DGAP-News

PharmaSGP: Revenue growth in 2020 despite declining markets - Seite 2

PharmaSGP increased its consolidated revenue by 1.1% to €63.2 million in the 2020 financial year (previous year: €62.6 million). In Germany (PharmaSGP's home market), revenue decreased in line with the market development by 5.3% to €43.4 million (previous year: €45.8 million). By contrast, international revenue increased by 18.6% to €19.8 million (previous year: €16.8 million).

On the one hand, PharmaSGP profits from a proven, scalable, asset-light business model combined with highly efficient and established processes. On the other hand, PharmaSGP benefits from a specialized D2C marketing strategy with extensive target group reach and efficient commercial media conditions. Revenue in the strategically important 'Health Brands' category grew accordingly by 11.8% to €54.8 million (previous year: €49.0 million). As expected, the 'Beauty Brands' category was weaker in an increasingly competitive environment, further exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Revenue in this category declined by 35.2% in 2020.

In the context of rapidly rising infection figures and area-wide hard lockdowns, advertising space already booked for new launches could not be reduced at short notice in Q4 2020. This was offset by unexpected revenue shortfalls. Mainly due to this effect, earnings before interest and taxes adjusted for one-off costs and special effects (adjusted EBIT)^[1] fell by 26.3% in 2020 to €16.5 million (previous year: €22.4 million). This corresponds to an adjusted EBIT margin measured against revenue of 26.1% (previous year: 35.8%). Unadjusted EBIT amounted to €14.2 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 22.5%.

Nevertheless, Michael Rudolf, CFO of PharmaSGP, sees good growth opportunities in all target markets in the medium and long term: "Structural trends such as the increasing age of the population, continuously rising health awareness or the trend towards natural drugs and self-medication favour demand for our products. Furthermore, we have a business model that allows us to react quickly to structural and demand-related market changes. We plan to take advantage of these opportunities and significantly accelerate our growth rate through M&A activities, driving growth of established brands and products through our PharmaSGP platform."