Metropolis Healthcare, one of India’s biggest diagnostic services providers, said it has seen a sharp up-tick in its revenue this year, benefiting from increased demand for COVID-19 testing.
As of September 2020, said the company, its total revenue is 40% higher than the same month of 2019.
Within this, the non-COVID services/revenue has achieved ‘normalcy’ compared to September last year, indicating that COVID-19 testing possibly contributed the 40% or so incremental revenue recorded in the month.
For the three months from July to September, non-COVID business was at 85% of last year’s levels, it added.
Despite the 15% shortfall in the regular business, total revenue was higher by 25% for the three months compared to the same period of last year — again indicating that COVID-19 possibly contributed a delta of around 40% in the company’s revenue during the period.
The company had seen a dip in revenue in the April-June quarter due to the lock-down.
However, revenue recorded in July-September was almost double that of April-June, it added.
Given that consolidated revenue for the lock-down quarter was at Rs 146.28 cr, its likely that the company will post revenue of around 290 cr for the July-Sept quarter when it details its earnings in the coming days.
The revenue for July-Sept is the highest quarterly revenue recorded in the company’s history, it added.
However, despite the 25% increase seen in revenue during the July-Sept period compared to last year, patient numbers were actually down about 9.4% during the three months, indicating that an COVID-19 patient was spending considerably more for testing than non-COVID patients.
A total of 2.41mn patients visited Metropolis’ labs compared to 2.66mn last year and 1.37mn in the lock-down quarter.
Higher revenues have translated into better profits too, the company said, without giving numbers.
“With the scale-up of the non-COVID business, sustained cost management measures as well as operating leverage on-account of significant uptick in Revenue, the EBITDA margins in Q2FY21 has improved over Q2FY20,” it said.
Cash and equivalents stood at Rs 300 cr at the end of September 30, 2020, it added.