Thank you, Yusuf. Good evening to all the participants in this call, and good morning if you are logging in from the west.

Before we proceed to the call, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward-looking statements that may involve known and 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 or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Please note we have mailed the results and earnings presentation, and the same is available on the company's website. In case you have not received the same, you can write to us and we will 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 Sai Life Sciences represented by Krishna Kanumuri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Sivaramakrishnan Chittor, Whole-Time Director and Chief Financial Officer. We will start the call with a brief overview of the quarter and the fiscal year gone past, which will be followed by Siva focusing on the financials, and then we will go over to Q&A session.

With that said, I will now hand over the call to Krishna Kanumuri. Over to you, Krishna.

Thank you. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us today.

We are pleased to report that Sai Life Sciences has delivered a strong performance in FY '26 with overall revenue growth of 29%, EBITDA growth of 56%, and PAT growth of 109%. Both our CRO and CDMO segments registered healthy growth despite operating in an environment characterized by geopolitical uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, evolving regulatory expectations.

This performance underscores the strength of our integrated CRDMO platform and our increasing relevance to global innovator companies. A key highlight of our growth continues to be increasing contribution from large pharma in FY '26.

The revenue contribution from our 19 pharma clients went up from 28% in FY '22 to 49% this FY '26. We are increasingly seeing a trend of large pharma moving to consolidate the full lifecycle from early development to commercial manufacturing.

Similar to trends witnessed in China, our CDMO strategy remains firmly anchored on deepening engagement with large pharma clients. As you are aware, Sai Life Sciences today works with 19 of the top 25 global pharma companies.

We believe that this foundation gives us a strong platform to build our growth on. We continue to build a strong pipeline of commercial molecules, with the tally standing at 34 commercial molecules, 11 in Phase III/pre-registration, about 155 in earlier stages of development.

Importantly, we're also seeing strong traction in our dedicated development R&D team model with large pharma, an initiative we started scaling last year. We believe this model will fundamentally reshape how we partner with large pharma towards larger, more customized, and longer-duration programs.

On our CRO side, our integrated discovery strategy continues to gain momentum, particularly with biotech customers. Our CRO revenue mix between pharma and biotech stands at 48% to 52% versus 52%.

We're also seeing increasing cross-selling opportunities with our CDMO large pharma customers, reinforcing the strength of our integrated model. A key differentiator for us is our focus on automation and scale in DMPK and biology, enabling us to handle large, integrated programs for our clients.

At the same time, we are investing in next-generation technologies, particularly in ADCs, where we are seeing significant interest and program inflow from large pharma. Let me touch upon a few broader industry trends shaping our strategy.

First, evolving regulatory landscape, particularly the FDA's push towards new approach methodologies, is expected to reshape discovery workflows over the next several years. While animal testing will continue to remain relevant for complex toxicology and global regulatory environments, we expect increasing demand for biology-heavy discovery services, including in vitro biology, human cell-based assays, and organoids.

We believe Sai is well-positioned to capitalize on this shift, and we continue to invest in these areas. Second, biotech funding has shown encouraging signs of recovery, with year-to-date funding up 52% year-over-year and April 2026 funding reaching $10.6 billion, up over 4% year-over-year.

IPO activity has also strengthened significantly. While funding remains somewhat constrained in larger, late-stage biotech companies, this trend still supports overall CRDMO demand, particularly through increased outsourcing and program progression.

Third, we are closely monitoring the evolving global trade environment, including potential tariff-related developments. Encouragingly, we are seeing large pharma increasingly structure deals in a way that mitigate tariff exposure.

We also remain mindful of near-term challenges. Ongoing geopolitical tensions, including Middle East situation, are impacting input costs and disrupting logistics and supply chains.

Despite this, our customer conversations and visibility give us confidence as we enter FY '27. We continue to believe that our growth will be led by pharma, driven by increasing outsourcing intensity, movement of biotech assets into pharma pipelines, and strategic long-term partnerships.

As we scale, a few priorities remain central to our approach: science-led capacity expansion rather than purely reactor-led growth; continued product and pipeline diversification, especially in CDMO, given the inherent variability in product lifecycles; careful management of customer concentration—in FY '26, top 10 customers contributed 54%, top 5 37%, and top 1 12% of revenues. Our top customer engagement spans multiple services, reducing concentration risk at any service level.

Given the momentum we have seen through FY '26 and the nature of customer discussions underway, we are entering an increasing investment cycle to support future growth opportunities. Our current estimate for investment in FY '27 is in the range of 1,100 to 1,300 crores.

Importantly, these investments are being undertaken either with clear demand visibility or through active strategic conversations with our large pharma customers. Finally, on the digital and AI transformation, we are investing in capabilities that improve productivity, speed, and solve problems across the organization.

We believe this will be an important lever in enhancing competitiveness and narrowing productivity gaps across the industry. At the same time, adoption of AI within the CRDMO sector must be carefully balanced with customer confidentiality and data security considerations.

