Turnover dropped 1.6 per cent to Rs 409.7 crore from Rs 416.30 crore in the corresponding quarter. Domestic turnover during the quarter saw a steep fall of 16.3 per cent against a 22.4 per cent rise in export turnover. The company's board met on Monday to take on record its third quarter results.

But for the technology licensing receipt of Rs 43.5 crore, Ranbaxy's net profit would have shown a dip. The company's profit before taking into account the licensing fee receipt and tax has fallen 13.5 per cent from to Rs 46 crore from Rs 53.2 crore. During the 9-month period ended September, Ranbaxy's earning without this technology receipt and tax dropped from 152.5crore to Rs 142.7 crore.

The Rs 43.5 crore technical fees has come a result of theagreement signed by the company with Bayer AG for the new drug delivery system (NDDS) for ciprofloxacin developed by Ranbaxy Laboratories. In future also, the company will be receiving milestones payments (as the new drug moves ahead in the development cycle) and royalty inflows.

On the operational front, there has not been any major improvement. Instead, there has been a marginal drop in the company's operating profit margin (OPM) which slipped from 19.77 per cent to 19.4 per cent in the quarter ended September 1999. OPM for the nine month period also dropped from 20.88 per cent to 20.78 per cent. Net profit margin without considering the one-time fees has dropped to 8.4 per cent against 12.11 per cent for the quarter ended September 1999.

On an equity base of Rs 115.9 crore, the annualised earning per share (EPS) has moved up from Rs 17.39 to Rs 26.89 for the third quarter ended September 1999. Annualised EPS without considering the technical fees is much lower at Rs 11.87 for the third quarter and14.45 for the nine month period ended September 1999.

There has been a healthy 23 per cent increase in the research & development (R&D) for the quarter ended September 1999. R&D expenditure increased from Rs 10.5 crore to Rs 13 crore for the quarter and from Rs 36.1 crore to Rs 38.5 crore for nine months ended September 1999.