Why did Lupin dip into such a big loss in the March 2022 quarter?

The big loss in the Q4FY22 for Lupin was largely on account of a huge deferred tax charge, but I will come back to that later. Let me first talk about the top line performance. Lupin saw 2.64% growth in sales at Rs3,883 crore for Q4FY22. FY22 full year revenues were up 8.5% at Rs16,193 crore. The pressure on sales came from tough competition in the US markets. Lupin reported a sharp 80% fall in net cash from operations for FY22 due to spike in current assets and higher working capital costs. Lupin declared Rs4 per share as dividend for FY22.

Now, let me turn to the profitability for the quarter. Q4FY22 dipped into a net loss of Rs-518 crore against net profit of Rs460 crore in Q4FY21. There were 3 reasons. Firstly, there was a spike in working capital and inventory costs in the light of supply chain constraints. Secondly, Lupin reported a deferred tax pay-out of Rs341 crore in the quarter. In addition, Lupin also took a one-time hit of Rs129 crore as impairment charge for acquired IP depletion of value.