Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Sai Life Sciences Limited Q1 FY27 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch - tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Diwakar Pingle from E&Y Investor Relations. Thank you , and over to you, sir.

Thank you so much, Sagar. Good evening to all the participants on this call. Warmly welcome you to the Q1 FY27 earnings call of Sai Life Sciences Limited. Before we proceed, on the call, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward -looking statements that may involve known, unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. It must be viewed in conjunction with our business risks that could cause future result performance or achievement to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied by such forward -looking statements. Please note that we mail the results and the same are available on our website too. In case you have not received the same, you can write to my team at E &Y and we'll be happy to send the same over to you. To take us through the results and answer your questions today, we have the top management of Sai Life Sciences Limited , represented by Mr. Krishna Kanumuri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Siva Chittor, Whole-Time Director and Chief Financial Officer. We will start the call with a brief overview of the quarter gone past and then conduct the Q&A session. With that said, I'll now hand over the call to Krishna Kanumuri. Over to you, Krishna.

Thank you, Diwakar. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q1 FY27 earnings call. We are pleased with the progress we have made in the first quarter and importantly with the momentum we are seeing across our business. Revenue for the quarter grew by 12% year-over-year, supported by growth across two businesses, particularly in the CRO, which grew by 26% year-over- year. The Q1 performance has been in line with our expectations and we remain confident of our growth trajectory and prospects. As we have discussed in the previous earnings call, we expect a stronger H2 with planned capacity expansion going live in the second half of the year. As we look ahead, we believe Sai is at an important point in evolution from being a strong small molecule CRDMO to becoming a technology-led, multi-modality partner with capabilities spanning discovery through commercial manufacturing. Let me begin with the broader environment. From a customer s’ standpoint, geopolitical uncertainty and concerns around intellectual property have made India an increasingly important part of their diversification strategies. I would say this trend has not only continued but strengthened. In the biotech environment, we have seen several large acquisitions and about 18 IPOs in the US.

As investors cash out, we expect capital to flow back into funding new biotech companies. The clear message we are picking up is that these new companies will be built with even leaner in -house capabilities, which should continue to support healthy demand for our sector. Our pipeline is being built for the long haul. Through dedicated F TE models, we are building deep, durable relationships with our customers' development team. This is impacting our pipeline in three distinct ways. Molecules from biotech companies that we have supported being acquired by pharmaceutical collaborators, molecules from acquired companies transferred to us, and finally, molecules from our own FTE relationships progressing into late-stage development. Together, these three create a broad and sustainable funnel for the business. As we engage with our customers, it is clear that the complexity and range of technologies they are pursuing are broader than ever. This aligns very well with our strategy of building strong R&D capabilities across diverse range of modalities. We believe the biggest long -term opportunity is to continue building a fully integrated delivery engine, from discovery through commercial manufacturing. We are seeing a clear traction with our clients beginning to engage with us across the full spectrum of our services. We are well positioned to transition from integrated small molecule C RDMO to a full -fledged multi-modality integrated CRDMO. We have already made meaningful progress and will continue to accelerate this build-out. Peptides are an important modality for us. We have one of the largest and fastest -growing peptide team within discovery. While GLP -1s receive d significant attention, there is substantial work underway in macrocyclic peptides, peptide-drug conjugates, and radiochemistry applications. Our first dedicated peptide development lab is coming online shortly for a top-tier pharma company. We are also expanding the scope of our peptides center of excellence support to both discovery and development teams with ability to deliver pilot quantities for clinical trials. In addition, we plan to break ground for a peptide manufacturing facility at our new greenfield site near Hyderabad, which is expected to be operational in 2028. We are close to opening our XDC Center of Excellence , which will support both discovery and development teams in the synthesis of payloads, linkers, and conjugation across antibodies, peptides, PROTACs, and oligonucleotides There is an increasing need to support our development programs with greater speed and flexibility. We are working on building new capacity specifically designed for early to mid-stage deliveries and will be an important part of the expansion at our new greenfield manufacturing site. Formulation is another area we are entering. While we are still about six months away from being operationally ready, we are seeing significant interest from our pharma partners. There is a clear demand for integrated offering that can deliver both custom first-in-human APIs and drug products with speed, helping customers accelerate development timelines. Scientific excellence remains at the heart of this evolution.

