Chemist4U has seen its pre-tax profits increase by some 118%, rising from £1.7 million in 2023 to £3.6m in 2024, company accounts have revealed.
Published on Companies House this week (June 23), the document showed that the online pharmacy’s sales revenue almost doubled in the space of one year, rising from £30.1m in the year ending September 2023 to £59.6m last September.
Read more: Online pharmacy Chemist4U rakes in 272% higher profits in 2023
Directors said that the business “had a satisfactory trading period for the year ended September 30 2024”, adding that “operational performance and customer service levels...remained very strong”.
“The business operates in a highly competitive sector but has delivered an acceptable level of profitability in the reported period,” the document said.
But it stressed that trading conditions were “highly uncertain” due to “the current weakness in economic fundamentals, including high and persistent inflation”.
Read more: Chemist4U: Weight loss video consultations will cause ‘bottlenecks’
The company highlighted that “continued downward pressure…on NHS funding and therefore NHS pharmacy incomes, combined with inflationary pressures on raw material costs and sustained competition in the sector, continue to create margin pressure”.
“Competition from other pharmacies and retailers” and the government’s focus on “reducing” expenditure also provided a “higher level of uncertainty as to future reimbursement levels for NHS prescriptions”, it added.
“Headwinds”
The online pharmacy, however, stressed that it is “well positioned to play a significant role in the development and provision of pharmacy services by developing technologies to improve the patient journey while driving down the cost” of services.
“Competitive pressures are likely to remain into the future and the trading environment faces headwinds”, it said, but directors “remain confident” that the business will “operate profitably moving forward”.
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The financial report also showed that the number of NHS items dispensed by Chemist4U increased by a quarter (26%) between 2023 and 2024, rising from 866,312 to 1,090,444.
The number of NHS patients registered with the online pharmacy rose by more than 60%, jumping from 70,542 in 2023 to 113,204 in 2024, it said.
And it added that “shareholders’ funds showed an increase of 131% compared with the previous year end”.
Standards “not all met”
The Companies House filing also said that “the business operates to the highest possible professional standards and is regulated by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)”.
Despite this, an April GPhC inspection of Chemist4U’s premises in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, found that standards were “not all met”.
Of the 26 standards measured by the GPhC, Chemist4U met 23, but the regulator identified one standard that had not been met at all, and two that “were met” but required “areas for improvement”.
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The regulator said that the pharmacy “has made changes to its weight loss services without having assessed the risks involved [and] this means prescribing may not always be safe and people might receive medicines that are not appropriate”.
It provides “additional treatments to help people manage side effects” from weight loss medications, but it “does not conduct a thorough consultation to assess whether the medicine is safe and appropriate for the person concerned”, the GPhC added.
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Chemist4U also “prescribes weight loss medicines in titration bundles” but is “unable to show that there are sufficient controls in place to make sure this option is suitable for the people it supplies”, it said.
Finally, the online pharmacy “sometimes accepts evidence of previously dispensed medicines to prescribe for long-term conditions such as asthma”, which is “not a reliable way to verify people’s healthcare conditions when prescribing remotely”, the regulator stressed.
“Areas for improvement”
On the standards that “were met with areas for improvement”, the GPhC found that:
- Either the pharmacy’s regular audits or its systems “are not constructed to ensure they are sufficiently robust to identify consultations and prescribing that may require a review”
- It provides medicines in “multi-compartment compliance packs” that “[do] not provide the specific patient information leaflets from the manufacturer...[meaning] people may not always have access to the most up to date and accurate information about their medicines”
C+D approached Chemist4U for comment.
Read more: Pickfords Pharmacy in liquidation after under four years’ business
Chemist4U told C+D in February that new GPhC guidance around digital weight loss drug prescriptions “may lead to unnecessary bottlenecks and delays in patient access”.
Earlier this month, Chemist4U was revealed to be the UK’s fifth most searched and third most reviewed online pharmacy.
