Interim report January - September 2021: High demand driving organic growth
- Demand for specialty care continues to increase in the wake of the pandemic
- Temporary overcapacity in Denmark weighs on the results for the quarter
- Vårdsamverkan and Qurant develop new services for the company-financed market
- GHP’s management contract in the UAE terminated as of the beginning of 2022
- GHP holds a capital markets day on 18 November
Third quarter 2021
- Sales revenues increased to SEK 294.7 million (278.4)
- Organic growth increased to 9.1 (2.1) percent
- EBITDA amounted to SEK 31.0 million (34.6)
- EBITDA margin amounted to 10.5 percent (12.4)
- EBIT amounted to SEK 4.1 million (9.3)
- EBIT margin amounted to 1.4 percent (3.3)
- Result after tax amounted to SEK 1.2 million (6.7)
- Result per share amounted to SEK 0.02 (0.09)
First nine months 2021
- Sales revenues increased to SEK 1,066.5 million (978.5)
- Organic growth increased to 13.9 percent (1.6)
- EBITDA increased to SEK 140.7 million (134.1)
- EBITDA margin amounted to 13.2 percent (13.7)
- EBIT increased to SEK 60.7 million (59.7)
- EBIT margin amounted to 5.7 percent (6.1)
- Result after tax increased to SEK 42.5 million (41.3)
- Result per share increased to SEK 0.57 (0.52)
CEO’s comments
We are in an especially exciting phase where we manage the increased demand through developing our existing clinics, new clinics and new services. Within the Nordic core business, we have a number of expansion projects where we focus particularly on Gothenburg and Skåne. As we communicated previously, we will early next year open a new clinic in Malmö, that over time can contribute with about SEK 100 million in new revenues. In Gothenburg, we have started a new Medical Center and in Q1, we will also open a new urology, general surgery and gastro clinic. Parallel to that we are developing a digital platform for patients and extended services towards company-financed healthcare. We look forward to tell you more about this at our capital market day in November.
Our aim has been to gradually provide the businesses with resources in order to avoid finding ourselves with unused capacity too soon. In most cases this has worked well. However, in Denmark we have had overcapacity for the volumes to be managed during the summer period. This means that our profitability in Denmark was considerably inferior in the third quarter as well. We expect that the action plan that we have introduced together with the increasing volumes will have a positive effect on our Danish business in the coming quarters.
In September it became clear that as from next year we will not continue to run the SKMCA hospitals in the United Arab Emirates. Our client has decided to consolidate the running of the hospitals in the northern emirates and that this will be managed by a local operator. This means that the next step for us in GHP International will be to further accelerate the work of setting up the diabetes business in Saudi Arabia. In parallel we are continuing with the successful expansion of the hospital in Kuwait.
In the Nordic Region profitability is always weaker in the third quarter as most of the clinic’s close parts of their business as patient volumes are lower during the holidays. The impact of this seasonal variation is becoming greater as we grow. In the Nordic Region we have so far had organic growth of 16% this year and it’s visible that the debt within health care grew during the pandemic and increased the existing queue problem. Leading to an increased demand for speciality care. The increased demand is also giving us a greater opportunity to influence the pricing of our services.
During the quarter we started up a new clinic concentrating on conditions within the field of general and internal medicine: GHP Medicinskt Centrum Göteborg. This clinic covers a gap that we have had previously in our offering in Gothenburg and we are taking one step further towards a complete network of leading clinics for company-financed health care.
International’s results developed well. The greatest improvement in results comes from Kuwait, where we continue to expand the hospital with more doctors and greater patient volumes. Furthermore, this year we will not be impacted by the reduction in revenues that the pandemic entailed last year. The business in the UAE also improved its results due to the fact that as part of the transfer process we received full payment for the variable parts of the contract. Of course we think that it is regrettable that our task of running the hospitals in the UAE will be terminated at the beginning of 2022. At the same time we are very proud of what we have achieved in Ajman. The hospitals have experienced fantastic development and have taught us invaluable lessons that we can now make use of in coming projects.
Vårdsamverkan is also in a very exciting phase. Over a number of years we have built up models to make care chains more efficient on the basis of insights from our constantly growing data warehouse. This has given us a unique position to help insurance companies improve their offerings. The next step for us is to improve and broaden the offerings in corporate health care in a corresponding manner. Recently our collaboration with Avonova went live and with our investment in Qurant we are focusing on modern corporate health care.
It feels very inspiring that GHP is in a position where we can implement changes and continue to grow. We are holding a capital markets day on 18 November, where we will describe the strategy for strong growth and increased profitability in greater detail. I hope to see you then!