Terry White lifts annual profit

TerryWhitePharmacy group, Terry White Group, reported a net profit increase of $1.84 million in the 12 months to June 30, up from $1.22 million in the prior year.

Terry White Group, the parent company of the Terry White Chemists franchisors, has doubled its profit after merging with Chemplus pharmacies in July 2015. The company also announced it is looking for more mergers for further growth.

The company reported a 107 per cent increase in consolidated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $7.71 million for the financial year, and a 47 per cent increase in revenue to $70.57 million.

“Our strategy is well defined and is built upon offering a strong, sustainable business model for our pharmacy owners, while continuing to increase our national footprint to deliver scale benefits and margin growth across the group,” said Anthony White, Terry White Group chief executive.

“The Chemplus merger grew our network scale, increased the number of distribution points for our higher margin private label products to support improved revenue for pharmacy owners, delivered increased sales across all categories for our pharmacy owners and provided us with proven merger capability,” White said.

Terry White Group recently announced it is merging with Chemmart to form one of Australia’s biggest retail pharmacy networks, with about 500 pharmacies and a turnover of $2 billion.

White said the company is well positioned to pursue another merger with a smaller pharmacy group with 20 to 40 stores in Australia.

“The main thing is to get a group that’s fairly like-minded and really focused on healthcare and frontline health services and really making the pharmacist the centre of all things we do,” he told AAP.

White said health services differentiate Terry White Group pharmacies from its main competitors.

“We train and develop the pharmacists to be up front and accessible to the customer, whereas you go into a Priceline store or a Chemist Warehouse store, they’re really hidden, they’re secondary to the product on sale,” he said.

Terry White Group has about 430 shareholders, including co-founders Terry and Rhonda White, and is looking at a public offering in the next 12 to 24 months, Mr White said.

“We’ve definitely got the base to do it now and maybe if we can do another acquisition in the next 12 months or so that would be a great base to go forward with,” he said.

“This transaction with Chemmart has been very rewarding for the shareholder base, and hopefully we bring it through to an IPO and it’ll be even more successful for them.”

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