Cost cuts and strong sales of its No7 cosmetics brand helped UK pharmacy chain Alliance Boots to defy a consumer downturn and post a 20% rise in profit in its first year as a private company.
The firm said its new owners, private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Executive Chairman Stefano Pessina, would forego a dividend in order to continue investing in the business and that it was moving headquarters to Switzerland to sit alongside other international healthcare groups.
KKR and Pessina's £11 billion sterling purchase of Alliance Boots in June last year was Europe's biggest leveraged buyout deal and the first time a FTSE-100 company had been taken over by a private equity firm.
A year earlier, the group was created from the merger of British pharmacy chain Boots and pan-European drugs distributor Alliance UniChem.
Alliance Boots, which runs 3,200 shops and 370 warehouses delivering drugs to about 135,000 doctors and hospitals across Europe, said it made profit before one-off items, goodwill and associates of £771m in the year to March 31.
Revenues rose by 4.8% to £15.3 billion, including a 1.9% increase in like-for-like revenues.
