A year ago the antiviral unit generated no revenues and dragged on fine chemical sales at American Pacific (AMPAC). After fixing the problem the unit began making sales in the subsequent quarters of 2011 and has business coming in to support growth this year.
“Supported by a three-year supply agreement, antiviral revenues are back on track for fiscal 2012”, Dana Kelly, chief financial officer at AMPAC, told investors following release of its first quarter results.
Fine chemical revenues rose more than 50 per cent year-on-year but the unit still posted a loss. The operating loss fell from $3.6m (€2.7m) a year ago to $1.2m and AMPAC is working on ‘performance improvement goals’ to continue the recovery.
“Performance today has not yet reached acceptable level. Complete execution of this plan will occur over several quarters, and we anticipate a continuing trend of quarterly improvement as we progress to targeted profits by the end of this year”, Kelly said. Revenue growth will also help.
Last month AMPAC was buoyed by US Drug Enforcement Agency approval of its Rancho Cordova, California site for production of Schedule II controlled intermediates and APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients). The site can handle commercial-scale production and has already won business.
“We have recently executed a manufacturing agreement with a large pharmaceutical customer to produce controlled substances, and will soon be conducting a full scale validation of a chemical product in this area”, Joe Carleone, CEO of AMPAC, said. The drug is already on the market.
Developmental benefits
In recent years AMPAC has also expanded its drug development activities, which now represent a “significant portion” of fine chemical sales, and wants to add to the 18 clients it is currently working with on these projects.
“Virtually all of the development products in our pipeline make use of our unique technologies. This provides a clear discriminator as the product moves in to production”, Carleone said. In 2012 AMPAC expects two products it worked on to reach the market and this provides work for its core business.