Sun Pharma reports surprise drop in profits

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, India's largest drugmaker, reported its first fall in quarterly profits in a year on Tuesday, due to slower sales in the United States, its largest market.

Net profit in the last three months of 2016, fell to 14.72 billion rupees ($219.87 million) from 15.45 billion rupees in the same period a year ago, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement. Analysts on average had expected a profit of 17.83 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Estimates.

U.S. sales rose 4 percent, while those in India were up 5 percent. The firm's business in the United States has been pressured over the past year due to increasing competition and regulatory restrictions after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found violations in manufacturing practices at Sun's Halol factory in western India.

The company has spent months trying to resolve the concerns, but the FDA remains dissatisfied and outlined further problems with the plant in an inspection report in December.

Sun's majority-owned U.S. subsidiary Taro Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd has also been hit by pricing pressures, and last week reported third-quarter sales down 15 percent compared with a year earlier.

Sun also said sales in its emerging markets rose 14 percent, and those in the rest of the world were up 33 percent.

($1 = 66.9500 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Mumbai; Editing by Vyas Mohan, Greg Mahlich)