Agfa HealthCare's second quarter revenue increased by 3.4 percent versus the second quarter of 2011. In IT, both the Imaging IT and the Enterprise IT segments reported strong revenue growth. In the Imaging segment, the situation on the traditional X-ray film market started to normalize. The digital radiography business (consisting of Computed Radiography and Direct Radiography) was rather soft. Several countries in the growth regions are extending their accreditation processes for medical devices, which is somewhat delaying the introduction of CR and DR equipment in their healthcare facilities.
IT performed particularly strong in Germany and the North of Europe, as well as in the growth markets. Business in the South of Europe continued to suffer from the recession.
Continuing the positive trend of the past quarters, the gross profit margin reached 36.3 percent of revenue, versus 34,8 percent in the second quarter of 2011. The improvement reflects the diminishing impact of the high raw material prices, as well as Agfa HealthCare's efforts to support its profitability. Recurring EBITDA amounted to 30.8 million Euro (or 10.3 percent of revenue). Recurring EBIT reached 20.1 million Euro, or 6.7 percent of revenue.
In the field of Imaging, Agfa HealthCare signed a new three-year CR contract with Novation, a leading healthcare supply contracting company in the USA. Through the contract, Agfa HealthCare is able to offer its CR systems to over 65,000 healthcare organizations in the USA. Recently, Agfa HealthCare introduced its DX-D Retrofit system to the market. DX-D Retrofit offers healthcare facilities a cost-effective solution to upgrade their existing film and CR based modalities to DR.
In Imaging IT, Agfa HealthCare formed an alliance with Dell to offer a comprehensive cloud-based image management solution to US care organizations. Dell will host Agfa HealthCare's cloud clinical archive portfolio, including the newly released Imaging Clinical Information System (ICIS) platform. Through this partnership, Agfa HealthCare can offer its US customers simplified archiving, management and viewing of their medical images, thereby supporting them to image-enable the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). In April, Agfa HealthCare announced that it started to provide off-site hosting of its IMPAX PACS/RIS and long-term image archiving to the Orbis Medical Center in Sittard-Geleen, the Netherlands. The Solution as a Service (SaaS) is provided out of two data centers: one in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands and one at Agfa HealthCare's headquarters in Mortsel, Belgium.
In Ontario, Canada, Agfa HealthCare successfully connected all 37 member sites of Hospital Diagnostic Imaging Repository Services (HDIRS). Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX Data Center and enterprise viewing technology allows connected physicians to view all diagnostic images and reports within the HDIRS network. In Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), Agfa HealthCare officially opened a new, state-of-the-art R&D facility. The facility will play a key role in the development and worldwide introduction of advanced imaging IT solutions.
In the field of Enterprise IT, Agfa HealthCare launched its HYDMEDIA solution to the Canadian market. HYDMEDIA enables healthcare organizations to integrate all their paper-based and electronic information, creating a complete digital archive of patient records.
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 3,023 million euro in 2011.
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 2011 were 1,177 million euro.