Siemens Healthineers sees a desire to invest

The flourishing business with corona rapid tests is gradually coming to an end for the medical technology group Siemens Healthineers. The Siemens subsidiary has so far turned over 920 million euros with the antigen tests, 600 million alone from April to June. But as the pandemic subsided, the demand from the public sector, which Healthineers had supplied with tests for schools, said CEO Bernd Montag. It should be a billion sales by the end of September, nothing more. There are now enough of the tests. How things go with the schools remains to be seen. "But here, too, the price levels are on a completely different level than we saw at the beginning," said Montag. Now the laboratory streets and computer tomographs are coming to the fore again, which the group actually sells, which the clinics in the pandemic were less in demand. "We can see that the willingness to invest in modern medicine is very high at the moment," said Montag. "We will certainly benefit from that too." In the meantime, the clinics and practices have again invested in imaging equipment (MRT, CT, X-ray) and used more reagents for routine laboratory examinations. "We are on a sustainable path to further sales growth," said Montag. For this reason, he raised the forecasts for the 2020/21 financial year (as of the end of September) again. Group sales are expected to grow by 17 to 19 (previously: 14 to 17) percent on a comparable basis - that is, without the cancer specialist Varian. In the third quarter alone, the comparable increase was 38 percent. After nine months there are 12.4 billion euros to book, adjusted that is an increase of 16 percent. Adjusted earnings per share will be between 1.95 and 2.05 (2019/20: 1.61) euros at the end of September, Siemens Healthineers predicted. That would be an adjusted profit of around 2.2 billion euros. The US company Varian has been part of Siemens Healthineers since mid-April, with more than 15 billion euros the most expensive acquisition in Siemens history. Varian contributed 98 million euros in two and a half months to adjusted quarterly earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 945 million euros. Compared to the previous year, it has more than doubled and by far exceeded analyst estimates. CFO Jochen Schmitz screwed sales and profit expectations for Varian upwards. "At the beginning, cost synergies can be increased relatively easily," said CEO Monday. He plans to present his plans for integrating the cancer specialist in November.