Diversified healthcare company Uniphar (UPR:AIM) firmed 1% to €1.13 on well-received maiden interim results since listing in July 2019. These showed trading in-line with expectations, with revenues up 20% to €800.6m and profit before tax powering 175% higher to €13.8m.
Chief executive officer Ger Rabbette said: ‘The successful IPO of Uniphar in July provides a platform for a steady growth trajectory and our subsequent acquisition of Durbin positions us well to become a global leader in the provision of product access solutions. We are on a firm footing for the second half of the year, going into 2020, and the next stage of our planned development in delivering our five year strategy.’
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Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Uniphar plc is a diversified healthcare services business servicing the requirements of more than 200 multinational pharmaceutical and medical technology manufacturers across three divisions.
Supply Chain & Retail remains the biggest division representing 81% of revenues and around half of gross profits (76%). The group holds a market leading position in supplying medicines to pharmacies and hospitals in Ireland.
Commercial & Clinical represents 12.2% of revenues and 45% of gross profits, up materially after the acquisitions of Sisk Healthcare and Angiocare in the second half of 2018. This division is focused on building in-depth expertise across several high growth areas such as Endoscopy, Cardiology and Opthalmics.
Product Access is the third division, representing 6% of revenues and 7% of gross profits and has ambitions to become a global leader in the provision of on-demand and exclusive access services.
Uniphar is building on its ability to offer both Product Access and Commercial & Clinical solutions to manage specialty products across the entire life-cycle of a product.
A significant step in that direction was made in August when the company acquired Durbin, a specialist provider of pharmaceuticals with offices in the UK and the US supplying over 160 countries.
The division saw strong organic sales growth of 64%, including the addition of a new exclusive access agreement for an oncology therapy (cancer treatment).
Overall gross profits increased by 86% to €82.4m, which includes acquisitions made in 2018.
Organically gross profits increased by 6% and the gross margin (gross profits as a percentage of revenues) improved from 7% to 10%, driven by the expansion into higher margin businesses.
This improvement led to a doubling of earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to €21.9m (€10m). Return on capital employed, at 14.3% was at the upper-end of the company’s medium term target.
House broker Davy believes that the company is on track to meet full year expectations of €47.1m of EBITDA, which leaves the group trading on ‘just 6.5 times 2020 EBITDA’ and 8.9 times 2020 earnings per share.
