The drugmaker said on Friday that it has made a Chapter 7 filing for voluntary liquidation of its US subsidiaries Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Wockhardt USA LLC. The business has been incurring losses over the past several years, clocking nearly $8 million losses in FY25.
In an interview with Mint in April, Wockhardt chairman Habil Khorakiwala had said the company is planning to exit the US generics segment, in a move to “derisk the organization fundamentally”. The company will continue to run its pharmaceutical operations in India, the UK, Ireland, and other geographies.
Focus on antibiotics
The US market has become “very uncertain”, Khorakiwala had said in the interview, adding the company’s focus would be on developing its antibiotics pipeline for the global market, while its generics pharma business will focus on the rest of its existing markets. Exiting the US generics market “will improve profits because we are losing money in the US,” he said.
Wockhardt is increasing focus on its new drug discovery programme, with a pipeline of novel antibiotics for drug resistant bacterial infections, and new biosimilar drugs to treat diabetes.
It has a pipeline of six novel antibiotics targeting bacterial drug resistance. Two of these, Emrok and Miqnaf, have already been launched in India. Its third drug candidate, Zaynich, has completed global phase 3 trials with promising results. Wockhardt has filed for approval with the Indian drug regulator, and is expecting approval in the second half of FY26. It plans to file with the US FDA in Q2 FY26, with a potential launch in FY27, it said in an investor meeting in June.
Zaynich could potentially change the company’s fortunes, with an addressable patient pool of two million. The addressable market potential for Zaynich is $7 billion in the US and Europe, the company said.
Wockhardt is also looking at building its insulin business more robustly for India and emerging markets. The company is doubling its capacity in the next three years to tap the growing demand in the space.
