Drugmaker Almirall’s shares jump 11% on bullish 2022 target

By Joan Faus

BARCELONA (Reuters) -Shares of Spanish drugmaker Almirall jumped 11% on Monday after the company set bullish targets for this year, despite a massive writedown on its anti-acne treatment Seysara that pushed its bottom line into the red in 2021.

The company reported core earnings for 2021 before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of 211 million euros ($239.74 million), up 17% year-on-year, reaching its target to end 2021 at between 200 million euros and 215 million euros.

However Almirall, which specialises in dermatology treatments, swung to a net loss of 40.9 million euros in 2021 due to 103 million euros of impairments, including a writedown on the value of Seysara, which it had already reported in its first-half results last July.

Almirall’s EBITDA target for this year at between 190 million euros and 210 million euros is higher than Credit Suisse’s, the investment bank said in a note to investors, adding it forecasts a strong cash flow in 2022. Its target price for the stock is 12 euros.

Shares of Almirall were up 11% at 11.76 euros in mid morning trading in Madrid, where the blue chip index IBEX-35 was down 0.1%. Almirall shares had been down 6% so far this year by Friday’s close.

Almirall’s revenue grew 2.7% in 2021 to 836.5 million euros, but core sales in the U.S. market dropped 7.9% due to competition with generic drugs.

In 2020 the group reported a 74.3 million euro net profit.

Chief Executive Gianfranco Nazzi said the Barcelona-based firm was on the right path, to growth and a return to profit, as it is working to expand its product pipeline with more launches.

“We start 2022 with the certainty that we are moving in the correct strategic direction,” he said in a statement.

Almirall said its long-time Chairman Jorge Gallardo Ballart would end his tenure as the council’s chairman and member in May, and be replaced by his son Carlos Gallardo Pique, currently the company’s vice-chairman.($1 = 0.8801 euros)

(Reporting by Joan Faus; additional reporting by Inti Landauro and Joanna Jonczyk-Gwizdala; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Susan Fenton)