Drugmaker Cipla profit falls short of forecast, down 69 pct

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Cipla Ltd, India's fifth-largest drugmaker by sales, reported a fall of 69 percent in its quarterly earnings on Tuesday, far short of analysts' forecasts.

Net profit for the January-March quarter was 808.7 million rupees ($12 million), compared with 2.60 billion rupees a year earlier. The average of forecasts by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters was for a profit of 3.79 billion rupees.

A company statement did not provide a reason for the profit fall, but said domestic sales for the quarter had risen about 16 percent in the quarter and contributed 40 percent to overall sales in fiscal 2016.

 

($1 = 67.7027 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Mumbai; Editing by Alexander Smith)