok Partheeban, Vice Chairman; Dr.

Sridhar Ganesan, Managing Director; and Mr. D.

Muralidharan, CFO. I would now like to hand the conference over to Caplin Point management for the opening remarks.

Over to you, sir.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you, Julie. Thank you, everyone, for joining, and welcome to our Q4 and FY '26 results and earnings call.

Please note that a copy of all our disclosures are available on the Investors section of our website as well as on the stock exchanges. Also, do note that anything said on this call which reflects our outlook for the future or which could be construed as a forward-looking statement must be reviewed in conjunction with the risks that the company faces.

The conference call is being recorded, and the transcript along with the audio will be made available on the company's website as well as the exchanges. Please do note that audio conference call is copyright material of Caplin Point and cannot be copied, rebroadcasted, or attributed in press or media without specific written consent of the company.

I would like to now hand over the floor to Chairman for his opening remarks.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you. Good evening, and welcome to our investors call.

Let me first list out the differentiation that we have created in the last five years. Revenue doubles from 1,085 crore to 2,300 crore in '25-'26.

Liquid assets triples, 928 crore to 2,726 crore. Free cash reserves triples, 470 crore to 1,470 crore.

EBITDA, PBT, and PAT increased by 2.5 times. Investment in capex stands at 900 crore in the last five years.

The gross contribution improved due to operational efficiency. Currently, we are building new factories for injectables.

All the machines for the new factories are imported mostly from Germany and Italy. In the next two to three years, we'll have 17 injectable lines for USA and other regulated markets of the world.

Our factories would be digitalized. Every machine that enters the factory will have video master to make the qualifications easier and also for operational efficiency.

Our video SOP for which we filed the patent has some unique features. It is visual before verbal.

We do not depend on one QA or one QC or one production or one engineer. The knowledge will be stored in the video library.

Our visual SOP ecosystem is both kinetic and non-kinetic. The kinetic side involves cameras, screen, voiceover, online monitoring, and dashboards.

On non-kinetic side: visual intelligence, behavioral discipline, institutional learning and memory, compliant consciousness, operator confidence, and quality mindset. For example, China's rise is a kinetic and non-kinetic story.

The present world affects the following: APIs, solvents, freight and lead time to destination, currency swings, energy unpredictability. However, our model of keeping the goods next to the customer in the last 20 years has produced this compounding effect.

Hence, we always keep the goods in our subsidiary warehouses for minimum of six months stock, in the form of stock in the warehouse, stock in transit, and work-in-progress. This anti-fragile model has really helped us for the best fundamentals even in ROW markets of LatAm in the last five years.

Now that we have substantial ANDAs, in addition to that, we also buy for our business. In the next three years, we'll have maximum products registered in the highly regulated markets such as USA, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.

Further, we increased the number of women employees in our shop floor, which ensured the discipline. The discipline that resulted due to women empowerment also guaranteed the integrity and quality, which are very, very essential for regulatory inspection.

The financial freedom for the rural women made them comfortable at their home and also in our shop floors. We always arrange to pick them up from their houses for all the shifts, which ensures their safety, too.

During volatile periods, the cash becomes a strategic oxygen. Our cash flow helps us to build new factories, and we are also buying, as I told you before, more and more ANDAs for the US market, and we've been trying to buy a distribution company either in Chile, Mexico, or Brazil, and we are sure that we'll be able to register maximum products in this region, that way to help our distribution company in case if we buy.

That will actually take us to the nook and corner of the private markets of these countries. This one is not the mainstay for big companies, hence the focus of our business will be more on private market in addition to the tender business also.

We'll also focus more on R&D for hormone injection and inhaler areas, which are unique in the regulated markets. Further, we are also on the lookout for a meaningful acquisition of a facility, as we have enough cash resource in our system.

Let me also convey that I read actually in BS, Business Standard 1000 of March 2026. They mentioned that we, Caplin, stand at 673 among the 1,000 listed companies of India, which comprises of all segments in addition to pharmaceuticals.

They also mentioned that we stand at 42nd position among the pharmaceutical companies. When I looked into the details, I have found that 16 companies above us had lower profits than us.

The statistics is based on the top line, not on bottom line or cash flow. Finally, when our revenue doubled and the liquid cash and liquid assets tripled, we never had the extraordinary fundamentals that we are creating now.

We only have one US FDA factory with three old lines and two new lines. Now that we are going for a massive infrastructure expansion, as I told you, that we'll have 17 lines of injectable in the next two to three years.

We'll also have automation, digitalization, and visual SOPs, more ANDAs, and more registrations for regulated markets of LatAm, entering into countries like Brazil and South Africa also will increase the prospects of our business. The variety of injectables in the form of liquid injections, ophthalmic, PFS, bags, BFS, fill-finish, lyo, onco injectable, hormone injectable will be there in the next three to four years' time two to three years' time and will also take us to the next orbit, which is for sure.