Over the past few years, we have deliberately invested in strengthening our scientific capabilities, infrastructure and talent across the organization. Recent successes have reinforced our belief that we are on the right trajectory. For example, we have independently developed capabilities in ADC bio-conjugation characterization and analysis and recently published our work in high-impact peer-reviewed scientific journals. During the quarter, we also published a joint paper with AstraZeneca on experimental approach to determining reaction kinetics early in development. Objective is to generate better process understanding earlier in the life cycle and ultimately support smoother scale -up and technology transfer. We believe these are important indicators of the scientific depth we are buildi ng at Sai and not only in terms of services we provide to customers, but also in our ability to develop and contribute new approaches to solving complex scientific and technical problems. Technology remains central to this proposition we offer customers. We are making meaningful progress in advanced process technologies. Recently, we successfully scaled up a late -stage GMP intermediate for a large pharmaceutical customer at our manufacturing facility using flow chemistry. We are experimenting with continuous downstream operations, including extraction, distillation, and crystallization, with a long -term objective to developing more flow applications in our commercial manufacturing. These capabilities are particularly relevant as we see an increase in complexity in molecules entering our development and manufacturing pipeline. Talent development is an important part of this journey. We have kick-started a campus strategy program led by a former board member , with the objective of establishing Sai as an employer of choice for life sciences talent. We are putting in place a more structured approach to how we attract, develop, and retain scientific and technical talent. We are establishing structured management development programs for the first time and experienced managers based on external technical and behavioural assessments, making them more targeted and outcome oriented. We are also increasing the intensity of S ai Academy, our strategic capability building program designed to create common scientific, technical, and operational standards across the organization. We believe building this depth of talent and capability is essential as we take on more complex programs and move into new modalities. In conclusion, there is a clear evolution in what large pharmaceutical companies are looking for from their outsourcing partners. The expectation is for strong scientifically led partners who can take greater ownership of discovery and development programs rather than simply execu ting individual pieces of work. We believe that the combination of our technology base, scientific talent and culture is a key reason why large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly bringing significant work to Sai through strategic engagements. These engagements will create a healthy and sustained pipeline over multiple years.

With that, let me hand over to our CFO, Siva Chittor, to take you through the financial performance and the progress we're making in the business.

Thanks, Krishna. Good evening. Good morning, everyone. Let me start with the financial performance for the quarter and provide commentary on the two businesses. For the quarter-ended Q1 FY27, total revenue stood at INR553 crores, representing a year -on-year increase of about 12% compared to INR496 crores in the same quarter last year. The CDMO business contributed approximately 60% of our revenues and the CRO business remaining 40%. On a Y-o-Y basis, CRO revenues increased by about 26% while the CDMO revenues grew by around 6%. Our balance sheet remains healthy, and we continue to maintain the financial flexibility required to invest behind the opportunities we see across the business. We will continue to balance investments in future growth with disciplined capital allocation and returns. In the Discovery business, the discovery chemistry services continue to scale. During the quarter, we successfully converted a pilot collaboration with a large pharmaceutical company into a long -term, high-volume discovery chemistry partnership. This is exactly the kind of progression we were looking for, starting with a focused engagement, demonstrating value, and expanding the relationship over time. We've also completed a large-scale DMPK data generation project for a biotech customer and have continued to build capacity to support our growing base of large pharmaceutical customers. A few years ago, we made a deliberate decision to move beyond being a low-value chemistry services provider and invest significantly in biology and DMPK while continuing to expand our discovery chemistry capabilities. Those investments in infrastructure, t echnology, and people are now translating into integrated service delivery for approximately 65% of our customers, today primarily biotech customers. We are now seeing the same model, gaining traction with large pharma. We are already in discussions with several large pharmaceutical companies and hope to transition at least two large pharmaceutical customers to integrated models this year. Moving now to the CMC business, the underlying health of the CMC business continues to be strong with 33 active commercial molecules and 14 molecules in late phase. As Krishna mentioned in his opening remarks, dedicated FTE development contracts are expected to be a key differentiator for Sai Life Sciences in augmenting our pipeline of late phase and commercial molecules. Over the last 15 -months, we have added six late phase molecules to our pipeline, 5 of which have come through large pharma clients with whom we have ongoing FTE engagements. One such collaboration with a top-tier market-cap pharma company, which began at a small er scale, has now expanded into a sizable dedicated FTE contract. With this customer, our engagement now extends end-to-end, truly from discovery to commercial with active programs across the life cycle from early discovery to late-stage manufacturing.

