• Home and Personal Care Sri Lanka
o Increased focus on high margin personal care segment.
o Value for money offerings
o Providing innovative solutions and NPDs including
• Home and personal care International
o Efforts to increase foot print in key markets East Africa and Middle East.
o Launched new variants in those markets.
• Learning Segment had a good back to school season and entered the value for money segment with Homerun
• Pharmaceuticals – Increased focus on Morison branded generics
• Hospitals introduced Ambulatory care and focused on improving home care and drove key anchor specialty revenues
- However, revenue growth was not up to the expected levels due to adverse impact of the macro-economic challenges.
- Even though the country saw improvements in the external sector and progress was made in the IMF programme, consumer spending remained low.
• Despite yoy contraction inflation is on an elevated base
• Changes to the personal income tax laws and VAT laws (from 15%- 18%)
• Increase in utility prices and fuel costs.
• Healthcare Sector particularly remained challenged amidst instability and delays in Government regulatory bodies and procurement authorities.
- However, there are some green lights with interest rates slowing and exchange rates slowing. We expect these positive to result in a demand recovery in the coming quarter.
- The businesses across the Group engaged in efficiency improvement initiatives.
Allowing breathing space for the businesses to absorb increases in operating overheads.
- Working Capital optimisation which has been a key priority and this along with interest rate reductions resulted in a significant improvement in finance cost and working capital.
Which intern resulted in reduced gearing and over Rs 23.2 Bn growth in operating cashflows.
- Consequently, the Group reported a 43.1% growth in earnings to report highest ever earnings of Rs. 6.1 Bn for the year
- Strong Financial position of the Group was verified by the Fitch The reaffirmation of the AAA (lka) Stable Outlook Rating by Fitch Ratings for the fifth consecutive year is a testament to the Group’s resilience and financial strength.
- We remain cautiously optimistic about the future.
- Our Strategic priorities to drive organic and inorganic growth,
• Consumer : Investing in underpenetrated segments like beauty and baby diapers, internationalisation and export footprint.
• Healthcare : Developing a branded generics portfolio under the brand Morison, driving distribution capabilities, expanding in key anchor specialties, and investing in the transition to a fully-fledged tertiary hospital.
• Improving the digital infrastructure and fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making will be a priority for all businesses as the
- Group continues its 75-year-long journey in empowering lives through innovative solutions for the future.