Agfa HealthCare's top line was influenced by the adverse exchange rate conditions. Excluding these currency effects, revenue increased by 1.1 percent. In the Imaging segment, the volumes for traditional X-ray film products continued to decline. This was partly driven by Agfa HealthCare's price increases and by the success of the business group's strategy to assist healthcare providers in their technology shift from analogue X-ray to digital radiology, which includes Computed Radiography (CR), Direct Radiography (DR), hardcopy film and printers, as well as Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS).
As governments often play a major role in financing healthcare investments, the uncertain economic conditions in a number of important markets weighed on Agfa HealthCare's IT segment. Nevertheless, the Imaging IT business posted satisfactory growth, which was partly counterbalanced by adverse currency effects. It is expected that the strong order book will lead to further growth towards the end of the year. The Enterprise IT business' revenue remained stable. The emerging markets in general and Asia Pacific in particular, as well as North America posted significant growth. Eastern Europe and the Benelux performed well, whereas business in the South of Europe was soft.
Agfa HealthCare's profitability was influenced by the high silver price. The gross profit margin amounted to 34.8 percent, versus 41.9 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Agfa HealthCare was able to counterbalance about a quarter of the raw material impact.
The business group's recurring EBITDA amounted to 32.4 million Euro (or 11.2 percent of revenue). Recurring EBIT amounted to 20.8 million Euro, or 7.2 percent of revenue.
In June, Agfa HealthCare announced that it won a Performance Award from the Premier healthcare alliance. These awards recognize contracted suppliers for their efforts to provide clinical and financial value to the more than 2.500 Premier alliance hospitals.
In the field of Imaging, Agfa HealthCare announced that it already produced over 10.000 units of the CR 30-X system. This entry-level CR digitizer is key in Agfa HealthCare's strategy to assist hospitals in their shift to digital radiology. The DR business continues to expand fast, with systems now installed in 16 different countries. At the German Radiology Congress (Deutscher Röntgenkongress), Agfa HealthCare announced the addition to its portfolio of the DXD-100 mobile X-ray unit in combination with the new wireless DXD-30 detector.
Furthermore, Agfa HealthCare signed a number of important Imaging IT contracts with leading care organizations. Both the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital district (Finland) and the Hovedstaden Region (Denmark) chose Agfa HealthCare as provider for their regional image management solution. In Canada, the go-live of Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX Data Center 2.0 and XERO solution was an important milestone for the Alberta Health Services Electronic Health Record initiative.
In the field of Enterprise IT, Agfa HealthCare continued to expand its presence in the French market with the introduction of its HYDMedia document management system, which was adopted by the Centre Hospitalier Alès-Cévennes and the Centre Hospitalier Jean Monnet in Epinal. Two large hospitals in the south of Germany, the Städtisches Klinikum Karlsruhe and the Kliniken des Landskreises Göppingen, decided to replace their existing clinical information systems with Agfa HealthCare's ORBIS.
Related news articles:
- Agfa HealthCare's Profile
About Agfa
The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world's leading companies in imaging and information technology. Agfa develops manufactures and markets analogue and digital systems for the printing industry (Agfa Graphics), for the healthcare sector (Agfa HealthCare), and for specific industrial applications (Agfa Materials). Agfa is headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is present in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries around the globe. The Agfa-Gevaert Group achieved a turnover of 2,948 million euro in 2010.
About Agfa HealthCare
Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading global provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions. The company has nearly a century of healthcare experience and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990's. Today Agfa HealthCare designs, develops and delivers state-of-the-art systems for capturing, managing and processing diagnostic images and clinical/administrative information for hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well as contrast media solutions to enable effective medical imaging results. The company has sales offices and agents in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2010 were 1,180 million euro.