India's Lupin first-quarter profit misses estimate by wide margin

(Reuters) - Drugmaker Lupin Ltd posted a bigger-than-expected fall in first-quarter profit on Wednesday, hurt by declining sales in the United States and Japan.

Sanctions imposed by international regulatory bodies and warnings over quality control at production sites have hurt sales in the United States where Indian pharmaceutical firms accounted for a third of the drugs sold.

"The first quarter of FY2019 has been subdued, primarily on account of the US and Japan," Managing Director Nilesh Gupta said in a statement http://pdf.reuters.com/pdfnews/pdfnews.asp?i=43059c3bf0e37541&u=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20180808:nBSE9Y1T5y.

Sales in North America, which contributed 31 percent to the total sales, fell 26 percent from a year earlier, while those in Japan declined 5.3 percent.

Net profit fell 43 percent to 2.03 billion rupees, way below average analysts' forecast of 3.51 billion rupees, Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data showed.

Total revenue from operations declined marginally to 38.56 billion rupees.

Shares fell as much as 5.4 percent, making them the top percentage losers on the NSE index which was up 0.3 percent.

($1 = 68.6850 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)