Syngene International Limited (SYNGENE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this call to discuss Syngene's Third Quarter and 9-month Results for FY 2025. To discuss the financial and business performance for the period, we have on this call today, Mr. Jonathan Hunt, Syngene's Director and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Deepak Jain, Chief Financial Officer. After the opening remarks, Jonathan and Deepak will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Before we begin, I would like to caution that comments made during this conference call today will contain certain forward-looking statements and must be viewed in relation to the risks pertaining to the business. The safe harbor clause indicated in the investor presentation also applies to this conference call. The replay of this call will be available for the next few days, and the transcript will be made available. With this, I now turn the call over to our Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Jonathan Hunt.

Thank you, and thank you to everybody for joining the call today. As always, my remarks will cover an overview of the key financials and market trends for the quarter, before getting into any operational or strategic highlights. I'll then hand over to Deepak to provide a more detailed insight into the financials in his remarks, both for the quarter and for the first 9 months of the year. We're pleased with the performance in the third quarter, return to growth. And I think it sets us on the right trajectory for the rest of the financial year. Reported revenue from operations for the quarter came in at INR 944 crores, up 11%. We benefited from a favorable exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the rupee. That resulted in approximately an 8% increase in revenue from operations in constant currency terms or 3% FX benefit. Looking at the growth sequentially. Revenue from operations increased by 6%. I think that's an indicator that things are moving in the right direction. Operating EBITDA was up 23% to INR 284 crores. So we delivered good operating leverage with the operating EBITDA margin increasing by around 300 basis points so that came in at 30.1% for the quarter. Reported profit after tax after exceptional items for the quarter was up 18% year-on-year to INR 131 crores. This reflects good underlying performance and despite the tax-related one-offs that you'll hear more from Deepak shortly. So during the quarter, there were signs, I think, of stabilization in the U.S. biotech funding environment. That said, the market didn't recover as quickly as we'd anticipated when we set our guidance at the beginning of the year. So while we called the return to growth in the direction of travel, I think correctly, the timing feels 8, 12 weeks off. So we'll cover more of that when we comment on expectations for the full year. But back to growth in the quarter, directionally in the right way, took a little bit longer in the year than I anticipated when I first set the guidance at the beginning of the year. Discovery Services contributed to the growth in revenue in the quarter as well, marked by collaborations with mid and large pharma companies on pilot projects. Last quarter, we had quite a discussion around biopharma companies looking for alternatives to China as they rebalance their supply chains. They're partnering through pilot projects, and they're using these as a way to select their longer-term partners. During the quarter, the initial pilots converted through for us into longer-term contracts. And of course, they then have the opportunity to contribute to growth next year. The performance of development and manufacturing services remained steady driven by biologics with repeat orders from existing customers and also through new collaborations on integrated projects that cover anything from drug development to clinical stage manufacturing. So to conclude, performance in Q3 was positive with a return to growth, good momentum across the business divisions that puts us on the right track for the next quarter. We've made good progress on our strategic priorities, and I think we're moving in the right direction to gain in that longer-term China-Plus-One journey. So with that, let me hand over to Deepak, and he'll give you more detail on the financials.

