The French homeopathy specialist was already down on one knee. Last week’s announcement of a new layoff plan confirms its fall.
Boiron had already passed the severe sieve of Zonebourse – although not the type to shoot the ambulance – in 2023. We warned at the time that the group had distinguished itself by chronic commercial and financial underperformance, even in its hours of felicity, these were so poorly taken advantage of.
As proof, Boiron achieved €566 million in turnover and €50 million in net income in 2012, compared to €534 million in turnover and €44 million in net income – part of which came from exceptional proceeds from sales of active — in 2022. A lost decade therefore, even when all circumstances favored him.
Indeed, rather than investing in the future, R&D and the diversification of its activities, particularly internationally, the group controlled by the Boiron brothers – especially by Christian Boiron – has singularly lacked ambition. Timorous, withdrawn from his pension, he is today paying the bill for this wait-and-see attitude.
The other lesson that all amateurs, practitioners, merchants or investors in the sector of alternative or alternative medicines should meditate on is that commercial success depends only on the condition that the reimbursement circuits allow it; that health authorities pull the plug and the party stops overnight.
For Boiron, as for others before him, the dereimbursement of his products by social security – not convinced by the real therapeutic merits of homeopathy – therefore fell like a cleaver, and a nail in the coffin that it now seems impossible to blow up.
The year 2023 was catastrophic and the year 2024 will not be much better, with turnover almost halved in two years and profitability hanging by a thread. Moreover, last year, feeling that the matter was over, the Boirons had emptied the large treasury of the group – which they control to the tune of four-fifths of the capital – to distribute a special dividend.
On November 21, the group announced a new plan to cut 145 positions. In the absence of a buyer with real industrial vision, the closure of 4 distribution centers and 7 preparatory sites, in addition to the dismissal of 32 salespeople, leaves no doubt about what awaits in the future: in the best case, to operate on a very small scale while trying to keep its accounts in balance.