Over the next 18-24 months, we expect AI and digital tools to become increasingly embedded not only in enabling functions, but also across core scientific and development workflows. As we enter FY '27, long-term opportunity for CRDMO sector remains very robust, and our integrated model with strong pharma relationships, technology investments position us well for sustained growth.

We would like to reiterate our stated aspiration of maintaining revenue growth of 15-20% while maintaining EBITDA margins in the 28-30% range over a three-year period. Just a reminder: given some of our new capacities and investment progressively coming on stream during the year, we expect the second half of FY '27 to be stronger than the first half.

With that, I will now hand over to our CFO, Siva, to talk through the financial performance.

Thank you, Krishna. Let me begin by reiterating that fiscal '26 has been a year of strong financial performance and disciplined execution.

We delivered a revenue growth of 29%, an EBITDA growth of 56%, and a PAT growth of over 100%. This growth was supported by balanced contribution from both the CRO and the CDMO businesses alongside continued operational efficiencies.

The CRO and the CDMO business for the year demonstrated a healthy growth rate: 24% for CRO and 33% for the CDMO business. Our revenue contribution from the top 19 out of the 25 global large pharma companies increased to 49% in FY '26 as compared to 28% in FY '22, demonstrating the steady deepening of our strategic relationships.

Our revenue mix continued to evolve in line with strategy, with increasing contribution from pharma clients across both segments. While the overall revenue growth in fiscal '26 was 29% as compared to 16% in FY '25, the year fiscal '26 witnessed a relatively even distribution of revenues with the split between H1 and H2 being 48% and 52% respectively, as compared to 40% and 60% in fiscal '25.

In addition, Q4 in fiscal '25 was skewed at 34% of the total revenues, as compared to 27% in fiscal '26. As we've often stated, the CRDMO sector is inherently characterized by a degree of quarterly lumpiness, particularly as projects transition across different stages.

While this will lead to periodic fluctuations in revenue and margin, as Krishna mentioned, the long-term opportunity for the CRDMO sector remains robust, and our integrated model with strong pharma relationships and technology investments position us well for sustained growth. We remain confident in our ability to sustain our long-term revenue growth guidance of 15-20% and EBITDA range of 28-30%.

As we enter fiscal '27, a key focus area for us is to invest in proactive capacity creation aligned with customer demand. In fiscal '26, we incurred a capex of 633 crores against a budgeted spend of 700 crores.

For fiscal '27, we expect capex in the range of 1,100 to 1,300 crores, split between CDMO at 65% and CRO at 35%. We expect to fund the capex through a mix of internal accruals and debt.

Our capex allocation will be split across capacity expansion, capability, and technology. 75% of the capex will go towards capacity expansion and the balance towards capability and AI and technologies.

At the same time, while we put these numbers of 1,100 to 1,300 crores, we will continue to calibrate the pace and the phasing of these investments in line with the evolving business environment and closely align the spend with our customers' strategic priorities and demand visibility. Importantly, our approach to capex remains science-led, as Krishna mentioned, rather than capacity-heavy, ensuring flexibility and higher long-term returns.

During the year, we navigated external headwinds, including increases in input costs and higher logistics costs and shipment delays arising from evolving geopolitical environment that is still continuing. At this point, we do expect some short-term impact on our cost structures.

We have approached our customers for appropriate cost revisions in certain areas. However, we believe that the recovery of these increases may not always be contemporaneous with the incurrence of the cost.

We continue to manage these challenges through operational efficiencies, strategic sourcing initiatives, disciplined execution, and ongoing engagement with our customers. In closing, I want to reiterate that we remain committed to disciplined growth, prudent capital allocation, and margin resilience.

Our balance sheet remains well-positioned to support the next phase of expansion, both in terms of debt and in terms of internal accruals that we're projecting. Near-term volatility can persist; our medium to long-term outlook remains strong.

With this, we'll be happy to take your questions.

Hi, team. Thanks for the opportunity.

My first question would be on the capex announcement that you've shared. We've seen a very sharp increase in capex from 200 crores or so that we did two years back to now taking it up to 1,300 crores.

Could you talk a little bit about what has given us the confidence for this level of jump in capex? Is there any one-off project that you are doing next year which is leading to this, or this sort of becomes our new level of capex?

Could you share thoughts on these points?

Binay, if you look at what we are indicating as capex a couple of years back, it was based on what we thought the demand was. If you look at the last 18 months or so, we've been getting more involved with customers across the value chain.

As we work with them closely, they're giving a better sense of what they would like us to look like and what volume they could potentially come in our direction on the discovery side. CDMO side, as we're getting into more integrated collaborations really being development partners, we're having greater visibility in terms of pipelines rather than waiting for RFPs to come through.