Thank you, Jonathan. Good evening, everyone. Let me walk you through our third quarter performance, followed by a review of the 9-month results and an update on our outlook for the fiscal. As we had indicated in the year, we expect growth momentum to build the second half of the year, and Q3 marks the return to growth on a year-on-year basis. As highlighted by Jonathan, growth during the quarter was driven by performance across all divisions. Operating EBITDA margins came at about 30.1% for the quarter compared to 27.5% in the previous quarter and 27.1% in the same quarter last year. Operating EBITDA margins benefited from lower material costs during the quarter which as a percentage of revenue from operations, declined from 27.8% to 25.2% in the third quarter. This was driven by a change in the business mix and some efficiency gains. Material costs are likely to be in the range of 26% to 28% as we had guided earlier. Staff cost. Staff cost increased by 14% year-on-year, primarily driven by salary increments and recruitment in skill areas needed to build capabilities in the business. With a focus on deployment of energy efficiency measures, renewable energy now comprises 96% of our total energy consumption. Other direct costs remained flat during the quarter as compared to the same quarter last year. Moving on to other operating costs, which increased by 18% year-on-year, largely driven by investments in digital initiatives, maintenance and upkeep of expanded facilities and infrastructure. This broadly remained the same as a percentage of revenue through this year at around 13%. Turning now to treasury and our hedging performance. Revenue for the quarter was hedged at around INR 85.3 per dollar. The average spot rate during the quarter was lower at about INR 84.8, resulting in a hedge gain. As a reminder, we hedged most of our sales for a 12-month period. Hence, any change in spot rate, while is reflective of in the revenue, gets adjusted in the hedge rate as a hedge gain or loss in the P&L. The company saw a hedge gain of INR 2 crores against a hedge loss of INR 12.4 crores in the third quarter of the previous year. Operating EBIT was up 42% year-on-year, supported by a stable depreciation cost of about INR 109 crores, similar to the last year. Interest expense increased by 15% year-on-year due to an increase in lease liabilities. Other income for the quarter was INR 18 crores compared to INR 29 crores in the previous year, which included a one-off item relating to income tax refund amounting to INR 15.8 crores in the same quarter last year and INR 2.5 crores in quarter 3 of FY '25. Moving to income tax. During the quarter, the company chose to settle income tax dues for prior year amounting to INR 9.5 crores under Vivad Se Vishwas scheme. With facilities coming out of the favorable tax base created by the SEZ status adjusted for prior year taxes I mentioned, the reported effective tax rate stood at 22.2% against 19.3% in the same quarter last year. Reported profit after tax before exceptional items increased by 14% after exceptional items grew by 18% to INR 131 crores. Turning to performance in the first 9 months of the year. Revenue from operations was up 2% year-on-year in reported currency, flat in constant currency as early softness in the first half of the year was offset by the recovery in the third quarter. This growth was marked by return to growth in Discovery Services division as well as continued growth in the Syngene CDMO divisions with increased traction in biologics. Despite decline in revenue and EBITDA in the first half of the year, the third quarter revenue growth and improvement in margins enabled us to report flat year-on-year EBITDA for the 9-month period. The operating EBITDA margin stood at 26.6% compared to 27.1% in the same period last year. While raw material costs benefit from gain efficiencies in biologics, investments in people, digitization initiatives in addition to decline in revenue in the first half of the year impacted margins. The trend of operating expenses in the first 9 months of the year broadly reflects that of the third quarter. Reported PAT after exceptional items decreased 3% year-on-year to INR 313 crores due to an increase in depreciation on account of investments made in the last 12 months and a decline in interest income due to lower cash balance as we utilize the cash to acquire biologics unit from Stelis Biopharma in quarter 3 of FY '24. We continue to invest in the expansion of capacities and capabilities in technological advancements to drive long-term growth. Over the first 9 months, we invested a total CapEx of around USD 34 million, approximately 50% in research services and approximately 25% in biologics to upgrade Unit 3, the manufacturing facility that we acquired last year. We continued our investments in digitization and automation, which we believe are essential for increasing efficiencies in our business. We maintain a strong balance sheet. And after meeting our CapEx for the quarter, we have a net cash of INR 838 crores as of December 2024. Finally, let me say a few words about guidance. Revenue trajectory in the first half of the year was as anticipated. The third quarter performance was back to growth after 3 quarters of decline. The growth observed in the quarter indicates that market dynamics, particularly within the U.S. biotech sector are stabilizing. As mentioned by Jonathan, the recovery in demand, which was expected in the second half of the year, experienced delay of approximately 8 to 12 weeks. We saw initial pilot projects with large and midsized pharma companies starting to convert in the longer term -- into longer-term contracts. We're also seeing positive momentum in the CDMO division led by Biologics. We expect the growth momentum to continue in the fourth quarter of this financial year. Despite challenges faced in the first year, we expect to close the full year with single-digit revenue growth and a flat PAT. As communicated in the last quarter, we expect operating EBITDA margins recovery to continue in the fourth quarter, which should lead to a full year margin around the same as last year in the high 20s as we have guided previously. Our CapEx program for the year remains on track at around $60 million by the end of the year. While we remain cautiously optimistic, we continue to focus on executing in line with our strategies and are investing in the right capacity and capabilities to position the company for future growth. I will now hand it back to the operator, and we will take a few questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from the line of Shyam Srinivasan from Goldman Sachs.

