Alchemia reaps $1.5m from anticoagulant in Q3

Alchemia (ASX:ACL) will take in $1.5 million for the September quarter as its share of profits from US sales of its lead product, generic fondaparinux.

Global marketing partner Dr Reddy's Laboratories earned net sales of $12 million from the product during the quarter, up 30% sequentially.

Alchemia's share under the marketing agreement actually came to $2 million, but Alchemia agreed in September to jointly invest $10 million to reduce production costs and improve profitability.

Alchemia's equal share in this investment will be taken out in $500,000 chunks from its quarterly share of profits for 10 sequential quarters.

Announcing the sales update, Alchemia cited news reports estimating that Dr Reddy's average market share also improved to 41% in the retail segment, from 39% last quarter. Its share of the hospital segment reportedly also doubled to 6%.

Fondaparinux is a generic version of anticoagulant Atrixa. Alchemia produces the drug using a patent protected manufacturing method that makes it less likely for other competitors to emerge in the space.

Alchemia started receiving its share of profits from the sales in the June quarter, after Dr Reddy's recouped the development costs incurred from the product launch.

But Alchemia's share for calendar Q3 represents its first full share of profit without reductions for these development costs.

Separately, Alchemia has revealed that chairman Dr Mel Bridges plans to retire from the board in 2013.

Announcing his retirement at an investor meeting, Bridges said that the timing seems right given the commercial launch of generic fondaparinux and the imminent demerger of its oncology business into the standalone Audeo Oncology.

Alchemia (ASX:ACL) shares were trading virtually level at 58c as of 3pm on Thursday.