Sun has terrific quarter, except for that Pfizer thing

India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries had a really good quarter, except for that one thing with Pfizer ($PFE). Its sales in the U.S. were up 28%, and it posted a profit of $204.8 million for the quarter--that is, before that one thing with Pfizer.

Of course, that one thing was a 25.2 billion rupee payment ($415 million) that it made to Pfizer and Takeda as part of its share of a $2.15 billion settlement it and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ($TEVA) reached with the two. The settlement came after their generics for the acid reflux drug Protonix were found to violate its patent. Sun has agreed to pay $550 million in all. With the payment this quarter, the company reported a net loss of about $215 million.

"If you exclude the one-time payment, which was known to the market, the sales, margins and profits have all beaten our estimates," Ranjit Kapadia, an analyst at Centrum Broking, told Bloomberg.

Sun has generally been on a roll in the last year. Its shares are up about 50% in the past 12 months, Bloomberg reported, and it has made some acquisitions that have beefed up its sales. Last year, it acquired Takeda's U.S. generics business, as well as dermatology specialist DUSA. It was rumored to be sizing up Sweden's Meda AB. Reports were that Sun was considering a $5 billion to $6 billion bid, but in June, Meda said, "there are currently no such discussions," suggesting talks may have been on and petered out over price.

- here's Sun's earnings report
- see the Bloomberg story
- read more from Reuters