India's Sun Pharma beats Q3 profit view on higher sales of specialty drugs

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, India's largest drugmaker by revenue, reported a better-than-expected 5.2% rise in third-quarter profit on Tuesday, driven by higher sales of its specialty drugs.

The company, known for its consumer healthcare products such as Revital vitamins and pain relief medicine Volini, said it earned a consolidated net profit of 21.66 billion rupees ($265.23 million) in three months ended Dec. 31, up from 20.59 billion rupees last year.

Analysts, on average, had expected the company to report a profit of 21.26 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Total revenue from operations climbed nearly 14% to 112.41 billion rupees. Input costs rose 8.5%.

Drug sales in India rose 7.1% to 33.92 billion rupees, whereas sales in the United States climbed 16.6% to 34.66 billion rupees, with each of the two regions accounting for 31% of the company's total consolidated sales.

The company, founded in 1983, makes over-the-counter medications, anti-retrovirals and active pharmaceutical ingredients for chronic and acute treatments.

Despite the popularity of its generics business, the intense price competition prompted the drugmaker to enter the high-margin specialty segment about seven years ago.

Earlier this month, the company said it would buy Concert Pharmaceuticals for $576 million for access to the U.S. firm's experimental drug for treating patchy baldness, in a move to boost its speciality drugs portfolio.

The company also declared an interim dividend of 7.50 rupees per share for the year financial year 2023.

Sun Pharma's shares fell as much as 2.4% to 1,026.05 rupees, after two straight sessions of gains. The stock climbed 18.4% in 2022, compared with an 11.4% decline in the Nifty pharma index.

($1 = 81.6660 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)