Philips Healthcare posts strong Q4
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“[W]e continued to see good mid-single-digit comparable sales growth at Home Healthcare Solutions and Patient Care & Clinical Informatics in Healthcare,” said Gerard Kleisterlee, president and CEO of Royal Philips. “Additionally, healthcare orders grew 3 percent in the quarter, allowing order intake to grow 9 percent for the year, providing an excellent basis for sales growth in 2011.”
The earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA) for Philips Healthcare increased by EUR70 million ($95.62 million USD) fourth quarter-over-fourth quarter to EUR522 million ($712.98 million USD), or 19.8 percent of sales. According to the Amsterdam-based Royal Philips, the EBITA improvement was “driven by higher sales as well as service productivity improvements across our businesses."
Also, for the healthcare unit, the comparable sales were 2 percent higher year-over-year at EUR2.64 billion ($3.6 billion USD), with sales increases at Home Healthcare Solutions, Patient Care & Clinical Informatics and customer services, said Royal Philips, adding that imaging systems sales were “slightly lower than in fourth quarter of 2009 as a result of lower sales in Latin America region.” Regionally, comparable sales in North America were relatively flat with the fourth quarter of 2009, while in markets outside North America sales grew by 2 percent. Philips noted its emerging market sales grew by 8 percent with notably better sales in China and at customer services.
The company also reported Philips Healthcare had a net operating capital of EUR8.9 billion ($12.15 billion USD) in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared with EUR8.43 billion ($11.51 billion USD) in the fourth quarter of 2009.