By Giancarlo Navach
PARMA, Italy (Reuters) -Italy’s Chiesi Group is aiming to significantly increase the number of patients it treats from around 10 million and its sales to 6 billion euros ($6.9 billion) by 2030, helped by acquisitions, its CEO Giuseppe Accogli said in an interview.
The family-owned group, which provides treatment for rare diseases and respiratory conditions such as asthma and COPD, is scouting the market to see if there are opportunities to buy a new company to help achieve its ambition of doubling sales, but says there is no rush.
“We are looking in respiratory, in specialty pharma and in rare diseases, not only in Italy, but also globally. I think every year is a good year if we find a good asset that will fit strategically with our portfolio,” Accogli said.
The last major acquisition by Chiesi dates back to 2023 when it bought rare diseases specialist Amryt for some $1.5 billion, shortly before Accogli took the CEO role.
He declined to comment on whether the group has approached listed Italian rival Recordati in the recent past.
“I don’t think we can share that, but we always look at everything that is available,” he said in an interview at the group’s headquarters in Parma, northern Italy.
Chiesi has no debt and earns around 1 billion euros each year in EBITDA so the company “has firepower to grow both organically and inorganically and to reach between five and six billion euros of sales with our own resources,” Accogli underlined.
Regarding the sales goal, around 10-15% should come through inorganic opportunities “that we are scouting”.
The current year has started well and the CEO is confident of ending it with revenue “growth of more than half single digits” compared to 13% growth reached in 2024 at 3.4 billion euros.
On the U.S. tariff front, Accogli said that the situation is still very confused.
“Many things have been said. Right now, none of them have gone into action, which doesn’t mean that they will not. So we keep monitoring and see. But things change by the day.”
The CEO is aware that meeting patients’ growing therapeutic demand may eventually require establishing a manufacturing presence in the U.S to complement existing sites in France, Italy and Brazil but nothing concrete is planned for the moment.
($1 = 0.8754 euros)
(Reporting by Giancarlo NavachEditing by Keith Weir)
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