2012 promises to be a year of passion for Italian pharmacies. Not only because of the liberalizations, but also (if not above all) because of a crisis that forces almost all sectors of the pharmacy market to go down, with very few exceptions. Cries of alarm had already been raised in some regions in recent weeks (see Pharmacist33 of 30 May), now data is arriving from companies specialized in market research that confirms all the concerns of the owners. See, for example, the April "check up" by New Line: compared to the same month a year ago, the pharmacy market globally recorded a -6.2% in quantity and a -9.3% in value; in particular, the ethical sector loses (-9.7% in values) but also loses the free sale market (Sop-Otc and parapharmaceuticals, -9.1% again in values), which evidently is no longer able to mitigate the loss of margins of Ssn recipe. For the loanable drug, the decline is frightening (-12% only in April) but it is true that the cut imparted exactly one year ago by AIFA to the prices of equivalents must be discounted on the April data. A more faithful picture can then come from the observation of what experts call rolling year, ie the twelve months starting from May 2011 and ending with April of this year. The result? Less dramatic figures but always dominated by the minus sign: the ethical drop to values of 4.7% (even if consumption increases by 1.1%, confirming the fact that pharmacies work more but earn less) and the market commercial of 0.3.
But the most alarming data in the overview of New Line comes from the estimate of the average turnover per pharmacy: in April the turnover stopped at 138 thousand euros, the lowest value in the last twelve months after the 129 thousand euros of August 2011. But indeed, that was August, a month that traditionally does not bring much into the coffers of any sales channel (except those linked to the holiday sector). If this goes on, the pharmacies that will arise from the competition risk swimming where there is no longer any water.
June 14, 2012 – Pharmacist33
