Uniphar has up to €100m available for acquisitions

HEALTHCARE services group Uniphar has up to €100m capacity to make further acquisitions following an active year of dealmaking for the healthcare services company.

Uniphar, it’s head office located in Citywest Business Park, nearly doubled its bank debt last year to just over €91m as it made four acquisitions valued at a total of €185m.

That left the business at a modest 1x leverage ratio, at the bottom end of Uniphar’s preferred range. But Chief executive Ger Rabbette said the company could easily go as high as 2.5 times to support more buying.

Mr Rabbette said he was prepared to more than double the group’s leverage in the short term to take advantage of buying opportunities.

“As a business we are very comfortable because we generate so much cash,” he told analysts after Uniphar’s annual results on Tuesday. “We’re quite confident letting [gearing] drift up because we can get it back down quickly.”

Finance director David Power added that the company had €50m-€100m available to spend.

The group bought McCauley pharmacies last year in a deal that “put a moat” around its Irish retail distribution business.

The group also added medical affairs capability in nine European markets and acquired US market research company Inspired Health last October.

It bought Australian-headquartered Orspec Pharma, which specialises in the supply of unlicensed medicines, and Netherlands-based BModesto, a healthcare services business focused on improving access to pharmaceutical and healthcare products across Europe.

Uniphar said the acquisitions enhance its “strategy of becoming a global leader in providing access to ethically sourced unlicensed and difficult to source medicines”.

Gross profits were up 11.7 per cent to more than €306m at Uniphar last year as organic growth and acquisitions added to its success. Revenues jumped more than 6 per cent to over €2bn.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) grew 13.4 per cent to over €98m, Uniphar said in its full-year results announced this week.

The company said it expects continued organic gross profit growth across all divisions this year.