Abbott India's Q2 profit climbs on strong sales

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Abbott India, the local unit of U.S. healthcare firm Abbott Laboratories, reported a 17.7% rise in second-quarter profit on Thursday, driven by strong sales in its mainstay pharmaceuticals segment.

Profit for the company, which makes pain-reliever ibuprofen under the brand name Brufen, rose to 3.13 billion rupees ($37.6 million) in the three months to Sept. 30 from a year earlier.

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KEY CONTEXT

Waning price erosion in the U.S. market, which accounts for a significant share of Indian generic drug-makers' revenue, led to an 8.3% rise in Abbott's revenue, driving up profit.

Peers Cipla and Dr Reddy's beat analysts' profit estimates while Gland Pharma missed profit estimates.

Still, Abbott was hurt by production halts in Goa, where it has one of its two India plants, after customer complaints led to a voluntary recall of its antacid syrup starting August and left the company embroiled in a tussle with regulators in the state.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next 12 Estimates (next 12 Analysts' sentiment

months) months)

RIC PE EV/EBITDA Revenue profit Mean # of Stock to Div

growth growth rating* analysts price yield

target** (%)

Abbott India Ltd ABOT.N 43.18 31.48 12.63 17.51 Buy 7 1.05 0.74

S

Gland Pharma Ltd GLAD.N 25.72 16.30 25.47 16.49 Buy 16 1.00 -

S

Cipla Ltd CIPL.N 24.21 14.42 10.53 17.96 Buy 35 1.00 0.68

S

Dr Reddy's REDY.N 17.72 10.95 8.03 7.18 Hold 37 0.97 0.73

Laboratories Ltd S

* Mean of analysts' ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell

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

JULY-SEPT STOCK PERFORMANCE

-- All data from LSEG

-- $1 = 83.2540 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Varun Vyas in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)