Cipla expects lower growth in second half of 2016

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Cipla Ltd, India's third-largest drugmaker by sales, said its sales for the rest of this year would be lower than that in the first half, after September-quarter earnings came in below analysts' expectations.

Sales in India, Cipla's largest market, grew only 1 percent in the quarter, and expenses rose. Total net profit rose 44 percent to 4.31 billion rupees ($65.56 million) in the quarter ended September, Cipla said in a statement on Thursday.

Analysts, on average, expected 4.84 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The company said it will spend heavily on research and development in consumer healthcare and biologics for the rest of the year.

Cipla was among the earliest companies in India to start exporting cheap generics. However, like its peers, it has more recently been developing high-value, complex products, as the market for simple generics becomes more and more crowded.

Among these are its line-up of difficult-to-copy respiratory products such as inhalers.

It has also been making efforts to expand in the United States, the world's largest healthcare market, where its business is much smaller than that of its peers.

It said in September that it was buying two U.S.-based generics businesses in cash deals worth $550 million, gaining drugs to treat infection, diabetes and central nervous system disorders.

($1 = 65.7400 rupees)

(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Mumbai; Editing by Sunil Nair)