BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian drugmaker Alembic Pharmaceuticals reported a 12% rise in first-quarter profit on Thursday, led by strong demand for its generic drugs in its key market of North America.

The company’s consolidated profit rose to 1.35 billion rupees ($16 million) for the quarter ended June 30, while revenue rose 5% to 15.62 billion rupees.

Sales in the U.S. climbed 18%, pushing the market’s contribution to Alembic’s overall revenue to 29% from 26% a year ago.

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KEY CONTEXT

Indian generic drugmakers earn a significant share of their revenue from the U.S., which is the world’s biggest pharmaceutical market. Alembic’s larger rivals Cipla, Dr Reddy’s and Sun Pharma all beat their June quarter profit estimates on strong demand in the U.S.

However, these generic drugmakers have also been grappling with lower prices of their drugs in key U.S. markets amid stiff competition.

PEER COMPARISON

Estimates (next 12 Analysts’ sentiment

months)

RIC PE EV/EBI Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div

TDA growth growth rating* analysts price yield

(%) (%) target** (%)

Alembic 31.34 19.40 11.48 16.89 Hold 10 1.30 0.90

Pharmaceuticals

Zydus 28.88 20.73 10.84 11.01 Hold 26 1.24 0.24

Lifesciences

Cipla 25.89 16.15 8.89 9.90 Hold 31 0.97 0.84

Dr Reddy’s 19.94 12.55 10.34 3.36 Hold 33 1.06 0.58

Laboratories

* The mean of analysts’ ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell

** The ratio of the stock’s last close to analysts’ mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

APRIL-JUNE STOCK PERFORMANCE

— All data from LSEG

— $1 = 83.9280 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)

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