I think given what customers are telling us where we have to go in terms of technology, in terms of better visibility of what they have in the pipeline and what potentially can come our way, and what they want us to see in terms of other technologies coming in as building next-generation technology for ADC development, for changes in peptide development, in terms of high-throughput screening in biology to do more integrated programs, and in terms of the level of data exchange they need between us and them, and also just the visibility in terms of not only what they are giving us for development in pipeline, we are seeing a lot more of the programs than we have in the past, and that'll give us a better sense of what likely will translate probably 12-15 months down the road to commercial manufacturing. It's just better visibility and better engagement with our customers across both diversity of areas to invest in—like a new area was we were not very sure about what formulation would look like, but we're seeing a greater need for formulation development services early on.

There's a lot more new things we're getting from customers as we engage more and more with them. What is extremely clear is companies want to develop strategic partners in India at this point, and they want to see who will be relevant in the next five years.

They want to see partners who can understand, work with them, and build along with them. That's how we're playing this game at this point.

We have a lot of conviction behind these investments.

Thanks for that.

Hi, sorry for that. One thing I noticed in your presentation, you've added one more large pharma customer, right?

Earlier you were working with 18 of 25, now it is 19. Did I hear you correctly in the opening remarks, you said that you are now have a dedicated research sort of a tie-up for large pharma?

Because earlier we had it for—

No, that's not what we're talking about. What pharma has done, if you look at in the past, pharma never gave us late-stage opportunities for outsourcing and process development.

They generally used to give us lateral tech transfers. Over the last couple of years, several large pharma have started getting into FTE agreements for late-stage and mid-stage development.

It's not a dedicated facility or anything of that kind. It's just that these are dedicated FTEs we're running for large pharma between our global sites, both in India and Manchester, which has greater visibility into doing development of their mid and late-stage assets.

That's what we mean by that, as opposed to dedicated centers. They're dedicated FTE teams working on development.

I hope that clarifies that.

No, that's very clear. Lastly, could you comment a little bit about where the capacity will go with capex?

That's it from my side. Thanks.

Siva, I'll let Siva talk about the capacity where it's going.

I think, Binay, the capacities that we are adding today, I think our current capacities will take us to around the 1,150 kL capacity that we had mentioned as far as the bigger capacity expansion is concerned. What we are doing, a lot of this is actually going towards, one, investments in discovery; second, there is investments in development phase that is kind of adding to our cost numbers.

If you remember last year, we had mentioned to you that we had started the plan for going from 700 kL to 1,150 kL, and we said that the FY '26 capex will only take into account capex that will be incurred in that fiscal year, while both the plants will not get completed, a majority of the capex will also fall in this year. Capacity expansion, as I've mentioned earlier, out of the 1,100 to 1,300 crore capex direction that we have provided, 75% of that will actually go and satisfy capacity requirements; 25% will be for capabilities.

Thanks, team. Thanks.

Thank you for giving the opportunity and congrats to the management on good numbers. First question I have the CDMO segment have delivered more than 30% growth during FY '26.

What would be the outlook for '27, '28? While answering that, there are two data points from the PPT.

One is we have added two large pharma customers on the commercial supply side, as well as our commercial products have gone up from 30 to 34 from the last quarter. How these two, three opportunities on the commercial side in terms of the scale, as well as in what areas these commercial opportunities are?

Thank you so much.

Thanks. Amey, I think on the CDMO side, I think what we have stated is that we've stated that there are, I think even in the last conference call, we had mentioned there are three new products that have actually gone commercial, and we've added one more product since then, which makes it 34.

Some of them, at least a couple of them will see production and commercial revenue starting this year. Other question, Amey, you asked about is how is the growth prospect?

Now I think, as we start this fiscal year, we believe based on the visibility, we believe the growth will be strong, and we're confident about a good financial year at this point in time.

Sure. The second question I have on the margin front, we have given the guidance that we will aim to maintain margins in 28-30% range.

There are two headwinds for the margins: one is the RM cost inflation, which could be there next year, as well as the capex, which is getting commercialized at the end of the year or the second half of the year. How should we look at the next year particularly in terms of the margins?

Thank you.

Our stated or an aspirational margin is to remain around the 28-30%. I'll tell you two reasons for it.

One, with pharma, generally there's an open-book pricing. From what we've seen, and we've seen this across the Chinese companies operating at much larger scale, the margins tend to remain between the 25-30%, which is what we've seen.

Our pricing with pharma indicates that 28-30% is what is much more comfortable from a pharma pricing perspective. The second thing, I think, will there be an operating leverage as we scale up?

Yes, but there is also capacity coming in, and there's going to be some amount of inefficiency as you scale up new capacity, which would then add costs into the equation. That is also leads something that we need to take care of, and that's why we're giving you an aspirational guidance of 28-30%.

I know we've hit 30% this year, but we still want to leave you with this guidance, and this is consistent with what you've stated all through, including last quarter.

Sure. The last question if I can squeeze in on the CRO side, this is the second year, I believe, where we have delivered 20%-plus growth.

Over these years, the large pharma contribution or the big pharma contribution have consistently gone up. Is this contribution going up, is it incidental because the biotech funding has slowed down, or is it also strategic in nature, and should we expect this large, big pharma contracts to keep driving our CRO business going ahead?

