1. At a Glance – The Big Pharma Flex 💊
India’s largest pharma company is doing what it does best: quietly minting money while the market yawns. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd currently sits at a market cap of ₹3.82 lakh crore, trading around ₹1,595, down ~9% YoY despite reporting Q3 FY26 PAT of ₹3,381 Cr, up 18.7% YoY.
Operating margins are flexing at ~32%, debt is a rounding error (D/E 0.07), ROCE is a respectable 20%, and cash keeps flowing like a hospital IV drip. Yet, the stock trades at ~31.5× P/E, which means Mr. Market is saying: “Boss, results are great, but we expected fireworks.”
Returns over the last 3 months and 6 months are negative, but profits are growing. Classic Sun Pharma behaviour: fundamentals doing surya namaskar, stock price doing meditation. Curious already?
2. Introduction – The Emperor of Indian Pharma 🏛️
Sun Pharma is that student who tops the class every year, but nobody claps anymore because it’s… expected. Founded and controlled by Dilip Shanghvi, the company has evolved from a domestic branded-generics powerhouse into a global specialty pharma player with presence across India, the US, emerging markets, and developed economies.
Over the last decade, Sun has survived USFDA nightmares, pricing pressure, patent cliffs, antitrust settlements, and still managed to grow profits at ~24% CAGR over 5 years. That’s not luck — that’s scale, execution, and regulatory muscle memory.
But here’s the irony: despite blockbuster margins and global leadership, Sun Pharma’s sales growth (~10%) looks… boring. And boring is the biggest crime in today’s momentum-driven market. So is Sun Pharma a slow poison or slow compounding medicine? Let’s
dissect.
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do? 🤔
Imagine a pharma company that refuses to bet on just one geography or one molecule. That’s Sun Pharma.
They operate across:
- India branded generics (doctor-driven, chronic therapies, sticky prescriptions)
- US generics + specialty (derma-focused, litigation-heavy, but high-margin)
- Emerging markets (volume + distribution play)
- Rest of World (steady but unsung hero)
- APIs & Consumer Healthcare (boring but defensive)
The real sauce? Specialty products like dermatology, ophthalmology, and oncology. These are not “copy-paste generics” — these require R&D, clinical trials, patience, and regulatory stamina. Basically, Sun Pharma has moved from “generic dabba” to “branded brain surgery.”
4. Financials Overview – Numbers That Don’t Lie (But Bore Traders)
Q3 FY26 Performance Table (₹ Cr)
| Metric | Latest Qtr | YoY Qtr | Prev Qtr | YoY % | QoQ % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 15,521 | 13,675 | 14,478 | 13.5% | 7.2% |
| EBITDA | 4,948 | 4,009 | 4,527 | 23.4% | 9.3% |
| PAT | 3,381 | 2,913 | 3,125 | 18.7% | 8.2% |
| EPS (₹) | 14.04 | 12.10 | 13.00 | 16.0% | 8.0% |
Annualised EPS (Q3 rule):
Average of Q1, Q2, Q3 EPS × 4 ≈ ₹45.5 (matches TTM).
Margins expanding, profits rising faster than revenue, and costs behaving — textbook mature pharma execution. Question is: how much excitement can maturity generate?
5. Valuation Discussion – Paying for Stability, Not Adrenaline 💸
Method 1: P/E Multiple
- TTM EPS: ₹45.5
- Peer