Finally, as you all know well, business in the formative years is the puddle of unknown unknown. When you develop the cadence for your business over a period of time and you establish the KPIs through video SOPs, then it's simply going above and beyond.

That is the deliberate growth. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you, Chairman. Now I request Ashok to give us a few comments.

Ashok Partheeban

Thank you all, and welcome to our investor call. I'll be talking about our Latin American pack and a few points about how we've been growing in Latin America.

I would like to start with Chile, which is our newest market. We have won 35 products to the tune of $10 million for the next 18 months to be supplied.

We have also received 135 registrations in Chile so far. We have submitted around 40 more products.

Our private market is the most important in all the countries where we are. As Chairman mentioned, we have two candidates that we're looking to offer to buy, that are two solid distribution companies that reach nook and corners of the country in Chile.

We have these two candidates because they actually have their own sales team, they have their own logistics team also. We're currently doing bio studies for more than 40 different products that are of very good margin and have very few players in Chile.

I would like to move on to Central America where we've been present since 2002. A peculiar thing about Central America is what happened during COVID was that a lot of independent pharmacies started growing a lot.

During COVID, what they basically did was they just started opening pharmacies wherever they could find a space because a lot of people were going out of jobs and they put their savings into these businesses. We made sure that all these individual pharmacies survived, and if we did a recent inquiry into it, we found out that the shelf space for Caplin products are 41% in these individual pharmacies.

While we were talking about this with the board, we want to start a liquid manufacturing facility, and the reason for this is once we register all these liquids, our shelf space in these independent pharmacies will go from 41% to 57%. We are also getting into brand marketing in Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

We chose the central nervous system line where we already have bioequivalence done for more than 12 products, and we'll be starting with that in September of this year. Going forward to Mexico, our biggest bet and our biggest market in Latin America so far, we've received 25 registrations so far.

We participated in eight different products for a two-year tender in which we won all of them. We also participated in a oncology tender with a partner of ours from China who gave us four different products, and we won those products, too.

We plan to do a sale of around $4 million in the coming two quarters in Mexico. As you all know, we already purchased a land in Mexico to build our first factory in Mexico also because we get a 16% advantage of a price when you participate in the tenders in Mexico.

We will be having liquid, ovules, suppositories, and a blister packing facility for tablets and capsules. This is the update from my side, and I would like to pass it on to Vivek.

Thank you.

Vivek Partheeban

Thanks, Ashok. I'll just take a few minutes to very quickly brief everyone on our progress in the US, which is continuing to be one of the most important pillars of our growth and long-term strategy.

As many of you would have seen from the results, FY '26 has been a very strong and meaningful year with progress on almost all parameters. From a few years ago, we were a cash burn EBITDA-negative company, and today, we've completed around 470 crore with EBITDA that sort of mirrors or comes very close to the parent company's numbers, which has been benchmarked amongst companies of our size.

We're very happy and proud to report that. On the product front, this has been a standout year for us.

We've received approvals for 10 ANDAs in the last four quarters, and we've also acquired another 15 ANDAs, with five in Caplin One name, taking our total tally as on date to 60 ANDAs as of this morning. Importantly, this expansion is not just in numbers, it's also in depth because we cover the entire gamut of sterile products, where we have products which is in vials, in prefilled syringes, in IV bags, in three-piece dropper bottles for ophthalmics.

We are now getting into cartridges, we're also getting into blow-fill-seal. Not only are we showing good progress with the products that we have been doing, we are getting into sort of uncharted territory for Caplin Point as we get into some of these complex technologies.

In addition to US, we will start seeing some meaningful revenue out of non-US markets in the coming few years as well because we've already filed 54 products globally in non-US markets such as Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa, etc., and we'll start to see some progress there. From a capacity standpoint, as Chairman said, we are building Phase 3 at a very advanced stage, and we're also expanding capacities internally in Phase 1 and 2 with expansion of our IV bag line to three times the capacity.

It's a very niche area where we have multiple products already approved. As we get into the slightly more complex platforms, this opens up new opportunities for us when we put up our retail arm of the company shortly.

This, I think, would be a good time to touch upon Caplin's own label in the US. A lot of people were very skeptical about Caplin launching our own label because our B2B business was doing so well.

People were a little bit skeptical saying that this might distract our partners, and this might probably show some degrowth. Very happy to say that in our first full year of operations, we've nearly touched 100 crore in revenue.

We were about $11 million plus in revenue with our own label, and we've done this with no degrowth whatsoever in the B2B business as well. We had launched 30 products under our own label in the last year, and another 15 products is going to be launched in the coming year.

We have weekly ordering from the four largest wholesalers in the US and pretty much most of the large IDNs that do business in injectables are our customers right now as we move from strength to strength. I would say that in summary, our US business is transitioning from a phase of foundation building to one that is scaling and growing in depth.

With a very strong pipeline, expansion of capacities, entry into complex technologies, etc., we are very well positioned for sustained and profitable growth in the years ahead. I would like to request our CFO to throw some light on the numbers before we open up for questions.

