Aventis Pharma net drops 20%; Piramal Healthcare posts loss
Aventis Pharma net drops 20%; Piramal Healthcare posts loss
Mumbai: Drug makers Strides Arcolab Ltd, Piramal Healthcare Ltd and Aventis Pharma Ltd posted mixed results for the March quarter. While the first had last week posted a 48.8% increase in profit for the quarter, the other two, which reported earnings on Thursday, were affected by non-operational factors.
Aventis Pharma saw a 20% drop in profit to ₹ 40 crore from ₹ 50 crore because of a local acquisition in the quarter, while revenue grew 16.39% to ₹ 345 crore. Strides Arcolab’s net profit had risen to ₹ 61 crore in the year-ago quarter, while sales had jumped 40.22% to ₹ 495 crore.
Piramal Healthcare posted a loss of ₹ 37.32 crore compared with a profit of ₹ 202 crore a year ago, owing to reduced interest income and research costs. Piramal Healthcare, which sold its key domestic business to Abbott Laboratories last year, maintained revenue at ₹ 688 crore in the March quarter.
“Income from investments" fell to ₹ 39.1 crore from ₹ 130.1 crore in the preceding quarter “due to the investment of ₹ 5,862 crore to acquire 11% equity stake in Vodafone India Ltd," the firm said in a statement. “Hence, operating profit for the quarter was lower at ₹ 150 crore compared with ₹ 263 crore in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011."
An analyst with a foreign brokerage, who did not want to be identified, said “the loss was anticipated given the fact that they have got the new chemical entity (Piramal Life Sciences) back into the main business. Net income will also go down because they have invested around ₹ 6,000 crore in Vodafone, so there is no income from interest". The person said that the company will make losses in the coming quarters.
A company spokesperson said it invested ₹ 156 crore in research and development that it hadn’t done in the previous year.
Shares of Aventis Pharma dropped 2.67% to ₹ 2,138 apiece on BSE at the close of trade on Thursday, while Piramal Healthcare fell 1.64% to ₹ 433. The benchmark Sensex fell 0.87% to 17,151.19 points.
namrata@livemint.com
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