A Study of Multilayered Profitability Analysis by Using DuPont Model: Evidence from Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Profitability is used as a prime indicator to measure the sustainable performance of an organization. The current study made an attempt to apply the DuPont model to investigate the multilevel profitability determinants for the pharmaceutical industry of India. The study also estimates an empirical model to predict the association of profitability with factors such as profit margin, asset utilization, leverage, interest load and tax load of firms in the pharmaceutical industry of India. For this purpose, a dataset for 170 companies from 2010–2011 to 2018–2019 was analysed initially by using panel data regression followed by stepwise panel data regression. The study successfully applied and tested the DuPont model with respect to the firms of the pharmaceutical industry in India. It was found that the factors such as profit margin, asset utilization and leverage had a significant positive effect on the firms’ profitability and the factor interest load had a significant negative effect on the firms’ profitability. The tax load does not have an impact on the profitability of the pharmaceutical firms in India. These findings are expected to provide a guide for understanding the profitability of the firms in a better way.