Takeda 9-month profit up 25 pct on Actos sales

TOKYO Jan 31 (Reuters) - Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (4502.T), Japan's biggest drug maker, booked a 24.5 percent rise in profit for the first nine months of the business year on Thursday as more diabetes patients turned to its Actos pill after a rival drug was hit by safety concerns.

Takeda said net profit climbed to 331.4 billion yen ($3.12 billion) for the April-December period, up from 266.2 billion yen in the same period a year earlier.

It left its projection of annual net income unchanged at 395 billion yen, below an average forecast of 409 billion yen from 19 brokerages polled by Reuters Estimates.

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

Takeda's shares have declined 17 percent this business year up to Wednesday, in line with Tokyo's pharmaceutical subindex .IPHAM.T. (Reporting by Edwina Gibbs)