D. Muralidharan

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Thank you, Vivek. Good afternoon to all who have taken time off to take part in this investors call post FY '26 results.

Results have been highly gratifying, and we are pleased that we have done well in all the across all parameters. Numbers are already there with you for a couple of hours now, and we'll be glad to clarify queries on the results.

Instead of going over the numbers again, would like to present distinct financial points for your attention. One, is an exceptional balance sheet compounding effect has happened this year.

Our net worth expanded by about 745 crore during the year from ₹2,3631 crore from ₹2,886 crore in the previous year. This is 26% in one year.

That is this signals strong intrinsic value creation by the company. Massive forex translation reserve uplift is the hidden value that has accrued to us in the form of net worth also.

The forex assets is are at $177 million against liability of $22.2 million. As we all know that we are 100% export-oriented company, and the assets assets outnumber the liabilities.

This has resulted in FCTR movement of about 141 crore, which has gone directly into the reserves of the company. Then third point will be, as already Chairman put it, cash-rich and zero leverage.

Continue to strengthen our balance sheet with 1,471 crore in cash and 2,726 crore in liquid assets. This strength this strength provides us with significant strategic flexibility, as Chairman also put it that we are in the on the lookout for meaningful acquisition.

Earnings quality and cash conversion: CFO remained at strong at 523 crore representing 80% with cash conversion of PAT. This shows profits are real cash, not only in books.

Profit growth of 20% ahead of revenue growth of 13 13%. Profitability grew materially ahead of revenue growth, reflecting operating leverage and improving business mix.

Next is capex. Before capex, I would like to inform the investors that our capex R&D spend this year has been 119 crore.

It's almost 5% of our turnover. This is the first time we have crossed 100 crore in R&D spend.

The capex incurred in the last year is 338 crore. Just the summary of the ongoing project out of the 1,000 crore what we envisage, here capitalized 154 crore, CWIP 143 crore primarily representing what is our injection plant in oncology injection plant, which incidentally has been capitalized in the month of April post our MOH approvals and what not.

Advances what we placed we have talked about enhancing the line capacities. We already paid an advance of 109 crore for various imported equipment, and balance about 500 crore will be incurred in the next 18 to 24 months from out of our own cash generation.

Then fixed assets turnover ratio, people were asking last time. Glad to inform that this is about 3.91 3.91 times.

Inventory held in market and WIP potential which have the potential of realizing about 900 crore in terms of sales. Our strategy to keep inventory close to the customer and then is paying high dividends.

This is excluding, of course, inventory in the US facility, I mean US factory and the warehouse there. To summarize, FY '26 was not only a growth year, but also a year of strong balance sheet compounding, net worth increase by 745 crore, operating cash flow above 500 crore, liquidity pool expanded to 2,726 crore while remaining virtually debt-free.

This is all from me for the presentation. We'll be more than glad to take any questions.

Over to you, Mr. Vivek.

Vivek Partheeban

Thanks, Muralidharan, sir. If we can open up the floor for questions now, please.

Operator

Sure. Thank you very much, sir.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may enter star and one on the touchtone telephones.

If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may enter star and two. Participants are requested to please use only their handsets while asking a question.

We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Aman Soni from 7Alpha.

Please go ahead. Mr.

Soni, your line is unmuted. Please ask your question.

Aman Soni

Hello. Am I audible?

Operator

Yes, now you are audible. Please go ahead.

Aman Soni

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Good evening and congrats for a good set of numbers. Question is on with growing cash generation, how does management is going to prioritize between the inorganic opportunities and the incremental capex and the higher shareholder payouts, sir?

See,

C.C. Paarthipan

as I told you before, the inorganic opportunity, in fact, we are waiting in the wings. It can be in the form of actually buying the ANDAs, which of course we've been doing actually.

We are waiting for more and more opportunity on that aspect. As I told you, the distribution company will also open up a bigger opportunity for us for the private market, especially in Latin America.

See, going for acquisition for the sake of acquisition, I'm sure you would not advise us to go for actually acquisition without going for a meaningful acquisition. That'll be a vanity, which I don't think it's advisable.

As I told you, what is important today, especially in a VUCA world, we're going for the completion of facilities. We'll be completing most of the facilities that are injectable, which you are aware, there are hardly three or four companies who would have 16 or 17 lines of injectable actually in India.

When we complete all this injectable, we are aiming to go for US and other major markets. That means that's a great opportunity which will open up in the form of not only for our own products to be sold in US, but also in the form of CMO.

Second one is we are concentrating more on R&D for complex products. This is one of the thing which is very important, as you know well.

The third one, we are increasing the registration in many of the larger geographies. These are a few things which are very important.

If you need any other questions, please tell me. I would be able to answer to your question also.

Aman Soni

Got it, sir. Secondly, on the receivables part, receivables have grown materially ahead of the revenue growth.

