Nifty Pharma P/E at 34.7, above its five-year median

Where pharma stands

Nifty Pharma closed at 23,171.85 on Monday, 27 April 2026, at a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.69. Its price-to-book ratio was 5.05 and its dividend yield 0.68%.

These are NSE's published end-of-day ratios. The daily history is on the Nifty Pharma valuation page.

A little above its own middle

The comparisons start on 31 March 2021, when NSE moved its index P/Es to consolidated earnings. Nifty Pharma's P/E went from 34.00 to 32.34 that day. That leaves 1,250 sessions to 27 April.

• P/E: 810 sessions closed lower, about the 65th percentile. The low, 27.73, came on 30 May 2023; the high, 39.63, on 9 October 2024.
• P/B: 738 sessions lower, about the 59th percentile.
• Dividend yield: right on its median.

That is unremarkable on its own. It stands out because of where the rest of the market is. In the last few weeks this series has found FMCG and IT near their lowest P/Es since 2021. Pharma is not near its low on any of the three measures.

It barely fell

Between 27 February and 30 March the Nifty 50 fell 11.3%. Nifty Pharma fell 3.1% and the Healthcare Index 4.5%. Pharma's highest close of the year, 23,348.05, came on 11 March, in the middle of the market's fall.

So far in 2026, Pharma is up 2.0% and Healthcare up 1.9%, against a 7.8% fall in the Nifty 50. Pharma is 2.6% below its record close of 23,783.80, set on 9 October 2024.

Price up, profits flat

A year earlier, on 25 April 2025, the index closed at 21,482.55 at a P/E of 32.54.

• The index is up 7.9% over the year.
• The P/E is up 6.6%.
• Dividing one by the other, the earnings behind the index rose only about 1.2%.

The earnings figure has wandered rather than climbed. Measured as the index divided by its P/E, it rose from 660 index points in March 2025 to 704 in July, fell to 649 by the end of September, and has sat at 668 since February.

Against the record close in October 2024 the picture is better for the ratio. The price is 2.6% lower, the P/E is 12.5% lower (34.69 against 39.63), so the earnings behind the index are about 11% higher than they were then.

Against the Nifty 50

Pharma usually costs more than the market on earnings. Since March 2021 its P/E has ranged from 0.97 to 1.95 times the Nifty 50's, with a median of 1.50.

On 27 April it was 1.66 times (34.69 against 20.96). That multiple was smaller on 1,064 of 1,250 sessions. Most of the widening is the Nifty 50 getting cheaper, as our April Nifty 50 P/E post covers, rather than pharma getting dearer.

The Healthcare Index alongside

The Nifty Healthcare Index adds hospitals and diagnostics to the drug makers. Its daily history here runs from November 2020, and three sessions in 2021 are missing, so it has 1,247 sessions since March 2021 rather than 1,250.

Healthcare costs a little more than Pharma and sits in the same place against its own history: just above the middle. It set its record close of 15,083.20 on 26 February 2026 and is 1.1% below it. Its earnings rose about 8.3% over the year, faster than Pharma's.

What this does not tell you

Holding up is not the same as cheap. A sector that fell least in a sell-off has not been re-priced, and its P/E shows it.

The ratios update in steps. The book value behind Pharma rose about 11% in a series of jumps between 4 July 2025 and 1 August 2025 as new figures fed in. A ratio can move on such a day with no change in price, and the published numbers cannot separate company results from changes in the index's members.

The P/E looks backwards. It divides by the last twelve months of profit.

These are indices, not funds. Pharma and healthcare funds hold their own mix, often with more mid and small companies than these indices.

Where to go from here

The Healthcare Index page has the wider index's daily series. The guide to sectoral and thematic funds covers the concentration risk in a single-sector bet, and sectoral and thematic fund rankings are computed from daily NAVs.