Just on the revenue guidance cut, right? So I think earlier we had high single-digit growth. I know it started with a range, high single digit to low double digit. Now we have come to say -- can I assume it's like mid-single-digit dollar like 5%? I'm not asking you to pin down a number. But just trying to see this trajectory of revenue revisions downwards? If you could help us understand -- I know the qualitative comment around 8 to 12 weeks. But in terms of when we started the year versus now, what's been the biggest miss for us in terms of expectation versus reality? And two, also, if you could also help us give the split of the businesses between CRO and CDMO, research versus CDMO? Has there been a mix shift in the 9 months or maybe in the forecasted 12 months so that we can get essence of where the weakness is higher or lower. So those are my 2 questions?

Yes. No, good, Srinivas, and I shall try and color in a bit more and help you think about it. I mean what I was trying to get at with my comments. Our guidance at the beginning of the year is 2 sets of forecasts really, isn't that? Because I have to take a view on what we think the rate of recovery in the U.S. biotech funding and then flow through to expenditure market is, and then I had to try and take a view on what we think our share within that market is. And I think the comments I was leading you to is the rate of stabilization in the biotech funding took longer in the year than what we've included in our original guidance. I was hopeful that we would -- that it would stabilize clearly in 2Q, and I think it stabilized more in 3Q. If you actually look at our ability to win share in that, it looks on plan to what I originally expected, just phase shifted by those 8 to 12 weeks. So that's what the coded language, if you're decoding what were we seeing in the press releases and the comments was exactly that. It's good to be back into growth in the third quarter, plus 11%. I just think that the external environment stabilized a little bit later in the year than I had originally baked into our guidance when we gave it. And then I'm sure as the earnings seasons go through, you'll read that across into the performance of others and others' comments and we'll all piece together the jigsaw at the end of the earnings cycle. As to the split, I think -- and again, this is intuitively embedded in it. If it's U.S. biotech funding, it's more likely to be in research because that's what they spend their money on when they raise it. So -- and I think that's probably true. Does that help?

Yes. So maybe you put this number out only once a year. So fair to assume like 100, 200 basis points of that 60% has actually come off, right? I would imagine -- we're trying to assess the decline in the CRO business. I think that's what we're trying to assess, Jonathan?

Yes. And well, it's growing. It grew in the third quarter.

Understood. And last question, just macro. There's been a delay in the whole U.S. Biosecure Act being cleared by -- so I'm not asking you to comment on legislation, but from a conversion of these projects, like you said, there's a pilot project that has been converted. Has there been any behavioral change or are people now reluctant to kind of -- or there is the urgency to move things out of China, let's assume. Has that reduced? So any comments on that would be helpful.

Look, yes, well -- and again -- I don't know what would -- a terrible thing to do, the CEO asking the analyst a question rather than the other way around. Look, how would you interpret what -- all the comments I've made throughout the year and the year before and things like Biosecure. I think I've been fairly constant in saying, at best, it's the cherry on the top of the cake. It isn't the cake. It's as much or more so about pandemic learning, COVID supply chains. It's around structural rebalancing around, it's about risk committees. I think I and many other CEOs have not placed the emphasis of single-point emphasis on, it's the Biosecure Act. Now if you're using that as a shorthand for the whole thing, I get it. But the big change in the Biosecure Act was the moment that they took the implementation deadline from, you've got to get it done in 12 months to, you got to get it done in 8 years, because that happened over a year ago. And again, that's the third quarter I've made that comment, I think. It feels like it anyway. So I don't think it's that. I think it's more structural. Here's a good word for you. It's more tectonic -- like plate tectonic. It's going in one direction. It's powerful, but it's slow moving, steady moving, however, you interpret tectonic. That's what I've been trying to say to you all year. And I said it on public daises, I said it on conference calls. In most industries, that would be considered to be a reasonably positive structural tailwind that was going to play out over -- again, I'll go back to the last 2 quarters. This will play out over many years, not over weeks. So there you go Srinivas. You've got me in a talkative mood and I've colored in as much as I can. Does that help? So that's what I think is going on across the industry. So -- and that's good. That's a positive for the Indian industry is to how that sort of structural dimension to it.

Next question is from the line of Chirag Dagli from DSP Mutual Fund.

Jonathan, you've talked about positive momentum in the CDMO division led by the Biologics. Does this mean that the new facility, which is going to come on stream, you already have customers for that? And how should we think about the ramp-up of that capacity as and when it comes on stream?

