Help Net, owned by Germany’s Phoenix since 2018, saw 25% growth in sales year on year in 2020, even better than the target it had set at the beginning of the year. The retailer climbed one place to the third position in the ranking of pharmaceutical retailers in Romania, following several deals last year.
Pharmacies experienced significant demand in the first quarter of 2020, due to the spread of the coronavirus, which made people stockpiled drugs, and then sales plummeted during the summer, but people returned to pharmacies towards the end of the year.
Help Net has more than 400 pharmacies, the retailer said, which means it made acquisitions in 2020. It had 350 in early February, when it took over the 52-strong Remedia network, in a EUR8.5 million deal. Before that, Help Net had bought Ecofarmacia network operating in Transylvania in December 2019.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)