Is this timing-related thing or any other reason for that?

C.C. Paarthipan

I could not hear properly. Vivek, are you able to

Vivek Partheeban

hear? Request CFO to take this, please.

D. Muralidharan

Yes. As we have mentioned in the press release also, while the forex reserves which I talked about improving my net worth, this also reflects my receivables.

Out of 136 days what we have reported, 11 days is attributable to this FCTR, which has gone into receivables, but it's not flown through in P&L. For this, my receivables would have been 125 days.

We have been promising 120. As rightly said, timing also is one of the factors that has gone into.

Last quarter, we have won a big tender in Salvador, and a lot of supplies have gone into that, which are in the process of being received in the market, and these receivables will be collected by end of Q2. This is a big tender, and most of supplies have gone during February, March, and we are in the process of receipts there.

This is one of the factors that's also contributed to the increase in receivables.

C.C. Paarthipan

I would like to add one more. The currency in El Salvador is a dollar, US dollar.

When I was working in this Latin American market, I used to see Colombians giving lot of credit in Ecuador, where the currency is dollar. The currency of Colombia used to get weakened, and deliberately they used to give credit more so that their earnings also more because of the depreciation of their own currency.

Here, of course, we don't want to do that way. Even if the delay that happens from El Salvador is going to contribute to actually in the form of increased profit for our company, as you know well, the dollar actually is getting strengthened and our rupee is getting weakened.

In no way this is going to affect our bottom line also.

Aman Soni

Understood, sir. Just last question on the outlook for FY '27 in terms of the top line and specifically on the kind of margins, these are very exceptional margins we are doing.

How much structural are these margins we are doing at? See,

C.C. Paarthipan

we will continue to do well. As I told you in course of my speech, the best is yet to come.

Maybe the best will come after two to three years. If you look at actually the past in the last five years, I don't want to repeat again actually what all tripled, what all doubled, and all you have seen.

The next three to five years is going to be the best period for Caplin Point. Of course, we will do well, actually, but it's difficult to tell anything on a quarter-on-quarter basis or on a yearly basis.

Whatever we say, everything actually is happening in the form of building the factories or whatever it is because you don't see many companies of our size building so many factories without a debt. After having invested in the capex, still we have enough cash flow, that will also help us to go for inorganic growth as you have mentioned.

We are waiting for actually that kind of opportunity. It will happen.

When it happens, whatever you expect in the form of growth can come even in actually six months or one year also if you go for inorganic actually opportunity. Again, we don't want to simply grab anything and everything, rather we would prefer to wait and actually go for something which is meaningful.

Is it okay, please?

Aman Soni

Yes, got my answer, sir, and thank you. Thank you very much, sir, and all the best.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you, Aman. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Participants with questions may enter star followed by one on your handsets.

The next question is from the line of Ahmed Madha from Unifi Capital. Please go ahead.

Ahmed Madha

Thanks for the opportunity. I have a few questions.

Firstly, on the revenue growth in the LatAm, Africa business, ex-US has been pretty strong. In last few quarters, we did close to high single-digit, mid single-digit growth, and this quarter is relatively exceptional.

Can you give some sense what has led to high growth in the specific geographies? See,

C.C. Paarthipan

sometimes markets fluctuate. Whether it is B2B or B2C, generic business is based on supply and demand.

We know we have an advantage of keeping the goods actually in the warehouse. If the profitability is not there in our sales, we will not sell.

Selling for the sake of selling doesn't make any difference to the company. Sometimes we wait and actually do it.

Sometimes, of course, we bundle and can sell also. At that point of time, there is a possibility that profit may come in single digit also.

Overall, if you look at it, as you rightly said, the overall profitability for the year '25-'26, I think is fairly good. Am I right?

Ahmed Madha

My question was from the front of revenue growth. If I look at the revenue growth of non-US piece of the company, that revenue growth percentage was in single digits for last few quarters, and we have spoken on the call that it will take couple of years for us to jump up, and you've been doing a lot of initiatives on Chile, Mexico, and other markets.

The question was that this growth is higher in this quarter, is there any specific factor which ex-US? There

C.C. Paarthipan

are two

Ahmed Madha

things

C.C. Paarthipan

I can even highlight. See, today we don't have depth of orders.

The facilities we have is running actually at the optimum capacity. If you look at actually our business, you will see at least 40% to 50% of it is in the form of actually outsourcing for LatAm market.

Especially, when we go for outsourcing, it's not easy to get a good facility where you can do the outsourcing very successfully. That's also one of the reason for us to actually limit the top line.

At the end of the day, what is important, whether it is a Latin American growth or US growth, overall only we like to look at it. Am I right or something?

The Latin American growth will start flourishing actually after we complete the registrations, mainly in markets like Mexico. Now that, as Ashok told, the business of Chile will start from this year, and it will start actually increasing manyfold over a period of time.

D. Muralidharan

Chairman, if you allow me, I'll add one point. I just like to add to this point.