Super question. No, it doesn't mean that, but no, it doesn't mean that, as I made no comment on it. The whole point we were telling you about the acquisition of that facility, we were running out of capacity because of the rate of growth we've seen over the last 2 or 3 years in our Biologics. We were getting close to me being concerned if we continue at this growth, we would have to turn clients away because we won't have capacity. That prompted us to think do we accelerate our internal build-out and that still left us with an overhang risk, which was you can't build plants that quickly. And then we saw a good opportunity, which I think was good value. We paid cents on the dollar for that facility, and we've invested. And then we told you, look, don't start plugging anything into your models. It's 12 months just for us to do the renovation and the retooling and reengineering, and that 12 months is not yet. That ends this quarter, and we're on track. So all that happens probably in April is that, that facility is ready to do work for clients that want to place work there and then we're into the selling cycle. But I'm going to look across my finance colleagues and know if I'm getting this right. The life cycle on a plant like that is 20, 30 years. So we'll start -- we're showing it and we'll sell it and we'll try and sell capacity. But I don't know, I'm not a big believer in hockey stick moment in any sort of business. Does that make sense?

Understood. No, no, fair point. Other question was Jonathan, we've spent 2 years now with single-digit kind of growth, FY '24 and '25. And you always articulated the reasons well. The question is the next 2 years or maybe 3, how different should they look versus the last 2 where we spent single-digit while we continue to invest in the business for the longer term. But revenue growth is...

I get it. And you know I'm not going to give you a 2-year guidance outlook at the third quarter results. But let's just minimize into quarter, shall we? Minus 2% last quarter, minus 2% the quarter before, plus 11% this quarter. You can triangulate as Srinivas did from Goldman's in his first question, what does it mean for the full year. The fourth quarter, I think, feels like the third quarter. So there you go. You can -- I'm not prepared to go into next year, but at least I told you a bit about what I think is happening this quarter and next. We're back into growth. We'll update you in April when I've had a chance to really have a look at the annual operating plan. But I see very similar patterns. If I look across either our Indian peer group or I look broadly, we don't look dissimilar. If anything, we went into the slowdown a little bit later than them. We've come out of it maybe a quarter earlier than many of them, but we've all largely experienced the same, I think, slowdown in research because of slowdown in biotech funding, and therefore, slowdown in expenditure. And I think it's stabilized. We'll see whether it's -- how much it rebounds.

Understood. And the last, just bookkeeping, if I may. What is your employee strength and scientific talent pool strength?

I need to look it up, but we don't -- we publish it once a year in the annual report. It's largely unchanged. There's some very good scientists, though.

So it's largely unchanged from the March '24 number as on today?

I think so, but I'd have to go and look it up. It's not something that we report quarterly.

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of Alankar Garude from Kotak Institutional Equities.

Sir, one question on the technology bit or the capabilities bit. Now, out of the various capabilities, technologies such as, say lyophilization, flow chemistry, column chromatography, which we offer. Which ones would you say are our forte? And similarly, I mean, which would be the technologies where you think that there is some catching up to do in terms of the depth of our offering?

You broke up. Which was our what? What was the -- foray -- sorry. No, it wasn't you. The phone glitched and I couldn't figure out what you said -- forte. Well, clearly, we think we do a good job in large molecule biologics whether it's discovery development or manufacturing of those. In the small molecules, actually, all of the things that you listed as sort of core competencies, we're right in the middle of the pack. We're very solid on our small molecule development and manufacturing. And then once you went to the research services, remember, research is still the -- so historically, it's also the biggest part of the business. You're right on the frontier of many things, whether it's some of the advanced techniques in biology or in chemistry. I think we're doing some really good innovation work. But if you roll it back to strategy, our intention is to be broad enough on our scientific capabilities, that we can meet the needs of a large proportion of the market, particularly recognizing that a lot of our customers also have large scientific footprints. And they don't want to be having -- managing a multiplicity of partners. They quite like that they have one-stop shopping, they can align culturally operationally and they get everything that they need. So we're intentionally broad scientifically.

Understood. The second one is more of a clarification. Now last month, in December, there was this FDA letter, which came for Librela. This is not really a new issue. But just wanted to understand, get confidence from you whether that $50 million number -- annual number, do you foresee any risk to that at all?

I couldn't comment on the FDA letter. I mean, that's a question for Zoetis. I'll go right the way back. The $50 million I think what I actually said at the time was, because it was an answer to your question, how do you want us to think about this? And I said $500 million over 10 years will average around $50 million a year. Beyond that, we don't correlate individual quarters or months of production, partly because it's clearly competitor sensitive to our client. I don't think they would want us disclosing that to their competitors. But yes, my understanding is it's doing well in the marketplace, and we're very happy with our relationship.