Thank you so much.

On that, I'll take this question. I think they're two they're actually both at play, right?

One is strategic. I think large pharma is very clear that they want to build the India footprint.

I think the large pharma business did not exist in India a couple of years ago. There are only two, three large pharma who are actively doing med chem in India, I would say, as close as three years back.

Now every large pharma is looking at coming to India to do discovery. This will be a structural trend for the next few years in terms of as they pick partners.

Also, I think biotech is just going through a little bit of slowdown as well on the new company formation. We expect that to pick up in the next couple of years.

I think secular trend, you will probably see larger pharma coming in and filling the gap for the next couple of years, but biotech will come back in the next 24 months and give us secular growth. I think from that way, the industry is well-positioned to kind of short and long-term as where we are right now.

We are also at the early part of the spade, right? People are just coming with chemistry, but eventually the whole goal right now is to be fully integrated.

I think the opportunity is significant for us because our integrated story is something we've invested in on the biology and DMPK front, which should probably give us an advantage in terms of being a preferred choice going forward.

Sure. Thank you so much.

I will join the queue.

Hi. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Hi, team. In emerging modalities, many outsourcing relationships begin in discovery, but don't necessarily translate into late-stage clinical or commercial manufacturing.

I'm alluding to one of your other CRDMO competitors in India, Bangalore-based company. What precisely increases the probability that Sai retains a molecule across the lifecycle, and where do you still see the highest leakage points today?

That's my first question. Thank you.

I think there's a difference in how we have been built versus other companies. If you look at where we have been built from day one, we actually were a discovery company first, but then we took a gap in terms of discovery investment and went very heavy in terms of becoming a preferred commercial partner.

As we've become a preferred commercial partner, we also now in the last few years have become a preferred development partner. We right now are working with companies in all three areas, right: discovery, development, and commercial.

What is happening because we're integrated, there's a technology thing, right? Essentially what happens is when you're doing discovery, people are looking at newer technologies, like ADCs.

First-generation ADCs will be very different from next-generation ADCs. Whatever we are doing in discovery, the development teams also are doing development to kind of reflect what their new-generation ADCs look like and what the technologies are.

Because we are partners there as well and we are commercial partners, it's much easier for them because we are qualified by all three departments to work with them. Whereas other companies have not made that transition.

Either they're very manufacturing-heavy or discovery-heavy, and they overlap a little bit on the discovery side, a little bit on the development side. We're the only one only company really stitched all these together, and we're approved by all three of these areas.

That's our strength why we believe that we can retain majority of the molecules. That said, some molecules definitely leak out of us because either we don't have specific capacity, people want diversity, or they want to take the molecules in-house.

The chances of us retaining are higher than most other players at this point. That's how I would frame it.

Thank you, Krishna. That explains the whole scenario very well, thank you for that.

My second question is historically many CRDMOs scale revenue faster than organizational capability, which eventually creates execution fragility. In that context, as Sai increases integration across discovery, development, and manufacturing, where do you believe complexity is kind of compounding faster internally or fastest internally?

That is, complexity is compounding fastest internally, and what are the leading indicators you monitor before those kind of stresses show up in numbers or financially? Thank you.

That's a very broad question, but again, unfortunately, we're at a point right now that we are getting into a very interesting part, right? We're scaling capacity, we're scaling technology, and we're getting deeper into relationships.

I think what gives us the advantage to understand where the gaps are, because we are very deep into relationships and not doing one-offs, we get to have a much more visibility in terms of what we are doing from a performance standpoint. I think if you ask me where the key gap will be down the road is really figuring out how AI plays a big role in terms of bridging the productivity gap vis-a-vis India and other geographies, to speak, and getting the right talent pool who's next-generation ready in terms of working in the digital space because we believe AI is a great equalizer in terms of, one, is intellectual horsepower in terms of basically knowing what's going on everywhere, more rapid problem-shooting.

I think we're putting all the clues in place so we have a much better view of how to scale up, where the gaps are, and be proactive in terms of scaling up at this point. The idea is there's no magic bullet here rather than having your ears to the ground, talking to customers regularly, and this is a 24/7 business.

It's about every customer, every project, one day at a time, and that's how we are able to scale up. That's really how it works.

Siva, you want to add something to this?

I think to add to what Krishna said, right, I think the one advantage that we've seen, right, working with these large pharma companies gives you, and because you work with them closely, they actually train you, they work with you, they kind of teach you their thought processes, everything from setting up of a lab, setting up of experiments, how do you kind of train, what kind of things to look at, how do you kind of look at a problem, right? I think that kind of gives us that ability to understand things.

What we are doing to reinforce and kind of spend on this, we are just taking this as part of our learning. We've created our own what we call an internal Sai Academy that kind of reinforces this teaching not just to the team that is kind of involved with any particular program, to broad-base this across the organization.

