The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 29 January 2010.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 81.73 points, or 0.50%, to 16276.23.

On BSE, 3,109 shares were traded in the counter as against an average daily volume of 24,063 shares in the past one quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs 1494 and a low of Rs 1432.20 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 1605 on 8 January 2010 and a 52-week low of Rs 953 on 4 March 2009.

The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 29 January 2010, falling 4.45% compared with the Sensex's 6% fall. It outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 4.65% as against 1.90% rise in the Sensex.

India's largest drug maker by market capitalisation has an equity capital of Rs 103.56 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5.

On a consolidated basis, the net profit fell 17.1% to Rs 338.95 crore on a 11.2% rise in sales to Rs 1020.86 crore in Q3 December 2009 over Q3 December 2008.

Sales growth was driven by business from the Indian market which posted a 24% growth in its branded segment at Rs 533 crore, contributing over half of its total sales.

Sales from US unit Caraco fell 7% to $52 million due to the actions of the US drug regulator Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), cessation of manufacturing and partly due to the voluntary recall of few of its products. During the quarter, Caraco also made a loss of $3 million, Sun Pharma said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

Sun Pharmaceuticals has taken a series of steps to mitigate and resolve its ongoing problems with the US FDA. US authorities had seized manufacturing of drugs at one of Caraco's plant after the company failed to address the manufacturing violations pointed out by the FDA.

Sun said, Caraco has recently submitted a remedial action plan to the FDA to resolve the issue and has shifted the production of some of its key drugs to other manufacturing sites to generate revenues from those products.

Another trigger for gains in the Sun Pharma counter was a media report which suggested that the company's plan to launch a copy of US-based Wyeth's blockbuster anti-depressant capsule Effexor XR got a big boost after the US drug regulator rejected rival Osmotica Pharmaceuticals's appeal to bar the Indian company. The FDA reportedly rejected Osmotica's appeal a few days ago, though the FDA's website is yet to notify the development.

Sun can launch low-cost tablets of the Wyeth drug, which notched annual sales of $3.8 billion in 2007, once it gets the FDA's nod. As Sun and Osmotica's drugs are in the form of tablets and, therefore, not replicas of Wyeth's drug capsules, these companies do not have to wait for the Pfizer group company's patent to expire later this year.US-based Osmotica launched its version of the Wyeth drug in late 2008. sam

Sun Pharma is an international, integrated, specialty pharmaceutical company. It manufactures and markets a large basket of pharmaceutical formulations as branded generics as well as generics in India, US and several markets across the world.

As on January 2010, promoters have pledged 6.85 lakh shares representing 0.33% of the equity capital of the company. Total promoters shareholding in the company is 63.71% (end December 2009).