Ceremony Assist CEO Heyward Donigan is telling shareholders the corporate stays “targeted on the continued … [+]
Ceremony Assist
Ceremony Assist’s management group is highlighting the pharmacy chain’s rising pharmacy profit administration firm and different property amid buyout rumblings for the U.S. drugstore chain.
As hypothesis swirls the pharmacy chain could possibly be a goal for a merger or buyout, Ceremony Assist chief govt Heyward Donigan is telling shareholders the corporate stays “targeted on the continued transformation of Ceremony Assist into a number one full-service pharmacy firm,” she wrote in a letter being sent to stockholders as a part of the corporate’s preliminary proxy. Ceremony Assist started its fiscal 2023 on the finish of February of this yr and holds its annual shareholders assembly July 27.
Ceremony Assist is within the technique of closing 145 shops it says are “unprofitable” in ongoing cost-cutting strikes designed to assist the pharmacy chain be extra aggressive. Ceremony Assist, which has struggled in recent times to compete with bigger rivals Walgreens, CVS Well being and Walmart pharmacies, in April introduced plans to “considerably scale back prices” via a “closure of a complete of 145 unprofitable shops.”
In the meantime, Ceremony Assist a month ago rebuffed a private equity firm’s takeover try and executives keep the pharmacy chain has the instruments and property to compete in in the present day’s hotly aggressive and rising marketplace for prescriptions.
“Now we have a deep bench of property to handle the trillion-dollar pharmacy market, which is rising by $40 billion per yr in response to IQVIA and iIBISWorld, healthcare analytics and business market analysis corporations,” Donigan said in her letter.
Key among the many property, except for the greater than 2,350 Ceremony Assist drugstores, is the corporate’s pharmacy profit administration firm, Elixir, which has been rebranded and repositioned underneath Donigan’s three-year reign as CEO.
“A brand new Elixir management group is driving their turnaround via extra aggressive pricing, participating shoppers and their consultants with new go-to-market plans and a repositioned Well being Dialog,” Donigan said in her letter to shareholders. “Our Elixir account and gross sales groups are gaining momentum, and we’re executing extra effectively by consolidating features. And the market is noticing—we’ve added 34,000 people coated by Elixir’s PBM companies since January 1, 2022, with many extra within the pipeline. And we simply gained the renewal of our largest well being plan consumer in a really aggressive bidding course of.”
The way forward for Ceremony Assist’s Elixir comes as rival PBMs are getting greater and competitors is fierce. Cigna’s Categorical Scripts PBM, bought in 2018, continues to help the well being insurer’s income underneath the Evernorth umbrella. In the meantime, Anthem has efficiently rolled out its personal PBM, IngenioRx and the nation’s largest well being insurer, UnitedHealth Group, owns OptumRx. CVS Well being, which owns the Caremark PBM, additionally has extra clout after it purchased the well being insurer Aetna in late 2018.
Ceremony Assist board chair Bruce Bodaken advised shareholders in a letter that was additionally part of the preliminary proxy filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission May 20 that the corporate has “continued the momentum of RxEvolution, the Firm’s technique launched in March 2020, to construct a full-service pharmacy firm with the prevailing property of Ceremony Assist, Elixir, and Health Dialog.”
“By means of strategic integration of those property, we offer prime quality pharmacy companies throughout the nation,” Bodaken advised shareholders in his letter. “We glance to additional improve efficiency via these property in fiscal yr 2023.”
