From the beginning of the year to the end of the year, the 2021 of "Eye Mao" Aier Ophthalmology is not very peaceful, but this does not affect the performance.
On the evening of April 25, Aier Ophthalmology disclosed its 2021 annual report, with annual revenue of 15.001 billion yuan, an increase of 25.93% year-on-year; net profit of 2.47 billion yuan, an increase of 31.58% year-on-year.
In the controversy of the whole year, Aier Ophthalmology was not only not affected, but the performance growth rate was higher than that of the previous two years.
After the disclosure of the annual report, Wu Shijun, secretary of the board of directors of Aier Ophthalmology, stated on the social platform: the capital market is turbulent and undulating, and the bright road is brave and resolute. As Chairman Chen Bang said: "All the past is the prologue; the mentality is zero, and it is re-issued!" ”
However, Aier Ophthalmology will not be calm after all. Since July 2021, Aier Ophthalmology's stock price has fallen from 72.27 yuan / share, the lowest point to 25.02 yuan / share, and two-thirds of the market value has evaporated.
Around Aier, in addition to dr. Effin's dispute, there are risks posed by the increasingly rapid expansion model.
Dangerous expansion
The size of Aier Ophthalmology is expanding rapidly.
According to the annual report, by the end of 2021, Aier Ophthalmology has 174 domestic hospitals and 118 outpatient departments, which is 58 more than the previous year. For the first time, the number of outpatient visits exceeded 10 million, reaching 10.196 million, an increase of 35.07% year-on-year, and the number of surgeries was also as high as 817,300, an increase of 17.64% year-on-year.
Refractive projects still contribute the bulk of revenue. Revenue of 5.52 billion yuan increased by 26.92% year-on-year, accounting for 36.8% of total revenue. Aier Ophthalmology said that on the one hand, the surgical volume of various hospitals has grown rapidly, and the proportion of high-end surgeries such as full femtoseconds and ICL has further increased, and the volume and price have risen together; on the one hand, the company has increased investment in the construction of refractive departments in various local and county-level hospitals.
Optometry and cataracts are the second and third largest projects, contributing 3.378 billion yuan and 2.191 billion yuan in revenue respectively. It is worth mentioning that the growth rate of cataract projects has slowed down, and Aier Ophthalmology said that it was affected by the medical insurance settlement policy.
In addition to the expansion of specific businesses, Aier Ophthalmology is also expanding its volume. Since 2021, Aier Ophthalmology has acquired a number of in vitro companies at a continuous high premium.
In August 2021, Aier Ophthalmology issued an acquisition announcement, proposing to acquire part of the shares of Rizhao, Weihai, Heyuan, Jiangmen Xinhui and Zaoyang for 327 million yuan.
In October 2021, Aier Ophthalmology acquired the equity of Aier Eye Hospital in Anshan, Cangzhou, Fuyang, Langfang and Qinhuangdao.
Near the end of the year, Aier Ophthalmology announced that it had acquired the equity of 14 eye hospitals such as Yiwu and Yuanjiang.
This series of expansions is very much like the health of the year. Use industrial funds to leverage external capital to invest in the construction of eye hospitals, and after a few years of incubation, use the funds of listed companies to acquire them at a high premium, accumulating a large amount of goodwill.
The biggest risk of this mode of operation is that once the performance of the acquired enterprise does not meet the standards, the accumulated goodwill will face the risk of impairment.
At the end of 2021, the goodwill scale of Aier Ophthalmology was 4.317 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 500 million yuan in one year. Last year, Aier Ophthalmology's provision for impairment of goodwill was only 216 million yuan.
The risk of goodwill impairment in Aier Ophthalmology can be high. In the annual report, Aier disclosed the financial information of 26 eye hospitals acquired and consolidated in the past year. From the data point of view, almost all hospitals are loss-making after the acquisition.
Take five eye hospitals such as Rizhao as an example. Aier disclosed that in 2020, Jiangmen Xinhui Aier net profit was 13.53 million yuan, Rizhao Aier net profit was 602,000 yuan, Zaoyang Aier net profit was 1.289 million yuan, and Heyuan and Weihai lost 2.64 million yuan and 3.43 million yuan respectively.
However, in just four months after the completion of the acquisition, the performance of rizhao and Zaoyang hospitals changed their faces, with losses of 2.46 million yuan and 670,000 yuan respectively. Heyuan and Weihai hospitals also experienced large losses, almost equivalent to the losses in 2020 in 4 months.
If the performance change continues in 2022, Aier Ophthalmology will inevitably face the risk of significant impairment of goodwill. What is more troublesome is that the acquisition of in vitro hospitals continues and has become the way on which Aier Ophthalmology's performance expansion relies.
It's addictive.
Late self-discipline
Chen Bang, chairman and founder of Aier Ophthalmology, proudly said: "Over the years, Aier's diagnosis and treatment volume has maintained rapid growth, and it has served hundreds of millions of patients in 20 years. ”
Questions and concerns about this expansion have arisen. Ai Fen, director of the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, told the Health Bureau: "The volume of Aier Ophthalmology is very large, and it will be terrible if it continues to grow barbarically. While pursuing the growth of indicators, how can the number and quality of medical personnel increase in a matching manner? Will overmedicination occur? ”
Aier Ophthalmology was repeatedly exposed to negative news last year, including insurance fraud, sale of testing reagents at a higher price, the risk of brand authorization model, and doubts about the acquisition of hospitals at a premium. Ai Fen is also constantly defending her rights and disclosing various negative events in Aier Ophthalmology, and has even become the general export of many rights protection groups.
Throughout 2021, Aier Ophthalmology did not agree with Effin.
What few people know is that in this year of deep public opinion crisis, there have been many changes in the interior of Aier Ophthalmology. In the eyes of some employees: "In the past, meetings focused on how to complete goals and complete tasks, and now we will mention paying attention to the quality of medicine." ”
In January 2022, Chen Bang issued a letter to employees entitled "Fully Embracing Social Supervision and Promoting Self-Innovation", saying that Aier Ophthalmology welcomes social supervision and will set up a special agency led by the president to promote medical and business management norms.
"For social supervision, once the relevant investigation is confirmed to be true, it will be dealt with immediately, respond in a timely manner, quickly rectify, and never shirk it", Chen Bang also reflected: "If you want to score Aier's 19-year development, I think it is barely 70 points at most."
All this became a good signal, so that Aifen saw the subtle changes in Aier Ophthalmology: "It shows that my continuous supervision has played a good role in Aier Ophthalmology." ”
Aier Ophthalmology emphasized in the annual report that during the reporting period, the incidence of endophthalmia after cataract surgery was 0.0121% and the incidence rate of endophthalmia after hyalectomy was 0.0166%, both of which met the evaluation standards of national tertiary eye hospitals.
In Aifen's view, as an ophthalmic specialist hospital, it is only natural that Aier Ophthalmology meets the above standards.
Aier Ophthalmology mentioned in the annual report that with the continuous growth of outpatient and surgical volume, its absolute number is likely to rise. Despite strict enforcement of various norms and guidelines, "medical risks remain inevitable".
To this day, Ai Fen and Aier Ophthalmology have not yet entered the legal settlement process, and Ai Fen told the Health Bureau that her litigation period is three years, and she is not in a hurry to go to court: "My personal rights protection is secondary, but if Ai Er does not make changes, there will be more victims." Effin claimed to have received several "private" requests from Aier Ophthalmology for more than a year, but all of them were rejected.
Today, the stock price of Aier Ophthalmology has entered the low area of listing for 13 years, with a total market value of nearly 200 billion yuan, but obviously, the risk has not been fully released.
#爱尔眼科 #