Cipla has sold inhalers for decades. So its announcement of another such product shouldn’t move the market. Yet, it did.

On 14 May, the day after the company reported one of its worst quarterly profits in recent years, Cipla’s stock rose 8%. What explains this?

Put simply, it’s not an ordinary inhaler.

In April, the nearly $12 billion company’s latest facility in Massachusetts, US, received FDA approval to manufacture generic versions of Ventolin HFA, one of the world’s most-prescribed emergency-use asthma drugs.

So far,........

© The Ken