Kyowa's interim fiscal 2007 income leaps 177%

Japanese drugmaker Kyowa Hakko Kogyo says that, for the six-month period ended September 30, 2007, net income reached 11.0 billion yen ($95.8 million) up 177.2% on its earnings in the comparable period in the previous fiscal year. The growth is partially explained by last year's extraordinary loss of 6.4 billion yen (Marketletter November 6, 2006).

Consolidated net sales for the period were 192.6 billion yen, representing an 11.3% rise, with the contribution from the firm's pharmaceuticals business growing 5.8% to 68.9 billion yen. In addition, the company's biochemicals business, which sells industrial-use raw materials such as amino acids, nucleic acids and intravenous liquids, achieved sales of 43.8 billion yen, up 31.3%.

Kyowa also reported that a lump sum payment to US biotechnology company ArQule, from which it licensed the anticancer drug candidate ARQ 197 (Marketletter August 6), had contributed to the 23.7% increase, to 18.8 billion yen, in its R&D expenditure in the period.