Cipla EU acquires additional stake in JV with Cooper Pharma; shares rise

Cipla stock rose marginally in early trade on November 28. The pharma player’s European subsidiary Cipla EU completed the acquisition of an additional stake in Cipla Maroc SA, Morocco, a joint venture company.

Cipla EU acquired an additional 15.1 percent of Cipla Maroc SA, Morocco shares from the The Pharmaceutical Institute (PHI) for MAD 81.1 million or around $8.05 million.

As of 9:45 am, shares of Cipla were trading at Rs 1,200.4 apiece, higher by 0.15 percent from the closing price of the previous session.

Accordingly, Cipla EU will now hold a 75.10 percent stake in the joint venture company, and the remaining 24.90 percent stake will be held by Societe Marocaine de Cooperation Pharmaceutique (Cooper Pharma).

On November 17, Cipla was issued a Warning Letter (WL) by US FDA for its plant in Pithampur, Indore, highlighting issues regarding – Albuterol inhaler manufacturing; contamination incidents; document disposal procedures; and repeat observations at multiple sites.

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The USFDA letter also underlined data integrity issues at Cipla. The letter followed a routine good manufacturing practices inspection of the firm’s Pithampur facility in February 2023. Cipla received eight inspectional observations in Form 483.

As per Jefferies’s analysts, the first two issues were regarding manufacturing processes, while the third issue was related to data integrity.

The brokerage said that its analysis found that 47 percent of import alerts are due to data integrity issues (manipulating data/overwriting or falsifying data), 37 from product and quality issues, 10 from hiding information from the regulator and 7 percent were due to repeat observations.

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