India's top drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories said on Tuesday its first-quarter net profit nearly tripled on booming exports of generic drugs to the United States.
The New Delhi-based firm, which earns more from exports than from domestic sales, started selling generic versions of Roche's anti-acne drug Accutane and GlaxoSmithKline's antibiotic Augmentin in the key US market during the quarter.
It has also registered strong sales of a generic version of the antibiotic Ceftin in the past 12 months in the US where it is the sole seller besides GlaxoSmithKline. But analysts expect competition from other copycats will come soon.
Ranbaxy and other Indian drug companies such as Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Cipla Ltd have been riding high on copycat versions of drugs going off patent.
Dr Reddy's by contrast is expected to report lower quarterly results as it lacked new blockbuster drugs in the past quarters.
Domestic market sales across the sector are expected to have taken a hit after distributors refused to buy fresh stocks and concentrated on clearing out old inventory amid uncertainty
Cipla, India's No 2 drug-maker by market share reported a 24 per cent drop in fourth quarter net profit late last week chiefly as domestic sales took a hit.
Ranbaxy said January-March net profit was Rs 2.8 billion ($59.12 million), compared with a profit of Rs 949 million a year ago, whipping estimates.
Sales rose 90 per cent to Rs 10.5 billion.
A Reuters survey of four analysts estimated Ranbaxy's net profit at Rs 1.49 billion on sales of Rs 8.05 billion.
Ranbaxy said global sales rose 54 per cent to $233 million while global net profit rose 77 per cent to Rs 1.73 billion.
"The consolidated profit has been better than our expectations. This would have been primarily driven by the US markets," Rohit Bhat, pharma analyst, B&K Securities.
"Generic drugs like Augmentin and Accutane may have contributed better than our estimates."
After the results, Ranbaxy's were up 3.32 per cent at Rs 673 while the benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange index was up 0.58 per cent.
