Healthcare

Accounting for nearly 55% of the Group’s revenue, healthcare remains Sunshine Holdings PLC’s largest and perhaps best-known business. Indeed, Sunshine, as a brand, is primarily associated with healthcare in the public consciousness, with our healthcare arm widely recognised as an industry leader in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, Nutraceuticals, and high-end retail pharmacy.

On the revenue front, healthcare is undoubtedly Sunshine’s most industrious vertical, contributing to some 50% of the Group’s total revenue every year.

The segment has, over the past several decades, helped Sunshine establish itself as a dominant player in the Sri Lankan market, propelling the Group to the upper stratosphere of homegrown commercial success. Every year that passes, our share grows in each of the market segments, setting the stage for industry dominance. Even as we concentrate on growth in volume and revenue, Sunshine Healthcare is also hyper conscious of the quality, efficacy, and safety of our products, taking into account our customers’ complex medical and surgical needs, not merely as a regulatory obligation but as an ethical imperative.

Sunshine Healthcare can be the divided into following SBUs:

Pharmaceuticals

• Serves as an agency house enabling its partners on market access and build quality pharmaceutical brands

Medical devices

• Importer of surgical devices and diagnostic equipment, serving mainly to hospitals in both government and private sectors

Distribution

• Known as Healthguard Distribution, the sales and distribution service provider to all potential importers and local manufacturers with a reach over 4,500 customer points island wide, in the pharmacy channel, modern trade and hospitals.

Pharma manufacturing

• Operated under Lina Manufacturing and Lina Spiro, producing respiratory therapy products including metered dose inhalers (MDIs) and an award-winning dry-powdered inhaler (DPI) line

Retail

• The Healthguard chain of retail outlets sell pharmaceuticals, devices, and wellness products to a loyal customer base in the Western Province

In the 2024-25 financial year, Sunshine Healthcare recorded revenue of Rs. 32.6 Bn., with earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of Rs. 5.5 Bn. at a margin of 16.9%, and profit after tax (PAT) of Rs. 3.6 Bn. at a margin of 10.9%. Strategic pricing adjustments following various macroeconomic developments, both positive and negative, together with timely cost control measures, drove margin improvements during the reporting period.

As the fiscal year 2024-25 rolled around, Sri Lanka’s health sector, which had been ravaged by back-to-back crises – from the pandemic to a catastrophic economic meltdown – had barely recovered from the state of profound fragility it had found itself in. Though much progress had certainly been made on the macro front, and both the country and the industry had made considerable headway in reversing the destructive impact of the 2022 financial crisis. Plagued by lingering macroeconomic uncertainties, from forex volatility to government-imposed price ceilings, Sunshine Healthcare still had much work to do in pushing ahead on its strategic goals in a market that, though it had largely stabilised. Yet, demonstrating remarkable resilience, the vertical maintained positive growth trajectories across its five business lines in 2024-25. Built on a lasting foundation of strategic relationships cultivated with our global principals over many years, Sunshine Healthcare made a concerted effort during the year under review to further innovate in service delivery, all the while maintaining stringent compliance standards. As we welcome a new fiscal year, we are quite confident of our growing ability to capitalise on emerging opportunities in an economy that, against all odds, is showing much promise.