So essentially on that $500 million number, you don't foresee any risk as of now?

I don't think I said that. I -- but then, I don't know as a CEO, you're not a professional risk. I don't know what it would be. I spend a lot of time worrying about what could go wrong to make sure it doesn't go wrong. Please don't misinterpret that. I'm not making any suggestion around that. But you did ask me a question to prognosticate for another 8 years. I don't think I could do that. But today, the relationship is good. The product is doing well, I understand. Certainly, our delivery and manufacturing has been good and continue to get better. Very happy to have that relationship. I hope to do a lot more with Zoetis with other animal health companies and with human health companies.

We'll take our next question from the line of Madhav Marda from Fidelity International.

My first question was on -- if I understand right, and correct me if I'm wrong here, that we have 2 facilities. One is the one which we acquired and one of the Mangalore API facility. Both of them seem to be running lower on the utilization side. So just what I wanted to understand is how much of a drag does that have in our profitability given that there might be operating deleverage that we are facing with those sites currently. So if you could give us some sense to probably understand the underlying business?

Just a basic construct to the question. No, we don't have just 2 facilities. We have an entire manufacturing campus facilities here at our main campus in Bangalore. Round the corner, we've got Unit 3, which we've added, which is a large molecule one. We've got a campus with more than one block over in Mangalore. I -- yes, so to some extent, your question is a derivative to the construct of the question.

No, my point was that these 2 facilities are the ones which are a bit underutilized currently, right, where one -- where we are renovating the site and one where...

Well, it's not unutilized. One of them hasn't opened yet. [indiscernible] unutilized.

Exactly. So what I meant was -- my simple question was how much of a cost, very broadly, are we incurring at these 2 sites, so we can get a sense of the underlying business profitability given that initially, as you scale up the plants, you might be incurring some OpEx at both the facilities, right?

Yes. Love the question. I'm not sure we've ever given that level of detail. I'm looking at my finance colleagues. Is there anything hopefully I can do. I mean you've got turnkey operations in there. So whatever you need to bring a facility up to speed, it won't be an enormous amount. But beyond that, I'm not sure I can give you that level of color. You're very welcome to have another question if you want to because I don't think I gave you the answer you were looking for.

We'll take our next question from the line of Bharat Sheth from Quest Investment.

Sir, I want to understand how do we integrate currently AI...

Bharat, I'm sorry. There's a lot of disturbance on your line. Can you use your handset mode?

I am on handset. Is that clear now?

Yes. Please go ahead.

I want to understand, how do we -- how much we integrate the IT on the research side, expedite as well as AI part side. So if you can give some color on our road map for the same?

Super question. Gosh, we could be here until midnight if we really talked about it. It's quite an exciting area. We do do it. So we have within the company -- of course, our own AI informatics and sort of digital research, if you think of it that way, group. What we try...

I'm sorry, sir. Sir, you're not audible. Yes, Bharat please stay connected. Jonathan sir?

Yes. Am I audible?

Yes, yes. Please go ahead.

All right. Super. As I was saying, good question. There's an awful lot of excitement and the [indiscernible] is being written every day around Gen AI, AI application in all walks of life. And we're making good progress on that journey. We have those sort of decision support tools already operating in the company. Whether it's use of things like AlphaFold, you'll have read about that, to help you predict how proteins fold and therefore, help you in drug discovery. Whether it's AI augmentation of scientific decision-making, we have algorithms that will go and look at all of the scientific literature in the world and help our scientists understand what's already known, so they can add to it with new innovations. We have digital ways of helping us predict DMPK distribution properties. So it's real. I don't know. I think it's a little bit like the moment where the world started talking about the Internet and then just not being able to live without it. Certainly, I find in my home with my youngest son. He can barely breathe unless he had access to the Internet. And I think that's what we're going to see in the world of work. We'll build those AI tools into everything we already do scientifically. Does that help? I'm not sure I told you anything specific other than what we're doing things.

Yes. But if you have to think of from, say, 2, 3 years perspective, how do you think that can really benefit on the efficiency side or bringing down cost. So any color do you have at this moment or like to wait?

