Novartis bullish to maintain growth momentum in 2009

Despite the gloomy economic forecasts, a dominant player of the country’s multibillion pharmaceutical company Novartis, is bullish to maintain an accelerated growth momentum this year.

The pharma company recently bared its accomplishments and projections for the New Year in a recent kick-off conference, which carried the theme “Grow Beyond and Overachieve in 2009” held at the Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort and Spa.

Novartis product manager Aireen Ronquillo said that they are confident that despite this year’s gloomy economic projections, Novartis will continue to post growth.

She said that for their Cataflam (anti-inflammatory tablet) and Voltaren (delayed-release tablets) product line, they project to continue excelling in its sales performance.

For the year 2008, Ronquillo said that Cataflam reached above 21 percent sales, a double digit growth over 2007 as the brand continued to outperform the market and was able to corner the third spot in the market from fifth.

While their Voltaren brand achieved 43 percent over budget sales, a double digit growth over last 2007 performing 148 percent last year.

For Cataflam, Ronquillo said the company targets P102 million top of line sales for the first quarter of this year and capture a market share increase of 3. 6 percent while for Voltaren, they target to achieve 4. 98 percent market share and P114 million top of line sales in the first quarter.

She urged the team of medical representatives for Cataflam and Voltaren to continue targeting more specialists and other doctors through reinforcing the brand’s key strength as well as highlight Novartis’ brand heritage.

Meanwhile, Jennilyn Gutierrez, Novartis senior product manager announced the accomplishments of Novartis’ CNS product line as it achieved 18 percent sales over budget last year and 24 percent over budget sales for its seizure-control drug Trileptal, which now ranked as the third in the market.

For 2009, she urged their teams of medical representatives to continue achieving market leadership and raising the bar to recognize Novartis’ active plight in introducing medical innovations such as changing the treatment paradigm of Alzheimer’s disease from pills to patches with the Novartis Exelon Patch.

This year Gutierrez aims for Trileptal to covet the number one spot and achieve P83 million sales, P37 million sales for their Exelon Patch, P63 million for Clopazine and P22 million for Stalev then covet the second top position in the competition for this brand.— Rhia de Pablo