Lupin Ltd, India's third-largest drugmaker by sales, reported a 57.6 per cent jump in quarterly profit on Wednesday, but missed analysts' expectations due to higher research spending.
The Mumbai-based company, founded by billionaire Desh Bandhu Gupta, said net profit rose to Rs 662 crore ($99.62 million) from Rs 420 crore during the same period a year earlier. That was below the average estimate of a Rs 716 crore profit, drawn from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Lupin, the world's seventh-largest generic drugs maker, said North America sales rose 73.1 per cent to about Rs 2,000 crore. Analysts expect this was mainly due to price rises and higher sales of its diabetes drugs portfolio.
Sales in most of Lupin's markets rose, including in India, the company's second-biggest market, where sales were up 12.1 per cent.
Total expenses rose about 25 per cent. Lupin said it spent about 13.6 pe rcent of its sales of Rs 4,211 crore on research in the quarter. Like most of its peers, Lupin has been spending on building up its portfolio of niche drugs that are harder to make and therefore face limited competition.
The company shares ended the sesion up by 1.31 per cent at Rs 1,529.05 on the BSE.