Yes. Certainly, if you find ways of doing things quicker, I think the real issue in innovation -- let's split it between the innovative bit of the company, finding new drugs, creating new knowledge and then the rest of it. And the innovation bit, you just want to help you make the right decision more often, make the right decision quicker, have a higher degree of confidence in your scientific decision-making. So it won't necessarily make it cheaper, but it will make it more value creating because those are the magic moments in drug discovery. It's an intuitive breakthrough that you validated. It's proving that something works. So it's a lot around decision support. And then I think if you come into the rest of the business, like many companies, I don't know you'll end up with AI bots looking at your finance, your accounts, you press release, your admin, your contracts. And there, you'll just try and industrialize white-collar work and augment it digitally, and that will drive down -- drive up speed, drive down cost. But I think that's a journey that all businesses, yours including, I would imagine, would go through and those sort of things. And then the last bit for us actually scientifically, it bridges from manufacturing into the labs. It's around automation. How do you try and link various machines together so that you don't have that human intervention and therefore, you can go a little bit quicker or with certainty. And we do that sort of thing everyday. That's now sort of a business-as-usual task to see how we can try and automate various processes within the business.

Okay. I have one question for Deepak. Sir, in the initial remarks, you said that we take the hedging for the 12 months. Is it fair understanding, in the rolling 12 months or for our financial year only?

No. We're just talking about the financial year.

Financial year, okay. So again, I mean say next hedging will be at a little higher rate than what we already have, correct?

You're talking about hedges or you're talking about the financials?

No, no. Hedging. The question was, do you hedge once every 12 months? Or do you hedge every day for a rolling forward view of 12 months?

We do a rolling forward view hedging. I thought your question was around financial.

Just let me summarize, there's no confusion that we caused hedging forward view, 12 months. But rolling, so we updated in real-time. We're always -- forward book goes 12 months and hedging fund [indiscernible].

[Operator Instructions] We'll take the next question from the line of Neha Manpuria from Bank of America.

Jonathan, based on your comments that there is a structural need by innovators to look at alternate location to China. Is there any investment you think we need to make to increase our commercial footprint in order to get that business with the competitive dynamics changing globally?

I think we've done quite a bit of that. So if you look at 2 levels, either at a capacity level, and I'll go back to the earlier discussions you were asking me about when is Unit 3 Stelis coming online. That's just making sure we've got the capacity headroom in place to enable future growth because we were running out of capacity. And on the commercial piece, and I assume the earlier question about what's the latest headcount was digging into this. The 14%, if I'm looking -- I got that right, 14% increase in the salary bill. Some of that is going into new capabilities and some of that will be in commercial. We -- our sales force structurally over recent years, we now have more of the staff living in the West close to clients, and I think that's advantageous for us. Net-net, it's more expensive on a per person basis. But they spend less time traveling to the U.S. because they live there already and they're much closer to their customers, and that gives them more selling days in a year. And often, it gives them the opportunity to build closer relationships. So I think we've done some of that already.

Okay. And would this addition be more in the recent years? Or it's -- I understand you would have been obviously investing this, but has that focus increased, that investment increased, let's say, in the last few quarters with this entire noise around Biosecure et cetera, whether it happens or not?

No. Again, you're going to take me back to what I said, that entire noise about the Biosecure. I tried really hard at the beginning of the call. It's more structural than the Biosecure. It started over the last 24 months and certainly was in place over the last year. You can see that in our margins and our costs. But it's good. It's the right thing to do. If we want more connect, more face time with customers, we've got to be prepared to invest in it.

And just an extension to that question, some of our peers have argued that it's an advantage to have, let's say, manufacturing or R&D facilities closer to customers. Would that be a direction that you could think at from a capital allocation perspective in the next few years? Or is that something that you think the way we are structured now with our capacities in India makes more sense for Syngene?

