Ibnsina Pharma is planning to increase its market share to 26% from its current level of 20% in the coming five years, the company's managing director, Amr Abdel Gawad, told Daily News Egypt. "We are planning to pump new investments ranging between EGP 150m and EGP 200m into the Egyptian market over the next five years," Abdel Gawad added, noting that the company's total investments in the North African nation would climb to EGP 700m. The pharmaceutical firm is also planning to expand by setting up new branches and developing its distribution network, in addition to boosting sales from government auctions, which recorded around EGP 1bn in 2017. The EGX-listed company is also seeking to develop its pharmaceutical portfolio through current negotiations with several international firms to distribute their products in the Egyptian market, Abdel Gawad indicated. Ibnsina signed two new contracts with Denmark-based Novo Nordisk on Wednesday to distribute more than 20 medicines to cure diabetes, haemophilia, and growth disorders. Previously reliant on one public-sector distribution company and one private distribution company, Novo Nordisk will join a group of over 325 domestic and international suppliers who rely on Ibnsina Pharma to distribute their products to over 39,000 pharmacies, retail chains, wholesalers, and public and private hospitals across Egypt. "We are incredibly proud and excited by this new opportunity to distribute Novo Nordisk's life-saving diabetes care, and haemophilia and growth disorder products across Egypt," said Mohsen Mahgoub, chairperson of Ibnsina Pharma. "Our primary objective is leveraging our distribution network to provide much-needed access to medication and diabetes care products, which are essential drugs in Egypt. At Ibnsina Pharma, our commitment to maintaining high operating standards and serving as a one-stop shop providing storage, distribution, and value-added marketing services has allowed us to become highly successful in the market and a distributor of choice for many suppliers from both Egypt and abroad," he added. In preparation for distributing this new array of medical products, Ibnsina Pharma invested EGP 2m in additional warehousing facilities and allocated 28 specialised trucks to deliver Novo Nordisk's cold-chain products. Currently, the company has a total of 55 operational sites across the country. As part of the conditions to obtain these new contracts, Ibnsina Pharma passed Novo Nordisk's due diligence and operational audit to meet international standards. "This expansion is made possible by our successful IPO, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2017, which was about 18 times oversubscribed. Adding Novo Nordisk's high-demand products to our portfolio will continue to drive our profits and feed into our long-term plan for growth," Mahgoub asserted. The audited financial statements of Ibnsina Pharma showed a 67.2% year-over-year growth in profits for 2017. Net profit reached EGP 170.14m last year, versus EGP 101.75m a year earlier, the company said in a filing to the EGX. Revenues rose to around EGP 9.82bn in 2017, compared to EGP 7.4bn in 2016. The company announced that it would not distribute cash dividends to shareholders for 2017.
