Daily Brief Health Care: Ipca Laboratories, Avid Bioservices , Shield Therapeutics and more

• In Q2FY24, Ipca Laboratories (IPCA IN) reported 10% growth in domestic formulation business, driven by 12% growth in pain management. In FY24, domestic formulation is expected to growth 12–14%.  
• Ipca now holds 52.67% stake in Unichem Laboratories (UL IN). Ipca is confident to clock revenue of INR1.7–1.8B and EBITDA of INR300M from Unichem within two years of acquisition.
• As facilities are back onstream, Ipca is augmenting the supply chain and revalidating of all the formulations and updating them. Shipment to the U.S. may begin in Q1FY25.

• In Q2FY24, Avid Bioservices (CDMO US) reported 27% YoY and 33% QoQ revenue decline to $25.4M, due to annual maintenance shutdown and reduction in process development services from early-stage customers.
• During Q2FY24, Avid Bioservices signed $35M in net new business orders from both new and existing customers, resulting in a record high backlog of $199M, up 35% YoY.
• Avid Bioservices has lowered FY24 revenue guidance to $137–147 million from $145–165 million. For reference, the company reported revenue of $149 million in FY23.

Shield Therapeutics’ US commercialisation efforts continue to gather steam, with prescription volumes gearing up in Q323 (27,750 prescriptions, a 76% sequential growth over Q2 and higher than the combined H123 figure of 26,284) and net selling price making a strong recovery after dipping in H123 (+24% to $148/prescription). US revenues grew to $4.1m, higher than the combined H1 figure of $3.7m. First-time prescribers grew 27% q-o-q and new prescriptions were up by 87%. More encouragingly, the clinical utility of Accrufer continues to be considered favourably by prescribers, reflected in the 77% repeat writers from Q223. Management has guided for FY23 total prescriptions to be between 100k and 130k, requiring a sequential growth of 65.6% at the lower end, which we see as undemanding given the Q3 run rate and growing momentum (as the expanded salesforce gets more entrenched). We maintain our full-year estimates and continue to value the company at £390.4m.