This is now headed by a senior head of research from a large pharma who has now taken this full time as an activity so that this can be a focus area for us. That's how we kind of make sure we keep at technology and science that keeps changing every day.

Just kind of adding to that, right, one thing we keep talking about is that we're building a technology-led growth, we really are focused on building the foundation, just not trying to over-index in one area because we realize that if you over-index in one area, then you're really not building the foundation. We're very, very clear that we want to get the foundation right here, and that's where we're spending most of our effort.

Sorry, go ahead, you had another question.

No, that's sensible, Krishna. Thank you for that.

Just on that AI thing, is it homegrown capability, or is it something off the shelf that even the competitor can buy off the shelf? How do we plan to differentiate AI so that it adds to the real advantage?

Look,

I think it's a question of getting the framework ready for using AI, and there are a lot of tools coming in. One is obviously want to use the tools available, and you have to understand we're going to be restricted in terms of what we can use of customer data.

How much internal data we can use is going to evolve. Right now, we are looking at different external sources.

It's not a question of just integrated AI; it's a question of what is the long-term strategy of how you integrate across the board. It has to be a fundamental shift.

Cannot be, "I'm buying a single tool, and this is what's going to work." It's not a single tool.

It's a complete way of operation has to change. Right now, we don't know how it's going to evolve in terms of internal tools, what customers want from IP standpoint.

It's early days, but the idea is to make ourselves digital-ready to be able to plug and play different tools as they come in. Our core process themselves should be data-rich to give us the opportunity to evolve with as the tools evolve.

Thanks for taking my question. Just on the Sajal's question, actually on the new modalities, Krishna, possible to give a ballpark figure you're targeting for revenue contribution from new modalities by say FY '30, given they are right now sub-10%?

Right now, we're not in the position to give that information yet at this point. We're not that far along to be able to give predictions of what that will be.

Generally, what happens if you really look at the trend of CROs just to be put in perspective, right, we tend to basically follow whichever way the pharma companies are going. If you look at where pharma is going today, it's 50% pure small molecule, then the next 30% will be peptides, oligonucleotides, and ADCs.

That's what they consider biologics. 80% is going to be covered there.

Over probably a 5-7 year period from now, you'll see a similar mix purely from a not a Sai perspective, but anybody who plays in these areas, you tend to follow the customers from that standpoint if you look at the way the market is. That might flip, right?

In two years, people might say, "Peptides are useless, we go someplace else." It's very hard for us to forecast what it looks like because we're almost like we're following the customer, and that can switch anytime.

The important part of being a CRO in our opinion is to be a fast follower, be close enough to be able to change the trend, but not be on the bleeding edge where you're left with the dead investment. That's kind of how we look at it.

Understood. Of course, you've highlighted four of these key ones.

Just one key question there. There are a lot of low-hanging fruits, but where do you think you will potentially take a high market share?

Is it more peptides, or you're doing right now segments, you're limiting yourself to amditides and oligos. ADC side also, you said that you're evaluating clinical conjugation.

Which area do you think will be a possibly a big focus area of these four, and probably easy to do also?

Very hard to say at this point. I'd love to come in and give you that clarity.

I can't really give you the exact sequence of how that's going to go, right? It's hard.

Right now, honestly, we can't predict that at this point.

Is there an area where customers are asking you?

What's that?

No, I'm saying the whole thing is the

pipeline, right? It's clinical molecules, you never really know which one will go ahead, which one will come non.

There's going to be other things that be kind of influenced the number and the revenue. That's why it's a little difficult to kind of give you a specific growth rate or a number at the end of a particular period.

Understood. Just last one.

This is probably more like an industry-wide question. We've seen so many companies talking about these new areas, but very few investments going into biologic manufacturing.

Do you have any plans for that in future?

Look, we evaluate all options, and when we're ready to take a position, we'll kind of communicate. Obviously, we're evaluating every market at this point.

Obviously we are looking at all options, and even if you look at biologics, you decide where to play. Again, we are constantly talking to customers to see where the demand is, where the gap is.

As our strategy evolves, we'll definitely inform you guys how we look at it.

Understood. Thank you so much.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted a couple of quick clarifications.

One, the new technology revenue salience went down from 7% to 4%, which means in absolute terms also there is likely to have been sort of a decline on a year-on-year basis. If you could explain what caused that?

Was there a one-off earlier, or was there any particular project that did not go through from one stage to the other? If you could give us some color on that.

The second one was you mentioned about some of the capex being on AI. If you could tell us what's the nature of that AI capex that you're putting up, that'll be helpful.

Sure. I think on the first question, I think we've mentioned this even last time when we put up this number.

A lot of the work on the new modalities are not commercial from our perspective. They are in clinical pipeline.

When you work on clinical pipeline, you're going to have a campaign, and then you're waiting for another campaign. There will always be that swing.

This is the primary reason why CDMO businesses have revenue swings. It is primarily that, and it's not about one-off this time or one-off last year.

