Welcome to Business Outlook
Related Articles
Profit and sales up in Oct-Dec
Beximco Pharma saw its profit soar about 35 per cent between October and December of last year to Tk 114.1 crore as the local drugmaker continues to make the most of the unprecedented public health crisis thrown up by coronavirus.
The quarter’s taking takes Beximco Pharma’s profit in the first half of its 2020-21 financial year, which runs from July to June, to Tk 222.6 crore, up 29.8 per cent year-on-year.
The pharmaceutical giant, which is supplying the Bangladesh government with 30 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine by Serum Institute of India (SII) logged in sales of about Tk 747.4 crore during the quarter, up 20.6 per cent from a year.
This takes its total sales in the first half of the financial year to Tk 1,440 crore, up 15.2 per cent from a year earlier.
The higher sales numbers are not at all unexpected.
Back in May last year, when the world was gripped by fear of the rogue virus that jumped out of Wuhan, China, the company grabbed grabbing headlines globally for being the first company to market remdesivir, the antiviral drug that showed promise then in treating COVID-19 patients.
The company exported the drug as well as other medications to treat Covid-19 to a host of countries. It has been supplying the medications at home, too.
Subsequently, its profit and sales are scaling new highs.
It is no surprise then shares of Beximco Pharma have been on the rise since June after the Dhaka bourse resumed from the 66-day recess in line with the government’s countrywide general shutdown to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Since then, Beximco Pharma’s stock price soared more than two-and-a-half times. Yesterday, they closed at Tk 188.1, in contrast to Tk 70.3 on June 1, when trading resumed at the bourse.
Beximco Pharma declined to comment for the report.
(DT)
