Fortis Healthcare Q4 net profit jumps 40% to Rs 87 cr; revenue rises 10%

Fortis Healthcare Ltd on Wednesday reported a 40 per cent jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 87.03 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2022.

The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 62.36 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal, Fortis Healthcare said in a regulatory filing.

Consolidated revenue from operations during the quarter under review stood at Rs 1,378.1 crore as against Rs 1,252,44 crore in the year-ago period, it added.

Total expenses in the fourth quarter were higher at Rs 1,264.17 crore as compared to Rs 1,167.29 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

 

Fortis said it witnessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of the quarter with occupancies witnessing a downturn.

However, given the lesser severity of COVID and low hospitalisations, the business saw recovery towards the end of February and operations returned to normal in the month of March.

While January saw an occupancy of 54 per cent, March witnessed a rebound with occupancy at 63 per cent.

The diagnostics business in Q4 was aided by higher COVID volumes albeit at lower price points, it added.

For the fiscal ended March 31, 2022, consolidated net profit was at Rs 789.95 crore. The company had posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 56.17 crore in the previous fiscal, it added.

In FY22, consolidated revenue from operations stood at Rs 5,717.61 crore as compared to Rs 4,030.12 crore in FY21.

Fortis said it had a healthy performance in FY22 for both the hospitals and diagnostics business, despite the COVID-19 impact in Q1 and Q4 of the fiscal. Hospital and diagnostic business revenues were up 37 per cent and 55 per cent year-on-year, respectively.

Fortis Healthcare Chairman Ravi Rajagopal said, "FY22 has been a challenging year with the company being impacted by the COVID pandemic both in Q1 and Q4 of FY22. Despite this, the company made all efforts to ensure the availability of medical infrastructure and treatment for COVID patients."

At the same time, he added, "As COVID abated and business rebounded, all the building blocks were in place to quickly scale up operations and refocus on our growth levers. To this effect, hiring new clinical talent, expanding medical programs and initiating brownfield expansion plans were prioritised and are currently ongoing."

On the outlook, Fortis Healthcare MD and CEO Ashutosh Raghuvanshi said, "We continue to invest in upgrading and expanding our infrastructure and commissioning state-of-the-art medical equipment in select facilities in our focus clusters. Some of our underperforming units are also witnessing encouraging signs of recovery."

He added, "Further supplementing our organic growth efforts and given our healthy balance sheet, we would also evaluate inorganic growth and consolidation opportunities in the industry. All these coupled with our steadfast focus on clinical excellence and patient centricity are expected to drive our future performance."

Fortis Healthcare said its board has approved Ravi Rajagopal, Suvalaxmi Chakraborty and Indrajit Banerjee as independent directors of the company, subject to the approval of shareholders, for the second term of up to 5 years.