COVID-19 impact: Aster DM Healthcare sees 35% fall in India, gulf revenues

Aster DM Healthcare on Monday said it witnessed approximately 35 per cent fall in revenue for India and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) businesses in April as compared to same month last year due to the impact of COVID-19 on operations. "The business operation of April was impacted significantly due to COVID-19. Improvements in performance are expected to start by Q2 of FY 2021 and we hope to cover up lost ground and achieve near normalcy by H2 of FY 2021," the company said in a filing to BSE.

For May, GCC continues to maintain the same revenue trend as April in spite of Eid holidays, whereas in India revenue has improved by approximately 23 per cent as compared with April, but still down around 20 per cent compared with May last year, the filing said.

"The current unexpected situation has even impacted our regular business operations," it said.

Lockdown restrictions in India and GCC countries, along with restrictions to undertake elective procedures, have impacted occupancy level in April.

The occupancy rate for GCC hospitals was 52 per cent and for India units was 38 per cent in April.

"We have observed improvement in occupancy rate for both India and GCC hospitals in May," it said.

At the beginning of the outbreak, Aster DM Healthcare also observed disruption in the supply chain which then led to shortages of medical devices, personal protective equipment (PPEs), medicines and other essential supplies, but now it is getting normalised, it added.

Shut down of international travel has impacted the company's medical value tourism business in India.

Medical travel contributes around six per cent of consolidated India revenue, it said.

All planned capital expenditure has been postponed, except for projects which are near completion such as the Sonapur Hospital in Dubai, it said.

"To mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on our business, we have taken the highest importance towards maintaining a strict watch on all capex and operating costs which are even more critical in this environment.

"To conserve cash, we have put on hold most of our existing projects till the overall business environment goes back to normalcy," it said.

The company said that it was continuously servicing its existing debt and it has sufficient unutilised working capital limits to support operation.

"Request is being raised to the banks for additional working capital limits, over and above the current limits to address any future contingency," it said.