We've also begun negotiations for another large pharma FTE engagement on the process development side, which we expect to close by the end of Q2, with work expected to commence from Q3. With respect to the phase 3 pipeline, one of our customers received an approval during FY26, two more have regulatory milestones during this financial year, and one is expected in Q2 of FY28. An equally important indicator of the quality of our customer relationship is the level of repeat business we generate. We continue to add new customers, but returning customers accounted for over 90% of our revenue in FY25 and FY26. We believe this is a strong reflection of customer satisfaction and the value we are creating for customers over the course of their programs. It also reflects our ability to deepen engagement with clients over time. We're also increasingly seeing evidence for our ability to support customers through the full life cycle. In calendar 2025, Sai contributed to five FDA-approved molecules, meaning we were part of either discovery or development or commercial manufacturing for the product. Over the past five years, we have supported 17 launches, demonstrating our ability to supply launch quantities and play a meaningful role in commercialization. I am also pleased to report that we secured the prestigious EcoVadis Platinum rating 2026, placing us among the top 1% of the companies assessed worldwide for sustainability performance. Overall, we believe the quarter reflects continued progress across both the businesses and our longer- term strategic priorities. Notwithstanding the inherent lumpiness in the business, the long -term opportunity for the CRDMO sector remains robust, and our integrated model with strong pharma relationship and technology investment position us well for sustained growth. We remain confident in our ability to sustain our longer-term revenue growth guidance of 15% to 20%, and the EBITDA range of 28% to 30%. With that, we'll be happy to take your questions.

Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question-and answer-session. Your first question comes from the line of Binay Singh with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, team. Thanks for the opportunity. In the opening comments, we talked about strengthening relationship with big pharma. We talked about integrated CRDMO, long -term discovery contracts, more FTEs, and you also made a comment on intellectual property. Do you think these things have accelerated this calendar year, or it's more a continuation of what you were seeing last year also was similar, or there is some sort of a change in environment where we are highlighting these more in this calendar year? Krishna Kanumuri So, Binay, we are looking at the progression of business. If you look at what is really happening, customers are trying to build sustained relationships over the next 5 -10 years. As a result, you will see a gradual increase in these relationships in terms of one service at a time and starting small and growing big.

So, I think we are still in the early stages of this journey. These relationships have the potential to expand significantly over the next 5 -10 years. While this evolution is still at an early stage, we are already seeing acceleration in both the scale and scope of services being offered.

Just to add, Binay, when we started on the FTE model about 15-months ago, we said it would begin on a small scale. We know this is very different. This is how China built some of the larger CDMOs, and we said we are seeing this for the first time in India. But if you look at where we are today, one customer relationship has already evolved into an end -to-end engagement, and we are seeing molecules transition through different stages of development. So, it's not just early phase development. We are now seeing late phase development as well. As Krishna mentioned, we are talking about molecules that are being acquired by pharma that is being, pushed into our FTE development enabling a robust development process and subsequent scaled up. So, I've talked about six molecules in phase three over the last 15 months come to this process. So, there is a progression happening. I think the broader sentiments are there , it’s the same, but as we kind of get into this and start working with the customers, acceleration with respect to size is what we have seen. That's the sentiment that we are expecting. Krishna Kanumuri Binay, to give you a little more context, right, if you look at the Wuxi model, the customers are engage across discovery, integrated discovery services. Then they're doing all the FTE development services and commercial manufacturing. What India has seen as a first phase is discovery chemistry services and then tech transfer at late-stage commercial manufacturing. But what we are seeing now is the middle part, which is FTE collaboration, with many of these relationships beginning to migrate here. And we're also starting the early phases of that discovery program going to integrated programs. So, it just shows that this is a very early part of the opportunity. I think these have a long way to go in terms of scale.

