Sun Pharma Share Price Today: Sun Pharmaceutical's efforts around specialty portfolio ramp up are yielding favourable progress as prescription trends around the key products suggest growth on a QoQ basis. Levulan which was significantly below pre COVID levels has broadly normalized but Nirmal Bang says needs to monitor the impact of resurgence in COVID cases. In fact, seeing faint signals of an unfavourable impact of the second COVID wave as trends seems to suggest weakening prescription volumes across product categories in the last week of November.

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On a QoQ basis though, the trend so far is favourable and should support sales growth, unless the resurgence in COVID incidences lead to sharp correction going forward. Nirmal Bang maintains their estimates with valuation multiple of 23x based on September FY23E earnings at target price of Rs 618. Considering the recent run-up in stock price an Accumulate rating has been assigned to the stock.

Levulan prescriptions (Dusa pharma) – Levulan which is one of the lead products of Sun Pharma and is meant for the treatment of actinic keratosis is recouping to pre-COVID levels. On a QoQ basis, Levulan prescriptions are up more than 100%. Since Levulan is used in physician offices in conjunction with the device, the prescriptions were down significantly owing to the lockdown.

Absorica and Absorica LD prescriptions – With looming threat of generic substitution, Sun has been able to convert 27% of the Absorica prescriptions to Absorica LD. We should see the impact of generic entry in Q4 FY21. 

Cequa prescription continues to trend favourably. Average weekly prescription run rate so far during the current quarter is up 35% compared to the average prescription weekly run rate in the previous quarter. Cequa market share is at 3% and the market size is $1600mn on an annual basis.

Ilumya prescriptions are favourably trending. On a QoQ basis, average weekly prescription run rate is higher 20%. Overall prescription run rate is above pre pandemic levels. The psoriasis market continues to get competitive.

Dysphagia portfolio intends to serve the need of patients who have swallowing issues. The portfolio continues to ramp up and is up almost 10% on a QoQ basis in terms of prescription volumes.

Outlook and Valuation:

Ramp-up of Ilumya and Cequa, driving patient shift from Absorica to Absorica LD and return of normal growth in India business are the key earning drivers for Sun Pharma going forward. 
Sun Pharma share price closed at Rs 567.05 , up by 1.85 points or 0.33%.