Q2 Results: Cipla’s Profit Beats Analysts’ Estimates
Shares of Cipla rose nearly 4.3 percent after the earnings announcement.
Cipla Ltd.’s quarterly profit surpassed analysts’ estimates as sales in India and the U.S. rose.
Net profit jumped 25 percent year-on-year to Rs 471 crore in the quarter ended September, the drugmaker said in an exchange filing. That’s higher than the Rs 404-crore consensus estimate of analysts tracked by Bloomberg.
Revenue rose 9 percent over the previous year to Rs 4,395 crore—analysts had forecast Rs 4,188 crore. The company’s other income fell to Rs 101 crore from Rs 132 crore in the year-ago period. The U.S. arm’s revenue grew 25 percent over last year to $135 million, while domestic segment grew 6 percent year-on-year to Rs 1,745 crore led by a recovery in the generics business, the company said.
Umang Vohra, managing director and global chief executive officer at Cipla, said the business in Middle East and North Africa could be “challenging” due to geo-political tensions in Lebanon and Syria. “We will, however, try to diversify into bigger markets such as China where we have already started work,” he told BloombergQuint in an interview.
Our home markets continued to bode well—India business recorded robust performance in trade generics and across all key therapies in branded business while in South Africa, the private market business outpaced the market significantly.Umang Vohra, MD and Global CEO, Cipla
The drugmaker’s operational metrics, too, beat street expectations. Operating profit rose 20.7 percent over last year to Rs 909 crore in the three-month period. Operating margin expanded to 20.7 percent from 17.5 percent in the same quarter last year.
Vohra said the drugmaker is expected to meet the Ebitda guidance of 18-20 percent guidance for the third quarter and may surpass the range by end of the year.
That comes at a time when India’s pharmaceutical market grew at its fastest pace in more than a year in the quarter ended September on higher volumes and prices even as new launches fell.
Shares of Cipla rose nearly 4.3 percent after the company after the earnings announcement, compared with a 0.66 percent gain in the NSE Nifty Pharma Index.
Watch | Cipla’s Umang Vohra on new launches in the pipeline and more...