WRAPUP 1-Takeda and Daiichi profits up, Chugai shares tank

By Edwina Gibbs

TOKYO, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Japanese drug makers Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (4502.T) and Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd (4568.T) reported bigger profits on Thursday for the first nine months of the business year, bolstered by strong sales of their mainstay drugs in the U.S. market.

But Chugai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (4519.T), the Japanese arm of Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX), issued a bearish earnings outlook, prompting downgrades by analysts that led investors to dump its shares, which slid 18 percent.

"Takeda and Daiichi Sankyo were pretty much in line with expectations but Chugai was shocking," said Kumi Miyauchi, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research.

"Chugai was down by its daily limit today and it will probably be limit down again tomorrow," she said.

Takeda, Japan's biggest drug maker, booked a 6 percent rise in recurring profit, which is before tax and extraordinary items, to 506 billion yen ($3.1 billion) for April-December as more diabetes patients turned to its Actos pill.

Sales of Actos, the main earnings engine for Takeda, have risen while those of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK.L) Avandia have tumbled since Avandia was linked to heart attack risk in a U.S. study last May.

Takeda's bottom line fared even better, with net profit rising 25 percent to 331 billion yen, rebounding from a year earlier when Japanese authorities saddled the company with an unexpected tax bill.

Domestic rival Daiichi Sankyo, formed when Sankyo bought Daiichi Pharmaceutical, posted a stronger climb in income on a jump in sales for its high blood pressure medicine Benicar.