Actually, this increase what you're referring to, the growth from 432 crore to 472 crore this this quarter, especially, that's why I was answering the previous question on the debtors. That has a bearing on this aspect.

We did supply a lot of material close to about 50, 55 crore during the quarter to the Salvador. The tender is valued at about $15 million, and most of the part has gone from India.

That is the reason this growth in Latin America has showing normal

C.C. Paarthipan

yeah.

D. Muralidharan

The US has grown US has grown about 20%. Mix is slightly distorted, but things are intact.

C.C. Paarthipan

Yes. Tender business, of course, we had to rush and then export everything.

Probably that's the reason you're telling. Okay.

I didn't get it properly.

D. Muralidharan

Okay.

Ahmed Madha

Fair enough, all. On the US side this year, we have done exceptionally well in terms of growing the business and having our own label.

From here on, with whatever ANDAs we have acquired and organic approvals we have got, about 10 of them, is it fair to assume the growth rate of 20%, 25%, that sort of run rate in US shall continue till we reach larger numbers?

Vivek Partheeban

We're very confident that current numbers can be sustained. In fact, we are confident that it can grow from here even further.

Again, the most important thing as what Chairman was saying is we're not seeing a dearth of orders. In fact, we have an order book that's full for another six months almost, and to an extent where some of these lower-margin, very high-volume products, we're not even taking them on board.

I think we are certainly on track to see a very strong next year for CSL. In fact, very strong next few years for CSL with all the capacity coming through.

When it comes to our own label, the target we've set for ourselves is to double what we did last year, and I'm fairly confident that we should be in a position to achieve that.

Ahmed Madha

Would you like to sort of give a range of numbers, what sort of growth we can achieve, at least for the next year?

Vivek Partheeban

Of course, yeah,

Ahmed Madha

you don't provide guidance, but I'm just saying this is yeah.

Vivek Partheeban

When it comes to what current growth was, I think it was close to 30%. I think we can see another 25% to 30% next year on the overall Caplin Steriles business.

When it comes to our own label, we did close to 100 crore, the idea is to touch or go very close to 200 crore for the coming year.

Ahmed Madha

Fair, that helps. Last question from my side, in terms of you've spoken about acquisition, considering an acquisition even last quarter and similar this quarter, and you spoke about obviously buying ANDAs and this sort of profile, but considering the amount of cash balance we have, what profile of acquisition we will consider apart from buying ANDAs, which I'm assuming won't be a large ticket size?

If you can give some sense of the profile of a company we are looking for.

Vivek Partheeban

When it comes to acquisitions, there are many things. See, of course, being a listed company, all of our reserves, surplus, everything is in public domain and for everyone to see.

You won't be surprised when I tell you that almost on a weekly basis, we receive a few opportunities, right? There are some opportunities that come in the US, there are some that come in Latin America, there one or two in fact come for the domestic market as well.

The ones that we will be targeting is similar to what Chairman was saying, is good distribution entities, especially in countries where we are very early or we are very new, or in countries like the US where it makes meaningful sense in terms of the knowledge that we gather. When it comes to ANDAs, I'm looking at it personally.

We'll be very opportunistic in terms of what we can acquire because we need to sort of strike the right balance between making sure that we launch all our approvals on time, and at the same time, not run into any sort of dearth in the pipeline because typically, for most companies including ours, the R&D outstrips the capacities, right? In injectables, an area of high criticality in terms of compliance and manufacturing, scaling up is not as easy as it is in oral solids.

Taking that into account, we'll be very opportunistic in terms of acquiring some ANDA in place of doing exhibit batches for new products and stuff like that. That's what we've done the last year.

We are actively working on another one right now. Hopefully, that should get over the line in the coming weeks.

Ahmed Madha

Sure. Thank you so much, and all the best,

Vivek Partheeban

sir.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Participants with questions may enter star and one on your handset.

The next question is from the line of Chirag from MS Capital. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations, Vivek, Chairman, sir, for a strong set of numbers.

I just wanted to first ask a question on the Central American, Latin American operations, and we have the chance to hear from Ashok ji, Vice Chairman, also. If he can just elaborate a little bit on the operations in that region.

A couple of annual reports ago, we heard that you have almost 14,000 daily touch points. How much has that grown to?

We also believe that there is a split between smaller wholesalers and distributors of around 60%, direct pharmacies 20%. Could you just overall give us a view of the operations in the Central American market, if that's possible?

Ashok Partheeban

Thank you. Every time we open a new country, obviously, the number of points that we touch actually increases.

We opened Chile this year in a very big way, and obviously, there are four big chain pharmacies in Chile, and on top of that, 30% of the pharmacies are independent. We obviously do not reach all the independent pharmacies right now through our own sales team, but we reach them through a distributor that we sell to, and I cannot give you an exact number on how many points we have grown by.

