By Pranav Kashyap and Rishika Sadam
BENGALURU/HYDERABAD, May 20 (Reuters) – India’s Apollo Hospitals Enterprise posted a rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday, driven by strong demand for complex medical procedures and growth in its pharmacy and digital health businesses.
The hospital chain also announced it would sell its fertility and maternity units to Kids Clinic India (Cloudnine) in a deal valued at about 15.5 billion Indian rupees ($160.09 million), while retaining a minority stake.
India’s hospital sector is seeing strong expansion, with leading players adding bed capacity, building new facilities and pursuing acquisitions to cater to rising healthcare demand.
Apollo, with a network of over 10,900 beds, commissioned four new hospitals during the year and plans to add around 1,500 beds over the next 12-18 months.
All three business segments – hospitals, retail health and diagnostics, and digital and pharmacy distribution – posted strong growth in the quarter, driven by high-complexity specialties such as cardiac, gastro, oncology and transplants, CEO Madhu Sasidhar, told Reuters.
Its core healthcare services division, which contributes the bulk of revenue, rose 16% to 32.68 billion rupees ($337.5 million) on steady patient volumes and higher realisations. Overall revenue advanced 18% to 66.05 billion rupees.
The hospital chain expects revenue growth in the mid-teens for FY27, broadly in line with the previous year.
Hospital occupancy for the three months ended March stood at 68%, compared with about 67% a year earlier, while average revenue per patient rose 9% year on year, the CEO said.
Of the proceeds from the fertility unit sale, “half comes to us as cash, which can be used to grow the diagnostics and other platforms,” CFO Krishnan Akhileswaran told Reuters.
Consolidated net profit rose 36% to 5.29 billion rupees, beating analysts’ expectations of 4.79 billion rupees, according to LSEG data.
($1 = 96.8200 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Pranav Kashyap and Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Ronojoy Mazumdar, Mrigank Dhaniwala and Vijay Kishore)
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