The second question on AI, I think Krishna addressed this, but I'll kind of give you the thought process that we have with respect to AI, right? The way we are thinking about AI, right, we need to look at our productivity, efficiency, and kind of scientific output that can be improved by using AI as technology that can aid and enable our scientists to do things faster.

That's the whole purpose of this AI definition. There are a few tools that are available from the market, but we're also building things within our overall system.

We are defining an AI canvas as we speak. This is kind of to make sure that the teams can get as much assistance, automation, analytics, all pulled in one direction in one set of information that the chemistry team leaders and leadership team can actually use at any point in time to kind of look, analyze, and kind of present data.

We're also with respect to the partnerships that we have with our large pharma, we're also trying to integrate with their systems and their needs in terms of what data that we will transmit and send out. That's the broad concept of the AI.

Sure. Sir, you also mentioned about some AI capex.

Is there any particular capex there, or did I miss hear that?

Anything that we are building or the tools that we are buying will be capex, and that's the AI capex.

Got it. Intangibles, software, and stuff.

Got it.

Yes.

Right. Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Hi. First question on the capex.

I think 1,300 is earmarked, but next year's cash flows could be anywhere around 600-700 crores. What will be the debt that we are planning?

Does this capex only include the 1,150 kL capacity, or we'll also start work on the greenfield? I think we have mentioned that we have acquired a land for a new greenfield site.

Sorry, your line is not very clear. Can you repeat your question, please?

The 1,300 crores that we have earmarked for capex, but our cash flows will be somewhere around 600-700 crores. We'll have to take debt, right?

How much debt are we planning to take to fund the capex? Does this 1,300 crore capex, is it only for the 1,150 kL brownfield expansion, or is it also for the greenfield that we will be starting the new land that we have acquired?

The 1,100 kL crores to 1,300 crores capex, I'm not going to give you the debt versus the cash flow number because that then means I'm trying to give you a projection. Based on where we see this number ending for fiscal '27, our debt-to-EBITDA ratio will be fairly healthy.

That's really what I believe. If I look at the capex spend itself, it will be for capacity also, including the 1,150 kL that we've talked about.

As we mentioned, 225 kL of that 450 kL capex will only get done in the second half of this year. The other capex is going to be much longer duration.

Most of the capex for the plant will actually happen in this year as opposed to last year. Plus, we're also adding capacity on the process development side, adding capacity in terms of fume cupboards and analytical and chemistry equipment.

We are also increasing our discovery capability and biology capability, both in terms of fume cupboards and equipment. This will all be there.

There will be slightly smaller capex on the new site. That new site will probably start towards late this fiscal year and early next year is how I see that capex starting to flow.

Okay. Second question, we've added four commercial molecules this quarter and five in the Phase III/pre-registration phase.

Can you highlight some of the high-potential ones and the corresponding therapy areas? Do any of them involve new modalities?

I think therapy areas are broad, there are multiple things that are there. When I say high potential, at least in my belief, there are at least three molecules that would show a good progress in this current financial year.

We have started manufacturing and delivering or starting to deliver revenue in fiscal '27 on at least three of the molecules that we've currently added into that pipeline. Of the four molecules, I would say three will have a pretty decent revenue growth and trajectory.

The fourth one in our opinion will be a smaller one, but it was a fairly important capability to acquire, and hence we've done this.

Okay. Just a follow-up then.

I think Krishna sir had indicated in a media interview that you might even look at acquiring new modalities or acquiring small pharma companies for the tech and for the new modalities. Anything that you're looking at?

We are open to options all the time. We evaluate deals as and when they get presented from the bankers.

At this time, we don't have an announcement to make, but as I said earlier, we continue to evaluate multiple deals all the time.

Got it. Thank you.

Hi, congratulations, sir, on great set of numbers. Sir, just one clarity on the capex side.

You said 25% of capex is in capability. Is it predominantly for our new modalities, and which is the key area that we are going to focus on?

It's not necessarily new modalities. This could be newer techniques even for small molecule.

For example, high-throughput experimentation is fairly new in terms of how things work, or a complete automation on a DMPK biology, which kind of end-to-end kind of gives you a different ability to kind of do precision biology and handle molecules at scale or volumes at scale. Those are the things.

It is capabilities in both sides: both small molecule and some new modalities. Sir, but

this would also include the capex for ADCs and peptides?

If you go back to our conference calls in the last year, I think we had stated that we are adding development capability on the peptide side. We probably will also at pilot scale.

This is coming up this year, we started the capex last year. Peptides is definitely included.

In the capex that we're talking about this year, we are adding some capability on the ADC side, but that's more discovery side. We have some thoughts, and we are working on the ADC on the development side.

We will come back to you as soon as we are able to make a public announcement on that.

Okay. Just one last question.

Even in the CRO business, we have seen that pharma is constantly a higher share of revenue compared to biotech companies. Do you see this increasing in the coming years?

How has been the pipeline, or how is the development from a biotech companies?

