Healthcare group hits $7.6b revenue
Ebos Group has delivered another record performance, with revenue hitting $7.6 billion thanks to investments in several businesses over the past two years.
Ebos is the parent company behind various healthcare and pet food brands in New Zealand and Australia.
Kiwis will become more familiar with the Black Hawk pet foods brand through a television advertising campaign beginning in September, chief executive Patrick Davies said.
‘‘Our acquisitions in the pet food sector mean we can now compete against multinationals like Nestle and Mars, who dominate.’’
Black Hawk was bought in 2014, and another pet food brand owned by Ebos, Vitapet, was added to the group in 2011.
The June 2017 turnover of $7.6b was 9.5 per cent ahead of 2016, and the aftertax profit of $133 million was up 6.4 per cent.
New investment by the company includes a distribution warehouse under construction at Christchurch Airport, a distribution centre in Brisbane, and a new logistics warehouse in Sydney, New South Wales.
These projects will cost $80m by completion in 2018.
Other brands in Ebos’ stable include natural health products supplier Red Seal, which was purchased in 2015.
Red Seal has experienced firm sales in New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, but lower demand in China over the past year.
The bulk of Ebos’ trading is its pharmaceutical subsidiaries, accounting for $7.2b of all sales. They include the Australian Chemmart chain of 460 franchised pharmacy shops being rebranded to TerryWhite Chemmart to reflect the merger of those two businesses.
The longstanding Ebos Healthcare division is the only trading entity under the company’s own name and supplies medical consumables and equipment to hospitals and pharmacies.
Another Australian acquisition announced a few weeks ago was the A$147 million (NZ$160.6m) purchase of pharmaceutical and animal health products maker HPS.
The recent acquisitions have considerably increased debt levels but Davies said these were within comfortable limits.
Ebos will pay a total dividend of 63 cents a share on the shares which have traded at slightly softer levels at $17.60.