Thanks for that detailed answer . My second question is earlier in the call, I think in the last call, Krishna had commented that how in financial year '27, the second half will be stronger than the first half. But if you've seen the past also leaving aside financial year '26, that is generally the trend 40/60 between first half, second half. So, this year you called it out is more because of more capacity coming this year that the skew of second half will be a little heavier than first half. Is that the reason you had called it out? Krishna Kanumuri That is true. Also, fiscal '26 was a little out of the ordinary for us in terms of how our numbers panned out. We were roughly at a 48/52, if I remember the number right, Binay. FY26 was somewhat different from the historical trend. Historically, it has been more of a 40/60, but fiscal ’26 was almost flat. Hence, we wanted to provide some advance indication of how we are seeing our next year.

Great. Thanks. I'll come back in the queue.

Thank you. The next question comes from Amey Chalke with JM Financial. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question and congrats to the management on good numbers. I have first question on CRO. We have said in the opening remark also in PPT that we have added one large customer in the CRO side in chemistry in this quarter. What has worked in our favour to convert this

relationship? And also, how big is this relationship could be for us in terms of number of projects or revenue, if any quantification you can provide? Thank you.

Generally, we don't quantify what we're doing with each customer. But it's just not one, we've converted a couple this quarter. So I think that tends to, there's multiple ways that we're actually converting, it's just not one. Some of them are converting more linearly, some of them are basically going more integrated, but we have more than one customer that expanded collaboration for this quarter.

Sure. Your voice is not that clear, but what I heard is our integrated platform, it is what helped us to convert this customer. Is that right or?

No, I'm just saying we're seeing both growth in terms of scale, in terms of certain lines of service, like I said the discovery chemistry , but some customers are also expanding more gradually in terms of integrations as well. And this growth is not contributed by one customer; there are multiple customers with us who have potential to scale up.

Got it. And the second question I have on the four commercial contracts, which will be added this year, I think three of them have been added in the first quarter. Is it possible for us to give some clarity in terms of modalities where these four products would be? And also, whether we would be a primary supplier or the secondary supplier for these projects? And have these projects have been already commercialized, or these are newly commercialized products? Thank you.

Three of the four that we will be working on this year, as we had mentioned during the last call, will be commercial supplies. Primary - Secondary, as we've discussed before right, they are, I think we probably are primary in two out of th is three, but this is more anecdotal than what I can tell you at this point in time.

Or at least if you can provide the revenue per product potential, would it be in line with some of our top commercial products or will it be sizably below or over and above that, if you can give colour on that?

I think what we mentioned in the last call, Amey, was that these would be a decently sized products. Looking at our size and revenue. the three of them would be decently sized products and one of them will be a lower volume product . That's what we had mentioned last quarter and we'll stay with the same comment.

So by size, you mean value or volume for all three?

Value. Volume does not matter. Value is what I'm talking about. I'm talking value with respect to how our revenues are. I think it's a decent sized volume.

Sure. Thank you so much. And one more question I have on the formulation capabilities where we are entering. What would be the like, what kind of formulation capabilities would that be? I think we have written drug products. So is it a biologic, the fill and finish facility which we expect to construct here or is it something else? And what visibility how we have in the pipeline for these projects?

As of now, we're building small molecules, primarily oral solids of different forms up to phase 1 and phase 2. We have significant interest from multiple of our large pharma partners already who are working with on the chemistry side to be able to support them on their early clinical formulation. So we have significant interest for that piece.

So typically, we have not seen CDMOs entering into oral solid formulation capabilities. So what's the thought process here? The reason being is the profitability in these segments are typically on a lower side. So is it something different for these projects?

Right now, we're only talking about clinical up to phase 2 supplies. We're not talking about commercial supply at this point. And this was driven by our discussion with customers where the need is. And their need is very specific to supply in China+1, where they're getting a lot of clinical materials early phase. And this fits in with the China+1 strategy of our partners at this point. And this only works well when you have existing relationship on the development side, not standalone.