Can you repeat your question? Sorry, we're not able to understand clearly.

I'll take the question. I think we already answered the earlier part of the call, right?

It's just where the market dynamics are right now. I think biotech will always be a significant part of discovery.

I think long-term, the 50-50 ratio will hold. Short-term, there might be a imbalance in terms of pharma in maybe in the next couple of years, but long-term, biotech still is the development engine for large pharma.

We do expect that balance to maintain at 50-50 on the 50-50-ish long-term on the pharma versus biotech. It's just as a short-term, you will see pharma probably drive the growth, longer-term biotech will come back, but overall, the pie should get larger in the next couple of years.

I hope that answers your question.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I just have one question.

In your presentation, you have mentioned 15-20% revenue CAGR on a current revenue run rate of 2,000-2,200 crores with expected capex of 1,100 crores. Fair to assume the asset turn would remain in the similar historical range as it was?

I would see a little bit of a dip before it kind of comes back because we're doubling down on our capex. That's really what we have stated.

What we had committed, and we continue to commit this, is our asset turn on a net basis, installed capacity will be 1.2 to 1.4, but that's a medium-term commitment. We would see some fluctuations, but we continue to remain committed to the steady-state 1.2 to 1.4.

Look, and

I think the important aspect to understand is that no matter what capex you put in, it's going to take a two, three-year cycle to get back to that scale. It's not like you put in, it's going to be day one that revenue.

I think as much as we expect that as a long-term trend to maintain whatever we forecasted, but obviously there'll be a two, three-year ramp-up period to get there for any capex we put in.

Understood. Okay.

That's it from my side. Thank you.

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

Sir, my first question is generally the quarter four should be the strongest for our kind of business, right? In this quarter, we have seen year-on-year growth of only let's say about 4%.

Can you put some light on that, and okay, then I will ask my follow-up question.

I think, Akshay, I think I've answered that question in my opening remarks. What I was mentioning to you was if you look at our fiscal '25, and this has been the general trend even for Sai, we had a 40% in the first six months and a 60% revenue split in the second six months in fiscal '25, while in fiscal '26, even though we delivered close to a 30% growth, our revenues actually fell almost even.

We were 48-52. It's not about, and as we've always told you, this business cannot be ascertained on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

Kind of difficult to say when a PO becomes due and when the PO gets delivered, because this is not a business where you produce in anticipation. You produce only based on what the customer wants.

It just depends on how the PO is.

Sir. My second question is despite the heavy capex of anticipation of around 1,100 to 1,300 crore, are we confident of maintaining 28-30% margin in the this year this financial year and going forward?

Akshay, again, we've said this last year, we're continuing to stress this here. So, 28-30% is our steady-state aspiration.

That's really what we committed, and we actually committed we'll get there in 2-3 years time frame, and we've got into this 30% last year based on how we look at EBITDA. I believe that we will continue to aim for that same number.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.

I had a couple of questions. First one is we had set aside an amount of 1,100 to 1,300 crore as capex.

When do we expect it to come live?

A typical plant takes somewhere around 18 months or so to kind of complete construction. Depending on what project.

For example, we've started the 700 to 1,150 kL capacity expansion sometimes during middle of last year. We're expecting 225 kL to come this year and 225 kL next year.

Similarly, we had put up a capacity to double our process R&D capacity last year. Anything will take around 12-15 months time frame in terms of capacity.

Capex will be incurred in part in one year, and maybe the remainder will come in the second year. Now these are all brownfield expansions within sites that are already developed.

If it's greenfield sites, it's probably going to take you 24 to 30 months.

Okay. That answers my question.

The second one is is there a possibility that we could name some of our molecules and the end clienteles?

We will not be able to do that due to confidentiality restrictions.

Not even the clients is possible?

Clients

is definitely not possible.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Sir, first question, apart from the four commercial molecules that you added in FY '26, you also now have 11 Phase III or pre-registration molecules.

Now this number as of third quarter FY '26 was around six. Assuming there have not been any drop-offs or further additions, it seems that you have added about five incremental opportunities in Phase III or pre-registration.

Can you elaborate on which modalities would these be in, any technologies that you would like to call out?

Most of these, Alankar, we've identified one that is already there on the new modality, which we said is currently undergoing validation. There is probably one more on new modality, but the rest of them are all small molecule.

Some of it is coming from, I think, what Krishna was talking about, right, this whole integrated CDMO play that pharma wants to consolidate as they kind of look at long-term outsourcing partners in India. Customers who are probably not doing a lot of late-phase in India are looking to do some of those, which is also a result of some of these additions.

Got it. Out of these 11 molecules, sir, do you expect any to commercialize in FY '28?

Alankar, right now it's too difficult. Some of them have just moved.

Very, very difficult for us to predict, but as soon as we hear something, we'll definitely come back and provide that information.

Fair enough, sir. The second question is what is your view on the impact of AI on drug discovery?