What we are doing is, as I said, our shelf space in these individual pharmacies that we sell to in Latin America is about 41%. What we're trying to do is strengthen our shelf space to get to 50%, 55% where we are completely indispensable to these pharmacies.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, that was helpful. Ashok, sir, if you can also sort of give us a little bit of an understanding on what proportion of our customers would be still distributors or middlemen, what proportion would come from pharmacies, institutions, or smaller wholesalers?

Ashok Partheeban

Okay. In the whole of Central America, the business that we've built, about 18% to 20% is institutional, which is government.

The rest is completely private market. What we do have to do in Central America in these countries is you have to have two co-distributors at least so that they reach to those pharmacies that cannot fill in a big ticket sale, which is let's say, we only do around about 300 products.

A pharmacy that does, let's say, a sale of $150 per day cannot buy all the 300 products. They have to buy through our co-distributors.

In each of these countries, we have two or three strong co-distributors. They sell around about 10% to 12% of our sale, and the rest of it all is us going directly to the pharmacies.

Understood. Just to clarify, you said 10% to 12% through those distributors?

Ashok Partheeban

Yeah, 10% to 12% of our sale is through the co-distributors, 20% is through the government, and the rest is all directly to the pharmacies. When I say the rest, it also includes the chain pharmacies also.

Understood. Very helpful.

Thank you. My second question is just doubling down on a previous participant's question on the receivable days.

I understand CFO sir mentioned that, a part of that is just FX change between the time the sale was booked and I guess the closing of the books, and that still bring us brings us down to 125 days, which is at least 25 days higher than what we've seen in the past. Is this how we think the new normal would be, and is this a is this a strategic call, or how do we understand that?

Vivek Partheeban

Chirag, in the past as well, we've been giving the messaging out that we are comfortable with somewhere around the 100 to 120 days range. Now, we are still within that range pretty much, but as CFO and Chairman were saying before, we've entered into a tender in one of our Central American markets, very highly profitable tender, by the way, where we needed to make sure that the supplies were done within 60 days.

It was a fairly large tender as well. Those numbers sort of moved it up by 5, 6 days.

Typically, I think we are happy to be anywhere between the 100, 110, 120 days, and that's a sweet spot for us. The larger picture that I want everybody to really see is we've been consistently able to invest hundreds of crores into our own capex, our own distributions, and despite all of that, we're still increasing our reserves and surplus by a considerable number every year.

You can imagine that even if we do see another 5 days or 10 days increase in the future, we're going to be okay with it because when that money comes in, more often than not, it comes in at a higher exchange rate compared to what it was previously, right? The cash flow I would say that we are benchmarked amongst peers.

We are probably better than most other companies in the same segment. We're not worried about that.

Anywhere between, like I said, 100 to 130 days even is probably still okay for us going forward. Yeah.

Vivek,

C.C. Paarthipan

just to add to what Vivek said, our history of writing off debts has been virtually negligible, and of course, zero. We have not been had any bad debts in the past which could not recover.

There is only a delay, but not writing off. Most of the receivables now attributing to higher number is from government, for sure it will all be received.

We are take few weeks here and there.

Understood, gentlemen. Thank you so much for taking my questions.

Thank you,

C.C. Paarthipan

sir.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Richa from Equitymaster.

Please go ahead.

Richa Agarwal

Thank you for the opportunity. I hope I am audible.

Vivek Partheeban

Yes,

Operator

ma'am.

Richa Agarwal

Yeah. Sir, my question was on what's happening around the world, the Middle East tension.

I know that's not your core market, and being closer to the customer helps to overcome the short-term disruptions, but how do you think if at all this could impact the business or margins or prices or maybe because of economic slowdown in the end geography if it could have any impact on your business and any vulnerability that you may want to highlight?

C.C. Paarthipan

I'd like to actually give you an answer on this. In fact, if you look at our past business, we increased the business, our profitability and everything actually went up only during COVID time, after COVID and during COVID.

What is happening today, as our Prime Minister said, is something closer to COVID, we all have to actually follow the frugal ways and we started advising is very, very correct. As a businessman, we should not allow the crisis to go waste.

How we are managing this, as I told you before, for the next six months, we don't have to produce any products that we have to sell in the market in Latin America. The same way, even in our US market, the goods are already available there in the US warehouse.

In addition to the six months, we also bought raw materials. Yes, there are some increase in the prices, but it's not going to impact us.

The reason being when the prices go up, if you already agreed actually to a price to a customer in the form of a B2B business or an LC, then of course, what happens is you like to honor the commitment, and then that's how you lose money. In our case, we are selling actually through our own actually subsidiaries through our own warehouses.

That's not going to create any major impact to our business. On the contrary, this will open up the opportunity.

The reason being these smaller geographies where we are today in Latin America, the big players are only into brand marketing. I'm talking about multinationals.

Second, small companies, they don't have anything in the form of actually stock and sale. They all actually sell it to some importer.

They will be very worried if they supply to the importer they may or may not pay. The reason being most of the transactions today happens in credit.