Good question. I'm going to give you a strategic answer, but as long as you promise not to misinterpret it as -- because I would never comment on M&A. I've never known any exact say, yes, let me tell you about the secret thing that we're working on. So don't misinterpret that. I think there are elements where if you can get unique talents that you can't get in one geography of the world, that are in another. And that doesn't necessarily mean Europe, it could be -- I can't get this in Japan, so I buy it in Europe. I can't get in Europe, so I buy it in the U.S. That would be one strategically sensible reason. The other one, if there was particular requirements from a customer point of view. And you'll know this, if you look across the pharma industry, particularly on innovative drugs, customers historically are much more comfortable doing drug product final formulation in region. So you tend to get more of the drug product made in the U.S. for consumption in the U.S. You get drug product made in Europe for consumption in Europe. Once you go back to API, so drug substance, then into intermediates, RSMs and KSMs, people are less concerned around where it's made as long as it's made to quality and standard and cost. And you can see that. I mean, the whole Indian generics industry and the Indian API industry has been founded and there's benefit on that. India tends to do well on KSMs, RSMs, intermediates into some drug substance, but most of the drug product in the world is made in the regions where it's consumed, so whether it's Japan or in Europe or in the U.S. So you can get -- I think there are good reasons why sometimes you'd want to be in one region. Equally, don't miss that there are a lot of Western companies at the moment thinking I wish I wasn't in the West, I wish was in Asia. India looks good. Large population, supply of talents, labor cost arbitrage, good knowledge around chemistry and science in general. So I think our industry group, whether it's Syngene or my peers here in India are also a benefit. Sometimes, it's good to be in a particular region. Does that make -- does that help you?

Yes, that's helpful. And one last quick question, if I may. Our Baxter dedicated service contract was supposed to get over in 2024 -- expire in 2024. So is that renewed? Is it up for renewal? Any update on that?

I just would never comment at an individual client level, but we have a good relationship with Baxter and I know we've done good work for them over the recent year. But there's an element of proprietariness for each individual client about not commenting on what they do and don't do.

We'll take our next question from the line of Kunal Dhamesha from Macquarie.

So first question is on the momentum of RFPs, which used to be quite high, at least in the first half of the year. While we are seeing some conversion or we'll see some conversion of the RFP, but how has the RFP momentum behaved in Q3 for us and, let's say, the start of the year?

Good question. I'm really hesitant -- I'll tell you what's going through my mind. When I answered that earlier in the year, I said let me give you a point of color because somebody asked me a question. But please don't expect us to report on this like a statutory reporting item from now on and everybody -- you all promised me that you wouldn't do that. So no real change particularly. I'm trying to get away from it's a leading indicator. It was meant to give you a sense that there are people that are looking to rebalance their supply chains, whether it's from China or whatever or coming out of the U.S. because of the Inflation Reduction Act, and we are out there in front of the client. I'd go back to our revenue. Third quarter was up 11%. That's after 2 quarters of decline, minus 2%, minus 2%. We called that we would return to growth in the second half of the year, took a little bit longer than expected, largely around the stabilization in the biotech market. After that, it's business as usual.

Sure. But would it be fair to say that the RFP momentum that we saw in the first half has continued in Q3? Or is there some change there? And then the related question is, after, let's say, probable delay in U.S. Biosecure, have you seen any change in the competitive intensity or strategy of our competitors with their forecast or maybe...

So let me say a bit about the second one, although I'm in danger of repeating the conversation we had at the beginning of the call. It's a perspective. I'm sharing my view. Biosecure is -- if you're using a shorthand for global restructuring of supply chains, patent expiries in the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act impact, risk management in a geopolitical world, learnings from COVID and balancing supply chain, so you have resilience. If you club all of those things together, I think it's more structural than one piece of legislation, the Biosecure Act crafted, directed at 5 companies. So I'm not -- and I've been consistent over the year. I'm not hung up on the Biosecure Act. I'm just looking at my clients think about how they manage risk and resilience in their organizations and they've been doing it for 1 or 2 or 3 years. So I think that's real, and I think that will play out over multiple years. Does that answer -- are you getting that?

Yes, yes, yes. And then one more of a business-related question. Since we are right now at the CRO end of activities, we do manufacture, but still are primarily -- we are levered to the CRO end of activity versus CMO. In your client set, what's the kind of churn that you see over a 5-year period, let's say, maybe the number of clients that you have right now, how many were there 5 years back?

Yes. Good question and somebody is going to get me the number. I don't have it at hand. But intuitively, I'll give you a gut feel. Not a lot of churn. It's very -- and I can get that just through the lens of -- I meet the same customers multiple times over 5 years. It's the same people, the same faces. The only thing I would say about your characterization of the company, it's about 60-40 split now, 60% of the revenue would be research, 40% would be development and manufacturing. So CDMO, not pure manufacturing, but it's less pronounced towards research than you might have appreciated. It's about 60-40.

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take that as a last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Nandini Agarwal for closing comments. Over to you.

Yes, thank you. Well, thank you everybody, for joining the call. If you have any further questions, you can get in touch with the IR team. Yes. Thanks, and have a good day.

Thank you. On behalf of Syngene International Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.