Sure, sir. Thank you so much. I will join back the queue.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Akshay from AK Investment. Please go ahead.

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is about the therapeutic-wise split in the revenue. So what is the therapy-wise currently split or exposure for different therapeutic mix in the revenue? And in the pipeline as well, which are the therapeutic areas are we focusing on?

So I think we've given the therapeutic distribution for the last financial year. I think that's part of the investor deck. We do it on an annual basis. On a quarterly basis, it does not make any sense. So it's available in the deck that we've uploaded on the investor presentation. We've given you a detailed presentation on that one. This is, if I remember, Slide number 21 on the investor presentation.

For the products in pipeline as well, that split will be more or less similar in that category as well?

It's difficult to say, right? It's about what our pharma customers are looking to innovate on. Finally, we will be driven by what the innovator pipeline looks like. But this is just a reflection of where we are today or how our revenues were in the last year. I see it from our book's perspective. That's really what we have reflected there.

Okay, sir. And my second question is, what is the capex guidance for FY27 and FY28?

So, we have given a FY27 capex guidance of INR1,100 crores to INR1,300 crores. That still stands. We haven't provided a guidance on fiscal '28. We will come back to you with a guidance at an appropriate time.

Okay, sir. Fair enough. Thank you so much and all the best.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sajal Kapoor from Antifragile Thinking. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, Krishna and Siva. Congratulations. What stands out over the last year is not just the growth, but the deepening big pharma relationships and Sai getting involved earlier in the development cycle, so very well done. Two questions, you mentioned that five of the six late phase

molecules added over the last 15 months came through large pharma FTE relationships. Does getting involved through these dedicated development teams materially increase Sai’s probability of retaining those molecules for commercial manufacturing versus programs where you enter later through an RFP or tech transfer? Thank you.

The first intent of every pharma company is to leave the program with us for commercial. So I think it's only in the cases where there must be maybe a mismatch in capacity, but the primary intent, a stated intent is to leave it with Sai all the way through the life cycle of the product.

Sure. And you also said around 65% of discovery customers now use integrated services and you hope to transition at least two large pharma customers to that model this year. So as the large pharma moves from single service engagements to integrated programs, do you see a meaningful change in revenue per customer and relationship duration? In other words, getting more wallet share per relationship?

Yes. That's the reason you also brought up a point on while we look at our growth right, last year we grew 30%, but 90%, more than 90% of our revenue came from our existing customers. So whatever we've done over the last few years, it's kind of, now that you are working with 19 of the top 25 pharma companies, there is a tailwind with respect to how India outsourcing is panning out. The objective is to go find out how much wallet share can you increase and what kind of services. So, we want to be careful when we do the wallet share increase. One, we want to increase commercial, but we also want to increase the spectrum of services that we go. We are also then able to transition work across different service areas. We are able to kind of, be present in every part of their services and it also helps us de-risk our overall revenue concentration, even within the same customer.

So you are entering a much heavier investment cycle with up to INR1,300 crores of capex, which includes a greenfield for peptides. Given the greater customer and pipeline visibility you now have, what internal return threshold do you use before committing this capital and what would make you slow down or defer an investment? Thank you.

So, we have certain internal hurdle rates, which will be generally higher than the ROCE, ROE from a company perspective target that we put. That would be slightly higher than that. So, we kind of use that as the model. And then we kind of stress -test this base d on what we have seen. We evaluate capital expenditure as we kind of put things in. There are certain expenditures that you are putting in because you have to build a capability and you were expecting certain amount of revenue based on certain assumptions once you build that capability. In those cases, it may be slightly difficult to defe r unless there are severe business circumstances. But if you are doing a capacity addition, we evaluate the capacity addition as we kind of run through our capex. And there are times in history where even in Sai, where we have demonstrated that when we have seen capacity addition requirements slows down, we slow down the capex. And that is the only way to kind of control and be modular and be as just-in-time as possible as is needed for the business.

The next question comes from the line of Siddharth Negandhi with CWC. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. One of the things that you mentioned in previous presentations is to share updates on AI initiatives that you have been taking. And this time you mentioned about a high-throughput experimentation platform. Just wanted to understand if that was basically the AI initiative that you were talking about or if you could give us some color on that? And in terms of the capacity expansion that is there, just a check on whether that is in line as what we had guided earlier or do we see that timeline moving in any way? Those were my two questions.

