Cipla Q3 Results: Profit Rises But Misses Estimates

Cipla Ltd.’s quarterly profit rose but missed analysts’ estimates.

Net profit jumped 5.7 percent year-on-year to Rs 351 crore in the quarter ended December, the drugmaker said in an exchange filing. That’s lower than the Rs 431-crore consensus estimate of analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

Revenue rose 9.1 percent over the previous year to Rs 4,371 crore—in line with analysts’ estimate of Rs 4,365 crore, the company said.

Operating profit rose 7.2 percent over the previous year to Rs 758.4 crore, while operating margin contracted by nearly 300 basis points to 17.4 percent.

Key Highlights (YoY):

• Domestic branded business grew 14 percent, while the domestic trade generics arm grew 7 percent.
• Chronic therapies drove a “significant share of growth”, growing 13 percent—higher than the pharma market’s 11 percent growth.
• Its respiratory and cardiology therapies grew 13 percent and 14 percent, respectively.
• Revenue from Cipla’s U.S. arm and domestic business grew 13 percent each over the previous year to $133 million and Rs 1,777 crore respectively, the filing said.

Shares of the drugmaker closed 1.2 percent higher ahead of the earnings announcement compared to a 0.9 percent gain in the NSE Nifty 50 Index.