Growth strong even excluding COVID-19; online pharmacy business growing: Apollo Hospitals

Apollo Hospitals’ revenue and adjusted profit came in above Street estimates while the margin was in line for the June-ended quarter.

Suneeta Reddy, Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals Group, discussed with CNBC-TV18 the numbers, which were were aided by the consolidation of Apollo Gleneagles, the contribution from COVID 2.0, and came on a low base.

Reddy said the 24/7 availability feature is something that is needed to grow Apollo Hospitals, not only for the services it provides currently but also to increase consumer base, which is now at 10 million active consumers. “But, most importantly the pharmacy online is growing. The growth in pharmacy was 28 percent,” she added.

As there has been a significant decrease in COVID-19 and the rest of the work is ramping up, the Apollo Hospitals Group MD said, “Outside of COVID-19 our average revenue per operating bed (RPOB) is Rs 41,000.”

She asserted that despite the pandemic or with the pandemic Apollo Hospitals Group has shown a very strong performance in terms of growth and hopes to keep up the momentum. “Growth will be funnelled by not just COVID-19 patients but higher asset utilisation,” she said.

On Apollo HealthCo, she said talks are on with a few financial and strategic partners and an announcement is likely to be made in the next 60 days.

“We do have cash and cash equivalent of Rs 880 crore that is there for us to use as we expand our presence,” she said.

Reddy said vaccination is a very important part of what the healthcare firm does and in Q1FY22 revenues from inoculation were Rs 211 crore with 15 percent margin. “Moving into Q2FY22, we do expect this will come down because the volumes all over India have decreased,” she said.