So, on this capacity addition, I think in the deck we mentioned we are largely on schedule. You could see one, two months but essentially the immediate capacity needs -- so we talked about a few things at the end of last quarter or when we began this financial year. We talked about a discovery capacity that we were going to build, that was going to come on stream in Q1. That facility has come on stream in Q1, and that facility is actually sold out at this point in time. What we thought we will probably need a year to fill in or a year and a half to fill in has already been filled in. On the capacity in Bidar, we had talked about building two production blocks of 225 KL each, totalling to 450 KL. The first production block will come on stream. We had talked about plants getting completed and ready for operation in H2 or Q3. The plant currently remains the same and we are on track for that. I think broadly other capabilities that we talked about -- we talked about we will bring a formulation capacity into operation this year, and Krishna just mentioned we are six months away, so it still will be in the current fiscal year. But broadly we are on track for this. On the first question on AI, I think AI is slightly different. I think what the HTE is more high - throughput experimentation that kind of allows you to kind of do multiple scenarios and kind of generate more data points on the same experiment. The AI initiative that we talked about is slightly different. This more focuses on how you can eliminate wastage in terms of non-value-adds that today a chemist or an operator at the plant is doing. It is necessary, but it is not the core value-add that we can substitute with either some help from AI, some help from document generation, also working on seeing what -- how can you kind of take data from scientific literature, kind of help provide help on an online as you kind of look through something. So, that is the thing that we are working on. We talked about it in detail last time. Working through this, we thought we will give you another update maybe before the end of the year because we are building certain things and as we kind of see progress, we will provide an update on that.

Got it. And on the peptides one, just if I may add in one more question. On the peptide one, you mentioned about GLP-1s as well as PDCs. So, you building capabilities in both or should we look at this as GLP-1s followed by PDCs? How should one think of your peptide capabilities?

No, the comment that we made is that peptides go beyond GLP -1. So, peptide as a modality is expanded, right? We talk about peptide unit with GLP-1, but now peptides -- look at this year, there are three blockbuster peptides which have been launched. You have the Merck PCSK9, which is for

cholesterol. You have the J&J peptide, oral peptide which is launched for basically neurology. So, you are seeing peptide as a modality going up dramatically with blockbuster potential, which goes beyond GLP-1. And you are seeing PDCs as a big part of the pipeline going forward as well. So, what we are saying is we are not solely focused on just the GLP -1 space. We are taking a very big position built to support peptides across the therapeutic window. That is the comment we are making. So that we are not just chasing a single modality, we are really building broad -based capabilities in peptides and built a significant technology platform for peptides.

Clear. And this will be across discovery, development, and at some point in time, commercial manufacturing capacity?

Absolutely.

Got it. Thank you and all the best.

Thank you. The next question comes from Karan Gupta with Asit C. Mehta Investment. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. My question regarding the number of molecules that we have in the late stage and the potential revenue out of that. And what will be the completion period of the molecules that we have in the stage, let's say, one or two?

We mentioned this before, the number of exits at Phase 1 and Phase 2 is fairly huge. Given that while we work on a large set of moleculesand we have actually given data as more than 150-160 molecules, we believe we should keep them as projects just given the amount of failures that happen at that stage. That is why we track only late -phase and commercial and present this data because the probability of success on the commercial side is higher. With respect to the late -stage commercialization and potential, I can answer data with respect to commercialization as we know. As you will appreciate, this is material non-public information for the Pharma companies that are disclosing this information. So, we also pick up information from publicly available sources and we presented data for the four molecules that we are aware of and put that as part of which I actually talked about it in my speech. Potential is kind of very difficult to say. It is still in Phase 3. Assuming Pharma, you probably should have a decent size, otherwise Pharma would not pick up a molecule and go to Phase 3. That's broadly what we think. Not able to give you more specific numbers.