You spoke about the investments, you spoke about the opportunities, but specifically on drug discovery, do you see that as a threat or an opportunity?

We see it as opportunity. I don't see it a threat.

Siva, go ahead if you—

No, no, go ahead, you finish, and then I'll add the next. Look,

I think it's a opportunity. I think at the end of the day, the synthesis part does not change, and the AI moieties are much more complex to make than regular synthesis.

Yes, you might make fewer molecules, but the resources needed to make the molecule are more than in the past. Plus, AI itself helps us be more efficient in terms of route design and better options.

I think net-net, I think my view of AI is going to be that you probably won't drop the R&D dollars, we do more with less for more targets. I think everybody we've talked to so far has indicated that the design part is what is going to be affected the most, not the synthesis part.

Synthesis part is going to be an important aspect of it. I think AI for us is a net positive because the complexity of the molecules are higher, and we don't see R&D dollars dropping in terms of what they want to do on the AI front.

Fair enough, Krishna. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you.

This has come right at the fag end. I have another call to catch up in 2 minutes, I'll be just brief.

I was intrigued by Krishna's statement about AI in terms of aiding the digital capability. I thought in specifically for pharma, AI probably would be a very potent research resource.

I'm from a non-science background, but whatever I understand, pharma drug discovery is much more of serendipity, some hard work, and some amount of luck, trying out zillions of molecules. AI along with quantum computing can tremendously accelerate that process and make the drug discovery process smoother and much, much faster and far more efficient.

I was a bit intrigued by AI merely as a digital capability rather than the fundamental core capability of the CDMO or CRMO organization.

I think may make Go ahead, Siva.

No, no, I think, see, I think the way we look at, there are two things, right? From our perspective, what we presented to you is what we can do without impacting confidentiality and IP of our customers, right?

That is what we can do within AI. If you look at AI on the drug discovery side, right, I think if you really look at, AI today has been great at generating molecules, right?

It gives you novel binding targets and things like that, but that's the probably the least expensive part of drug discovery, right? If you really look at programs actually succeed or fail, and the bottleneck is actually when they move from preclinical to clinical.

There are many things that today success of a program actually hinge on judgment calls, right? AI will get you efficiency, gains in enrollment, and all of that stuff.

There is so many things that the model today is not yet trained. I'm not saying 5 years, 10 years down the road how they will behave, but today it is attacking the probably the lower cost piece of AI and the lower complexity part of AI, right?

There is definitely software is giving you great output, workflow optimization, etc., but I think the whole development side or synthesizing a molecule that is kind of super complex because AI has created things without a constraint is creating more work on that side. That's really what we're talking about.

I just want to add a little bit to that, right? I think we're not saying digitalization, but if AI you're talking about quantum computing just in terms of discovering what molecule to develop, right?

Now you're synthesizing a molecule, you're scaling up the molecule. AI will help you design the molecule, synthesis route itself is better, will give you better translation from lab to plant.

There's a lot more AI which goes beyond digital. AI is inbuilt into everything.

You have become AI-native company, but what I say digital is getting to be enabled to handle AI is as in unless you get the platform right, you won't able to apply tools across the board. AI is just not related to just discovery of new molecules.

It's a question of increasing efficiency of scaling up every molecule as they go commercial and reducing the timeline. I hope that is clear.

We're not talking about digitalization here. We already are completely digital company ahead of the curve.

We're talking about how to take that data and increase your accuracy and speed in terms of scaling it up, and what's the correlation between lab data to plant data and so forth. I hope that gives you a little more clarity as we're talking about this.

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Hello, is it better now?

Yeah. Sir, thank you for the opportunity first.

I would like to begin with congratulating the company on the good set of annual numbers. I had a question regarding the CRO business.

It's more of a bookkeeping kind of question. I just wanted to understand how many scientists do we have in the discovery or the CRO business, and what was the similar number in FY '25?

We don't provide discovery, CMC scientists. We have scientists across discovery and CMC.

I think we've provided this numbers as part of our annual disclosure, and you will see that number.

Understood. On the second question, I think you did answer it a bit earlier, but nonetheless I'll confirm again.

The 1. the 1,100 to 1,300 crore capex outlay, large part of it is going towards the 1,150 kL expansion plan, right?

The 75% of this FY '27 guidance.

75% is going to capacity, but it's not necessarily the 700 to 1,150 only, right? There are also capex that for discovery, for R&D capability, fume cupboards, all of that stuff included.

Understood. That's it from my side.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I thank you for the call. As we mentioned, we believe as we enter fiscal '27, we believe that the trend in terms of outsourcing with respect to the CRDMO remains very robust, and we believe we are positioned well to kind of capitalize on this growth.

Krishna, you want to add something for closing comments?

I think it's very exciting time. I think India in general and for Sai as well.

I think this multi-year trend nothing has changed dramatically. I think India is going to definitely become a very strategic player in terms of the global supply chain over the next 5 years.

I think the trend is good, and we are well-set to benefit from this opportunity at this point.