• GHP’s best third quarter so far, all three segments are doing a positive result despite the holiday period
• Majority of the businesses are now back to normal or higher levels
• Society’s health care backlog as a result of the pandemic is driving higher demand for specialist care
• Temporarily lower remuneration and continued challenging Covid situation in Kuwait impacted results for the quarter

Third quarter 2020

• Sales revenues increased to SEK 278.4 million (274.2)
• Organic growth amounted to 2.1 percent (20.4)
• EBITDA increased to SEK 34.6 million (28.9)
• EBITDA margin increased to 12.4 percent (10.5)
• EBIT increased to SEK 9.3 million (6.6)
• EBIT margin increased to 3.3 percent (2.4)
• Result after tax increased to SEK 6.7 million (2.8)
• Result per share increased to SEK 0.09 (0.02)

First three quarters 2020

• Sales revenues increased to SEK 978.5 million (940.3)
• Organic growth amounted to 1.6 percent (17.4)
• EBITDA increased to SEK 134.1 million (109.1)
• EBITDA margin increased to 13.7 percent (11.6)
• EBIT increased to SEK 59.7 million (45.1)
• EBIT margin increased to 6.1 percent (4.8)
• Result after tax increased to SEK 41.3 million (30.6)
• Result per share increased to SEK 0.52 (0.37)

CEO’s comments
After an exceptional spring, when management of the effects of the pandemic was in focus, we were able to largely return to more normal conditions in the third quarter. We can see that there is a great need for efficient and high-quality health care in all our markets and GHP stands ready to help in this regard. We want to continue building the collaboration that has evolved during the second quarter together with Sweden´s regions. We found new ways of helping, both through supplying the regions with employees and material and through taking care of new patient groups. Successfully utilising the capacity of both private and public sector health care providers will be crucial in being able to manage the health care backlog that has now been built up. By using GHP and other private health care providers, the regions can work off this backlog at a considerably lower cost and within a more reasonable time frame than if only public health care providers are used.

Our financial results continue to develop in the right direction, and the results for the period are our best third quarter so far. All three of our segments are profitable in spite of the fact that our businesses always have less activity during the holiday months as many of our clinics reduce their clinical business operations.

In the Nordic Region the majority of the clinics improved their results during the quarter. During the summer months some clinics continued to experience lower activity than normal but this was compensated for by the fact that other clinics saw increased demand and by good cost control. There were also regional differences in patient flows in this quarter, with greater activity in Västra Götaland and Skåne compared with Stockholm and Copenhagen.

In recent years we have carried out important expansion in various places and during this quarter we made the decision to expand our business operations in Skåne. At the end of next year we will open a brand new spine and orthopaedic clinic in Malmö. The business will have three to four in-house operating theatres and will offer in-patient and out-patient care. We anticipate that this investment will be a welcome addition for both our insurance company customers and our public sector customers.

In International our business operations and our personnel continued to be impacted by the pandemic during the quarter. Restrictions have made it difficult for us to fully control and build up the hospital in Kuwait, which meant that together with our customer we decided to halve our remuneration during the second and third quarters. Our personnel are now back in place again and we can resume the work of scaling up and developing the hospital. However, local restrictions continue to limit the pace of the ramping up process.

The hospitals in the United Arab Emirates had in the beginning of the quarter gradually gone from solely treating Covid patients to step by step opening up their normal business operations. We are now in a second wave there and this limits the return to normal care. It is a challenging period for the hospitals but our efforts have been received with great appreciation by our client and by society in Ajman.

In Vårdsamverkan our results are governed by the amount of care consumed by insurance company patients. By actively guiding the patients to the care that is most efficient, both medically and financially, we can create value. The amount of care consumed is also impacted by external factors and during the pandemic we saw that the number of appointments decreased, which also reduced our costs for delivering care.

During the third quarter patient volumes increased again and we expect that there will be somewhat higher demand for care in Vårdsamverkan in the period ahead. The efforts we have made to build up data warehouses, competence and analytical tools is an important tool in the ongoing development of GHP. Unlike the digital players we have data across the entire care chains from the patients first visit to completed treatment, including quality outcomes and costs, which enables us to really develop health care.

Finally, I am delighted that GHP now stands stronger than ever, with three smoothly running segments, good financial development and an organisation that is ready to take on the opportunities that lie ahead. However, we still have to be prepared to continue addressing the challenges of the pandemic.