Okay. So, one question on the growth guidance of 15% to 20%. Just wanted to have some clarity on this, basically the number that you said 15% to 20%, how we are come to that 15% to 20% only as we have huge pipeline of late-stage and Phase 1 and 2 molecules? Why we are constraint on 15% to 20%, or is the conservative guidance that you are giving? Because sequentially quarter four and quarter one, we have slowed down the growth as compared to the previous quarters. So, just wanted to have some clarity on the guidance side.

First of all, as we have consistently stated, our guidance should be viewed over a longer time horizon. Given the inherent lumpiness in the industry and the way the business operates, we believe it is more appropriate to look at the direction of the business over a three-to-five-year period. We have provided a revenue growth guidance of 15% to 20% over that period, and that remains our stated position. Now, that said, we are not going to constrain business for growth, right? If you look at the last year growth, while you talked about Q4, if you look at our last year growth, we grew close to 30% on annualized basis. So, your shipments and dates of shipment and when your order came and when you need to deliver will decide a quarter's revenue. So, I would personally like you to see the business on a longer-term basis. That is when you will actually get to see the trends. We demonstrated last year, we demonstrated a 30% growth. Our mid -term growth guidance is 15% to 20%. Have I put all my bets on it and every last dollar to get the 15%-20%? Obviously, we would also want to kind of make sure we will meet and beat guidance that we give to the market. So, that is the broader thought process. I will not be able to elaborate this more, Karan, on this one, but broadly look at it from a direction perspective and what we are trying to build is our way of looking at it.

The next question comes from Rajat Baldeva with Kizuna Wealth. Please go ahead.

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My question on the CDMO side, and in this quarter, we have grown only 6% Y-o-Y. So can you throw some outlook for FY27 and FY28 given that CDMO is a lumpiness of the business?

So, we don't split our growth guidance. We have given you a 15%-20% growth guidance over a mid- term. And as you rightly pointed out, business is lumpy based on how the deliveries and purchase orders come in. And we also stated that our H2 -- the second half of this financial year -- will be better than the first half, just given more capacity is also coming on stream by the end of Q2 or early Q3.

Okay, sir. And just the last question. Just to confirm, we are in line with our capacity building to reach 1150 kilolitre by FY27, right?

Yes.

Okay, sir. Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Tirumala Reddy, an Individual Investor. Please go ahead.

Is there any particular reason for not entering into monoclonal antibodies or mAb space?

We will discuss this strategy at later point.

Okay. And what is the contribution of this fermentation capacities building in the current capex?

We are not giving information on fermentation at all.

The next question comes from Siddharth Negandhi with CWC. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for the follow -up. If you could give us some color on how the two offshore facilities in Boston and Manchester are shaping up currently. We are obviously seeing the difference in the standalone and consolidated revenue reflecting from one of those facilities, but if you could give us some color around how are those shaping up and is that commercially adding to our revenues?

So, yes, I think the way to look at Boston and Manchester -- they are independently at this time, I think we mentioned this -- I think if you look at the Boston P&L that you would see, it is a bit accretive to the business. And the way we look at both Boston and Manchester are satellite centers that help us kind of bring larger business back to India. It is, for example, on the CMC side -- on the discovery side, there has been many instances. One of the reasons we have been consistently growing on the discovery side and one big reason is that we are able to actually cultivate customers even before they actually have a need for a discovery service for MedChem or DMPK at a later stage. We are act ually looking at we are talking to these customers much before they would need to seek out an Indian operation. So, by the time you actually help them do a target identification sitting at their backyard, you have probably developed relationship, they understand your business, they understand how your team’s function. I think that kind of gives them that comfort to kind of get business, and that's kind of borne out in the overall numbers, right? We established Boston in somewhere around the end of 2020. Assuming 2021 was a little bit of washout for COVID, and if you look at the discovery revenue it is probably in the last four, five years has grown at a CAGR of close around 30%-35%. On Manchester, I think the skill sets and the requirements are different. What we brought in is a set of individuals who worked at Large Pharma, look at things very differently. I think the way today we look at these two teams function together, but then they bring in very, very complementary skill sets. And both the teams have kind of helped us to be where we are, be it in terms of getting our relationships, be it in terms of deliveries and scale -ups. That is how we look at all of the India and the US teams for the respective businesses as one single team and they kind of work in tandem.

