Sun Pharma Q1 net up 43% to Rs 2,061 crore on specialty sales, India biz

Gross sales up 10.1% YoY to Rs 10,644 cr; EBITDA at Rs 2,884.4 cr, with a margin of 26.8%

India’s largest drug maker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has posted a 43 per cent rise in net profit for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, to Rs 2,061 crore, beating street estimates, riding on robust sales across India, US and emerging markets. The firm’s gross sales were up 10.1 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 10,644 crore during the quarter, from Rs 9,719 crore a year ago.

Excluding the exceptional items of Q1 last year, the adjusted net profit was up 4.1 per cent.

EBITDA for the quarter came in at Rs 2,884.4 crore (including other operating revenues), and at a margin of 26.8 per cent.

Sun Pharma shares soared 5.4 per cent on the BSE on Friday.

The company said excluding sales of Covid-19 products, the overall sales are up by about 14 per cent. The India formulations business was up 13 per cent on a like-to-like basis, excluding Covid-19 product sales of Q1 last year. “On a reported basis, the growth is 2.4 per cent over Q1 last year,” the company said.

US formulation sales came in at $420 million, up 10.7 per cent over Q1FY22, while emerging market formulation sales were $245 million (12.6 per cent). Rest of world formulation sales came in at $190 million (2.6 per cent).

Dilip Shanghvi, managing director of the company, said, “For Q1, all our businesses recorded good growth, driven by a combination of sustained scale-up for our specialty business and all-round growth across markets.”

The growth in Q1FY23 was led by the rise in Sun Pharma’s specialty business.

“Specialty business has grown 29 per cent, driven by Ilumya, Cequa, Odomzo and Winlevi. Our India business continues to grow faster than the market, leading to an increase in market share. We have been able to report healthy margins despite rising costs. We continue to focus on expanding our global specialty business, growing all our businesses and improving our market share,” Shanghvi said.

He added that specialty R&D constituted 21 per cent of overall R&D. There were four specialty molecules, which are in clinical trials now. 

India formulation sales accounted for about 32 per cent of total consolidated sales while the US accounted for over 30 per cent. Sun Pharma improved its market share to 8.5 per cent in India as of June 2022. There were no sales of Covid-19 drugs during Q1FY23 in India. In the US Winlevi, the specialty drug that got approval late last year, has seen 10,000 doctors prescribing it. 

Sun Pharma’s Israeli subsidiary Taro posted Q1FY23 sales of $157 million and net profit of $14 million. Taro’s financials include the first full quarter of consolidation of the Alchemee acquisition.