Alitam CEO Feisal Nahaboo reports 24% organic growth in group pharmacy sales in two years following launch of new medical services
Alitam Founder and CEO Feisal Nahaboo has revealed that his pioneering 100-plus store pharmacy group has increased organic ‘like-for-like’ turnover by a staggering 24% in just two years of operation as new clinical service offerings swells footfall.
Alitam, the pioneering 100-plus store pharmacy group, has increased turnover by almost a quarter in just two years, it was revealed today.
Alitam founder and CEO Feisal Nahaboo has said that the merger’s organic like-for-like turnover has grown by 24 per cent since its foundation in late 2019.
This rapid growth is attributed in part to greater cost-efficiencies achieved across the group through Nahaboo’s revolutionary M&A vehicle, the Overnight Multiple Merger Model (OMMM).
The additional profit generated has allowed stores to headhunt highly skilled staff to boost clinical services while also investing in patient education—better serving communities while increasing footfall at the same time.
Alitam’s rapid growth come as little surprise to financial and accountancy industry insiders, who have already watched Nahaboo transform business capability and profitability with hundreds of businesses over the past 20 years.
He is widely recognised as being an expert in helping businesses maximise profitability by reducing P&L costs, while supporting equity directors to launch new services among their client bases.
Using the OMMM, Nahaboo created a leading accountancy firm, Xeinadin—comprising a mass merger of more than 100 independent accountancy firms—seemingly ‘overnight’.
He engineered a number of different marketing and financial strategies to exponentially increase Xeinadin subsidiaries’ profit.
After manufacturing the world-record merger and consolidation process of 122 accountancy practices spanning just 256 working days, Xeinadin equity partners received significant pay outs on private equity investment due to Nahaboo’s initial work in building Xeinadin into a highly profitable company.
Many are now exhibiting record profit levels following Nahaboo’s initial leadership as founder from May 2018 to December 2020, with business valuations reaching treble that of the industry standard.
Just as Xeinadin was formed around Nahaboo’s visionary multi-service platform—offering the full range of accountancy, financial, legal and HR assistance to clients—Alitam also has a visionary mandate: to deliver a preventative healthcare service which “truly meets the health and wellbeing needs of the nation”, reducing the burden on NHS services such as GPs and hospitals.
This is all underpinned by the entrepreneur’s meticulous business strategy to capture his vision within a large-platform business consisting of 100-plus subsidiaries.
Nahaboo said: “Business strategies for developing profitability are in my blood. There were seven key reasons why Alitam pharmacies sales soared.
“In early 2020, I sat with the main pharmacy equity director of each subsidiary, explaining how they could be more cost-efficient by addressing matters in their P&L more effectively.
“This additional profit allowed stores to headhunt highly skilled and qualified personnel to boost the clinical offering instore, meaning communities could be more fully served, while sales increased.
“Now you can walk into an Alitam pharmacy and receive expert medical help on an extensive offering from sore throats, ankle sprains and minor wounds to travel vaccinations, seasonal vaccinations and diabetes checks.
“Alitam pharmacies could also widen their remit by harnessing the experience and wisdom of their Alitam peers who already featured certain services in store—such as stop-smoking clinics, men’s and women’s health checks, weight loss, travel clinics, hair loss and many more.
“Meanwhile, pharmacies began to endorse and recommend fellow Alitam pharmacies to patients, so we could capitalise on the specialisms offered within the group. To patients, of course, this meant they had a source of help, no matter what.
“Key to all of this is patient education—making local customers aware of the scale of clinical help a pharmacist can provide. This was achieved through digital marketing, in-store marketing as well as local PR activity.
“The inception of Alitam coincided with the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and footfall naturally increased, as other High Street businesses were forced to close.
“But Alitam pharmacies ran training programmes with their staff, to ensure their teams built strong relationships with customers—making them aware of the extent of clinical services available such as weight management, blood pressure checks, ear irrigation, minor ailments clinics and more whilst hospitals and GPs were closed managing their pandemic crisis.
“Staff were also trained to empower patients to proactively look after their health and, hopefully, avoid burgeoning issues.
“We installed digital screens instore, and in shopfront windows, to display details of current, and brand new, health services available. We also built robust patient databases, which meant we could effectively target patients with a tailored healthcare offering.
“Alitam pharmacy equity directors focused on optimising customer flow through the store, and ensured their team of pharmacists were utilised most effectively.
“Sales also increased due to optimal use of consultation rooms, wherein clinical services supporting cold and flu or sports injury clinics could run at capacity each day.”
Only last week, Alitam announced a new partnership with Pharmadoctor, the industry experts in providing the tools and resources for instore medical clinical services, which will bring walk-in, GP-type clinical services to stores.
These services will initially be trialled within a number of Alitam stores before being rolled out nationwide, enabling patients to access urgent medical care without the need to wait for a GP or hospital appointment.
Nahaboo added: “Having become accustomed to this new modus operandi, many Alitam pharmacies are very keen to expand their offering even further.
“Last week I announced our strategic partnership with Pharmadoctor, which will enable a mass roll-out of the aforementioned GP-style services across Alitam stores, and lift a huge burden from primary care services.
“We have another three partners to name shortly, all supplying Alitam pharmacies with digital tools, resources, knowledge and training to deliver additional medical services.”
With a number of Alitam pharmacies rolling out new medical services, it seems likely that Nahaboo’s forecast of 10 per cent minimum ‘like for like’ organic growth per annum for the next two years will soon be achieved.
On top of this organic growth, his recently announced five-year pharmacy acquisition programme for Alitam will see a forecast 50 per cent acquisition growth for year one and a further 33 per cent acquisition growth for year two.
Alitam plan to acquire 50-plus pharmacy stores a year for the next five years and Nahaboo forecasts that 50 per cent of all his acquisition targets will be offering an extensive medical service programme in their stores, which will increase organic growth further.
He has already begun negotiating acquisitions and preparing pharmacies to enter Alitam in the next 24 months.
This will be a crucial step in realising Alitam’s multi-billion-pound ‘Pharmacy of the Future’ plan to launch a chain of ‘Super Pharmacies’ across the UK and Ireland over the next decade which will embed preventative healthcare by drawing upon the skills and expertise of “underutilised” pharmacists.
“By leveraging the skills, and infrastructure, of community pharmacies, we can radically reshape the healthcare landscape,” said Nahaboo.
“We’ve seen through the popularity of our vaccination clinics and medical and wellbeing clinics, just how badly these are needed. And Alitam is set to go much further.
“I recently announced a multi-billion-pound plan to launch a chain of ‘Super Pharmacies’ across the UK and Ireland within the next ten years.
“These Super Pharmacies will offer everything from highly regulated ophthalmic and audiology services to physiotherapy and even midwife-led care.
“It’s about giving the people of our nation the healthcare, and quality of life, they deserve. We’ve been planning our strategy and implementation programme for two years and now I have the Alitam infrastructure to increase the roll-out programme.
“Far too many pharmacies are not being brave enough to extend beyond traditional pharmacy services so part of our remit is to help them in this regard; offering the hand of guidance and mentorship to pharmacies everywhere, and improving the health of our communities overall.”
