Apollo Hospitals had a strong September quarter, with its consolidated net income growing 63% year-on-year to ₹379 crore, driven by volume growth in its healthcare services and a lessening of losses in HealthCo, its online pharmacy business.
The hospital chain announced its Q2 FY25 results on Wednesday, reporting results that outperformed estimates. Its overall consolidated revenue grew 15% year-on-year to ₹5,589 crore from ₹4,847 crore in FY24. The revenue was estimated at ₹5,532 crore by Bloomberg. Profit after tax (PAT) rose to ₹379 crore, up 63% from ₹233 crore in the same period last year. The company’s Ebitda also grew 30% year-on-year to ₹816 crore.
Consolidated revenue of the firm’s healthcare services division grew 14%, aided by strong 8% volume growth. As on 30 September 2024, Apollo Hospitals had 7,994 operating beds across the network. The overall occupancy for hospitals was at 73% as opposed to 68% in the same period in the previous year, aided by a strong increase in patients across hospitals, the firm said.
HealthCo, its omnichannel pharmacy business, which includes its online platform Apollo 24/7, also saw a robust growth of 17%. In HealthCo, the firm said it had been able to bring down Ebitda loss from ₹169 crore to ₹100 crore y-o-y in the online business this quarter. The company is in line to achieve its goal of breaking even on the online business in the next five quarters, Group CFO Krishnan Akhileswaran told Mint.
“None of the PAT expansion is one-off. We should be able to continue to see this momentum even going forward,” he added.
The first tranche of investment from private equity firm Advent International in Apollo HealthCo of ₹1,732 crore has already been infused. Advent announced a capital infusion of ₹2,475 crore in the Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (AHEL) subsidiary in April. The agreement also includes a merger of Apollo’s wholesale pharma distribution unit Keimed Pvt. Ltd and online healthcare business Apollo 24/7 under Apollo HealthCo. The balance infusion from Advent and the merger is expected within 12 months from now, said Akhileswaran.
“Once we merge that into Apollo Healthco, you will see a very integrated pharma platform there…in three years from now, we should be able to get the combined Healthco business at a ₹25,000-crore level revenue and a 7-8% Ebitda margin,” he added.
The firm recently announced that it would add a 500-bed hospital in Worli, Mumbai as well as expand its existing hospital facility in Lucknow to 500 beds from the present 300 beds. In FY26 the hospital chain plans to add around 1,400 beds in four key markets—Gurugram, Hyderabad, Pune, and Kolkata.
Following political disruptions in Bangladesh, AHEL saw a 15% decline in revenue there in the first half of the year. Dr Madhu Sasidhar, president & CEO, Hospitals Division, Apollo Hospitals, said that the chain is seeing rising demand for healthcare and medical value tourism from multiple countries in Africa and in the Commonwealth of Independent States, among others.
“We see a requirement for high-end differentiated care such as proton beam therapy, (CAR) T-cell therapy for cancer, as well as complex aortic and cardiac surgery coming out of Africa, CIS countries and these markets to India and to Apollo,” Dr Sasidhar told Mint.
On Wednesday, Apollo Hospitals' shares ended flat ahead of the results.
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