The next question comes from the line of Yasser Lakdawala with M3. Please go ahead.

Hi. I just to sort of get some qualitative understanding. I think when we say that we have got about between 4% to 5% of our revenues from new modalities, is it mostly on the CRO side or are we doing anything in the development and the commercial aspect?

We are not doing it on the commercial side, but we are doing on all the development and the discovery side.

Development discovery side. Fair enough. And typically when we have like some biotech customers and if they are acquired in different Phases, be it like a Phase 1, Phase 2 by a Big Pharma company . Historically have we seen those orders post-acquisition, does that project necessarily stay with us?

Like what sort of percentage of those projects stay with you? Do the Big Pharma have their own sort of CDMO networks and they tend to sort of shift those projects? Like should just sort of help us understand that.

I think Krishna actually addressed this as part of his opening remarks, right? I think one of the biggest advantages that we have is we work with 19 out of the 25 large pharma companies. Our pipeline today as Krishna mentioned, right, is growing on three d ifferent ways when we're building our CDMO pipeline specifically. You know, products that are we are seeing our biotech customers acquired by pharma companies that we work with that continue to remain in our funnel. We're seeing pharma companies putting something on the FTE development deals which then progress into our late stage funnel. We're also seeing situations where pharma acquires a biotech company with whom we've not worked before but then the product gets transferred to us primarily because we are one of their preferred vendors. So that's the that's how we work. So finally, just given the pharma relationship, this is what happens.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Dhaval with Jefferies, please go ahead.

Hi sir, thank you for taking my question. I wanted to get few more details on the peptide program. So, can you inform us like how many different projects are we working on within the peptide space and how many different customers are there? And the facility which is coming up in 2028 that is the pilot scale facility that you are talking about or is it something different?

Dhaval, at this point majority of the work we are doing is in the early-stage discovery space, multiple customers almost every significant number of large pharma customers as well as biotech . The development lab, we have one lab which has come up which is dedicated to a pharma company. And there is one much broader facility right now which is coming online which will do GMP pilot supplies for clinical and that will support both developments, GMP supplies as well as discovery support. What we're building out for 28 is the true commercial capacity. So clinical capacity is coming online sooner, and commercial capacity is coming online 2028.

Okay. And just I understand these are still initial years, but based on your experience what kind of work are customers willing to give on the manufacturing side for peptides? Are they willing to give out the manufacturing of longer chains like 8, 10, 12 a mino acid kind of chain or is it restricted to maybe dipeptides or chain length of 4-5 amino acids? What's your initial sense? Or is it going to be something that they want to start with smaller chains and gradually are very much willing to take it up into the higher value chain work?

I think it depends on who you ask, right? Right now, because we're doing development technology people are doing longer chains with us, because for commercial probably people start with smaller chains which are already mature pipelines. But we are seeing customers working with longer chains right now rather than small chains.

Okay. And just last one on conjugation. So, do you think the next steps on the conjugation side will be to establish a pilot scale facility and then if everything goes well go deeper on a larger scale? Are those the next step if the program continues to do well on the discovery side?

We already are building a pilot scale space; we do have more plans there which we'll detail once we have a clearer specific on the plans we have in terms of that area. But we already have a significant footprint we're building which spans both discovery and development for all ADCs.

By next year what would be the total spend that we would have done on the peptide side, let's say towards end of 2028 when the facility is coming online, ballpark?

Dhaval, it's probably going to be less than INR300 crores.

Okay. Thank you, that's it from my side.

As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference call over to the management for closing remarks.

Thanks everyone for joining the call. I would like to reiterate that we continue to remain bullish on the business and the trajectory that we've set for ourselves, it seems to get validated quarter on quarter as we work with our customers. We continue to believe the path that we are taking with respect to building a development centric business that kind of helps us build the science capability first before we build the capacity is the right way to go for us. And we continue to believe that this will help us deliver value over a longer- term period. Thank you all for joining the call.

Thank you. On behalf of Sai Life Sciences Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you, everyone, for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you. (This transcript has been edited, without altering the content, to ensure clarity and improve readability.)