Rigla lost its leadership in the Russian pharmaceutical market for the first time in five years

In the first nine months of this year, April increased revenue by 55% year-on-year to 136.4 billion rubles, while Rigla earned only 136.2 billion rubles, 24% more than in the same period of the year past.

At the same time, the April network has significantly more pharmacies than Rigla: 8,470 points versus 4,920. The general director of the DSM group, Sergei Shulyak, explained the difference by the greater compactness of April points in comparison with the pharmacies of other market participants.

Rigla’s market share in the second quarter of this year was 9.24%, in April it was 9.77%, DSM analysts note. At the same time, Russia’s 20 largest pharmacy chains operate half of all pharmacies in the country. Its total sales represent 66.4% of the turnover of the entire pharmacy market, and the dynamics of the largest chains is higher than that of the market as a whole,

In addition, Rigla is developing not by opening its own pharmacies, but by acquiring regional and interregional chains, Shulyak noted. For example, in October this year Vedomosti sources reported that Rigla will acquire the Minitsen and Novaya pharmacy chains, which operate in all regions of the Far Eastern Federal District except Chukotka.

According to Boris Popov, CEO of Rigla, there is competition in the market between the business model of extensive and high-risk demand and the model of safe and effective growth. The senior manager stressed that the chain will continue to strive to consolidate with participants in the pharmaceutical market at any level and increase the efficiency of investments, instead of opening a large number of pharmacies. By the end of this year, the number of Rigla outlets will exceed 5,000.

In October, the FAS approved Rigla’s purchase of several regional pharmacy chains in Moscow, the Moscow Region, St. Petersburg and the Republic of Mari El, as well as in the Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Kaluga and Kirov regions.

The third company in terms of revenue in Russia, according to DSM research, was Planet Health with 95.3 billion revenue from 2.48 thousand points of sale. The fourth and fifth places were taken by Implosion (82.9 billion rubles and 5.97 thousand points) and the merger of the Erkafarm and Melodiya Zdorovya chains (69.5 billion rubles of revenue and 2.34 thousand pharmacies) . The top 10 is closed by Vita (Samara) with 55.6 billion revenues and 2.9 thousand points of sale.