Nobody actually pays cash for a generic. If you have your own warehouse, if you have people, we have more than 700 people working in the whole of actually Latin America.

It helps us to collect the money. We are there for the last 20, 20 years, 20, 22 years.

Coming to currency crisis also, Guatemala is very stable. There's nothing in the form of no fluctuation in the currency.

Coming to Nicaragua and Honduras, maybe slight fluctuation in the form of 3% to 4%. The rest of the markets like El Salvador and then Panama, Ecuador, the currency is dollar.

It's not going to create any issue. Costa Rican currency also stable.

Chile also, for the last four, five years, the currency is stable. Is there anything else you want me to answer?

Richa Agarwal

Thank you. Thank you so much, and all the best.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Participants, if you have any questions at this time, please enter star and one.

The next question is from the line of Prince from Family Office. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. I have just one question.

Going forward, can the company maintain around double-digit revenue growth rate and the PAT margin between 25% to 27% consistently during the FY '27, '28, and '29?

Vivek Partheeban

As I've explained previously, we remain very confident that the business will continue to do well. We need to be patient for the next 12 to 18 months at least because there is a period of regularization in pharmaceuticals.

Always what happens is I'm getting an echo from someone's line.

Operator

Prince, is your line on handset or the speaker mode? Could you please switch to handset?

Oh,

yeah.

Operator

Thank you.

Vivek Partheeban

With all things when it comes to pharmaceuticals, especially the regulated markets, things take a lot more time because your product development to approval itself takes around two years plus. As we enter into the larger markets of Latin America and the US itself, things are going to take a little bit longer.

Once it starts fructifying, I think it will be a very sticky business. 18 months and beyond, we feel that these numbers are going to get back to what they were before.

I'm talking about Latin America. What we are seeing today in terms of the bottom line is please take into account that we have certain segments of our facilities that are not breaking even yet, if you're talking about our API units, and if you're talking about Amaris Clinical, which is basically completely backward integration.

Despite all this drag on our bottom line, we are still looking at 27%, 28% PAT and 38%, 39% EBITDA, which, in my opinion, at least from whatever I've seen in our size segment, nobody else has these numbers. With all these drag, if we can continue to maintain these numbers, you can imagine that 18, 24 months beyond, this are going to be definitely maintained at the same level or potentially even inch up a little bit.

I hope we've answered that. Okay.

Thank you for participation, and all the best.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ahmed Madha from Unifi Capital.

Please go ahead.

Ahmed Madha

Thanks for the opportunity again. Just one question on forex gains.

Can you quantify what was the gain on foreign exchange booked in Q4 as well as for the full year, if CFO sir can help?

D. Muralidharan

The unrealized gain would be to the order of

C.C. Paarthipan

$1.7 million, I think. Over

D. Muralidharan

the year, full year, we have had about ₹20 crore, ₹21 crore as realized gain over the year. The remaining 46 crore will be unrealized gain, which is reflecting in the receivable.

Ahmed Madha

Out of 116 crore other income, what number would be roughly forex gains for the full year, if you can give just one number?

Vivek Partheeban

We can even write that to you, Ahmed, so that we don't take everybody's time on this, please.

Ahmed Madha

No problems. Just other question, considering you answered on the volatility part, but considering the volatility in RM costs in general, obviously a lot of forex volatility, and assuming we are net beneficiary of the INR depreciation, but overall considering everything, are we able to manage the current supply chain raw material volatility, or has there been any issues considering we have a fair amount of dependency on China?

How would you judge current situation, if you can give some remarks on it?

C.C. Paarthipan

Yeah.

Vivek Partheeban

Go ahead, Chairman.

C.C. Paarthipan

Our business in the form of outsourcing is much lesser compared to actually what we used to do in China and all. There was a time it was a more of a natural hedging.

Now that of course, I think it's in the region of 20% to 30%. Coming to the volatility, see, the global economy is drowning in debt rather than water.

That of course, that will happen. Coming to us, what is happening to big companies need not happen actually the same way to a company where their fundamentals are unique or the business model is unique.

If you try and do something which is unique, then of course you will not allow this crisis to go waste. That's what I told before also.

Prices are going up. No doubt.

There is definitely is going to go up also. When it happens, it is the model that makes actually you to make money or lose money.

The moment we understand that the price of a material which we bought is higher, we also actually decide the price at which we have to sell the product in the market. That's why we don't face any major issues, to be honest with you.

Vivek Partheeban

Just to quantify, obviously, with regards to input materials like glass and plastics and all of those things, we keep getting increases from suppliers. Of course, we fight all of them back and then try to rationalize it to the lowest amount possible.

Just to give you an idea, the highest impact product for us that we've been doing, especially for the US, is less than 1.5% to 2%. The COGS, I'm talking about, that's gone up by.

We haven't yet seen any major negative impact in the form of input materials going up significantly.

