Assessing the Financial Immunity: A Pre- and Post-COVID Comparative Analysis of Sustainable Growth in Indian Pharmaceuticals Companies

Abstract

The Indian pharmaceutical industry has been critical in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its financial performance in pre and post COVID-period can provide an indication of its sustainability and ability to survive periods of global crises. The paper sets out to compare and contrast the financial growth of 10 of the major pharmaceutical firms in India throughout two periods: pre-COVID (2015-2019) and post-COVID, based on five financial parameters; Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), Net Profit Ratio (NPR), EBITDA Margin, Return on Capital Employed (ROCE), and Return on Net Worth (RONW). The study will focus on comparison between the earlier and later periods and find out using SPSS whether there is any difference between the two periods or not using t-test of paired samples and correlation analyzing. Hypothesis testing and descriptive statistics were also carried out in order to determine changes in financial growth, profit, and capital efficiency. The findings show that the t-test relationship in all five financial metrics is not statistically significant (all p-values > 0.05) in their difference between pre- and post-COVID. Although certain metrics such as SGR and RONW went down to some extent after the COVID, there were some increases in margins in others such as NPR and EBITDA. But the differences were non-statistically significant. Results of the correlation analysis revealed weak medium correlations, which is the indication of the limited similarity in the financial trends between the two periods at the firm level. The Indian pharmaceutical industry has proved to be financially durable as it was able to retain its performance during the pandemics. The existence of no serious changes emphasizes the flexibility of industry and the stability of its inner financial flows.