Ahmed Madha

That helps. Thank you so much.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pavan Kumar from RC Capital.

Please go ahead.

Pavan Kumar

Sir, can you comment on the capex that is expected in FY '27 and '28, and what will that be spent on?

Vivek Partheeban

When it comes to capex, the residual capex that we have is the Phase 3 of our injectable plant. We call it internally as CPOL 2.

Also, two other ones, which is we are constructing a much larger capacity oral solids and derma facility in Pondicherry next to what we call our CP 1 plant, our existing plant. Thirdly, we also will be completing our oncology API plant.

In addition to this, we are drawing up plans for our building in Mexico that should happen sometime by Q3 or Q4, it will start by Q3 or Q4. When it comes to exact numbers, CFO, any numbers you can shed some light on?

D. Muralidharan

Yeah. As mentioned during my opening remarks, out of the envisaged capex plan of close to 1,000 crore, 510 crore remain to be spent.

The rest have been spent. They are either in the form of CWIP.

Capitalization is 154 crore, and 143 crore has been CWIP, and we have paid advances to the tune of 109 crore for various lines that are being imported. This leaves about 500 crore, give or take some can vary.

This 510 crore will be spent over the next 18 to 24 months. This is a plan as of now.

Mr. Vivek said this does not contemplate the inorganic growth.

It does not contemplate Mexico. It does not contemplate Chile warehouses and the quality control lab which we are planning right now.

These are all not even a spend part, it's on the drawing table right now. Once we get some clarity, probably we'll update in next quarter.

510 crore for sure will be the amount that is already identified and will be spent in next 18 to 24 months.

Pavan Kumar

Perfect. Thanks.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Julie Mehta from 361 Capital.

Please go ahead, ma'am.

Julie Mehta

Thank you for the opportunity. Firstly, congratulations on a great set of numbers to the entire team at Caplin.

Vivek Partheeban

I have

Julie Mehta

three questions, basically. It caters to the US business.

The US business has now picked up decent scale and size. If you want to understand the growth breakup, how much of that would be organic and how much do we still have to account for through the new launches, be it the ones coming in or the pipeline or the ANDAs that we are yet to acquire?

If you could also share the EBITDA margins for CSL for 4Q and FY '26.

Vivek Partheeban

Okay. On the breakup in revenue, I would say that more than 90% of the revenue has come from the older products that were already in the market.

The 10 ANDAs that were approved over the period of the last 12 months, we've launched a couple of them, but the majority of it, especially the larger ones, are in the process of getting launched in the next few weeks. In addition to that, I would also suggest that 10 the 15 ANDAs that we acquired from outside, we're in the process of launching them, which will only happen this year.

You can assume that, like I said, around 90% of all the growth that you've seen is from products that were already launched in the market. This is actually a good statistic as well because when most other companies I think are somewhere in the region of their average earning per ANDA, I believe, if I'm not wrong, is somewhere around $800,000 to $1 million, whereas ours is almost twice that number, more than 50% higher itself.

Of all the products that we have approvals for, we were just discussing about this yesterday, literally just one product is the one that we've technically taken off the market because there were no sales. Every other product continues to show good sales, and we continue to receive repeat orders.

When it comes to the EBITDA margin for CSL, request Sathya to answer this, please.

Sathya Narayanan

Sir, thanks, Vivek. Thanks for the question.

The EBITDA of CSL for financial year '25-'26 was 142 crore, which is 30%, as compared to 102 crore last year, which is 27.9%.

Julie Mehta

Okay. Sir, for the 4Q, what would be the EBITDA numbers for 4Q?

Sathya Narayanan

For the fourth quarter you're asking the EBITDA?

Julie Mehta

Yes, sir.

Sathya Narayanan

It is 33%.

Julie Mehta

That's helpful. Sir, last question is I missed you, Stephen.

Also, since you're almost on our last leg of capex now, do we have any plans for capex going forward in the next two to three years, or will that largely be maintenance and nothing like major? No, so

Vivek Partheeban

as we just discussed, we had taken on close to 1,100 crore of capex, of which 50% is done, and then the other 50% will be completed in the next 18 to 24 months. This doesn't take into account the ones that we are going to be planning in Mexico, Chile, etc.

There is still certain amount of residual capex that needs to be completed. In addition to that, I will just give you some statistic.

Last year, we were able to add close to 400 crore to our surplus, right? That is over and above what was spent in terms of capex.

If you were to do some numbers over the last 18 over the next 18 to 24 months, you can assume that despite the capex that we will be putting up, the likelihood is that our reserves and surplus will continue to rise even further.

Julie Mehta

Sir. That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question.

I now hand the floor over to the management for closing comments.

Vivek Partheeban

Thank you to 361 Capital Market and Rohit and Julie for conducting, and thanks to everybody that took time out to attend our call, and we hope to stay in touch with you in the future as well. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you very much.

C.C. Paarthipan

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of 361 Capital Market Private Limited, that concludes this conference call.

Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.