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The year 2020 gave Aché an extraordinary opportunity to approximate its decisions to its purpose: offering people a better life wherever they are. The meaning of our purpose was translated to strategies to face the business challenges brought by the pandemic situation the whole world is facing in a way that the care, health and well-being of people are prioritized.
At the beginning of February, in a quickly and determined manner, we created a committee for facing up to the pandemic. This committee was formed by members of Aché’s senior management team. The objective of the committee is to make decisions in a fast and assertive way bringing peace of mind and security to all employees and their families at home, at our offices and manufacturing facilities.
As a solidarity and citizen company, we destinated R$ 6.5 million for donating protective equipment to healthcare professionals, manufacturing and distribution of alcohol gel and for other initiatives that aimed combating the Coronavirus pandemic. The Company also supported scientific researches that are being conducted by Coalizão Covid Brasil [Brazilian COVID Coalition] to investigate the use of Decadron® (dexamethasone) for the treatment of patients infected with the new coronavirus. The results were able to demonstrate that dexamethasone is efficacious in the management of COVID.
Aché’s 54-year history has demonstrated the Company’s great capacity to react in the face of such an adverse scenario. Despite the challenges posed by the economic activities of Brazil and the world, the Company used its strength and its innovation and management capacity to achieve net revenue of R$ 3.5 billlion, EBITDA of R$ 1.074 billion, with a 30.1% margin and leverage of 0.59 (net-debt-to EBITDA ratio).
We started implementing initiatives arising from the new 2020-2025 Strategic Planning cycle based on sustainable growth drivers with increased competitiveness, and boosting the business through our agility in innovation, excellence in execution, and digital transformation.
We launched 46 new products and line extensions in 2020, following our plan to invest in innovation and expanding our diversified portfolio.
R$ 104 million (10% of EBITDA) were invested in our portfolio renewal and to build a differentiated pipeline that has 173 on-going projects. Also, as a result of our innovation initiatives, the Company inaugurated the InSPIRe Lab (In Silico Prediction, Information & Research Lab), being one of the firsts lab in the country to study the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence for identifying the properties of molecules and inspiring the development of new products, which makes the processes and decision-making that are strategic for Aché’s incremental and radical innovation more agile.
We inaugurated Intralogística, a project to consolidate our warehouses and internal movements, which resulted in greater efficiency in plant just-in-time supply processes, in the management of finished products, export activities, clinical research logistics, reverse logistics and centralizing the reception of indirect materials. We also concluded our logistical automation process and the vertical warehouse at the new plant in Pernambuco. Furthermore, the incorporation of Melcon was successfully concluded. Melcon was acquired in 2019 and has now become our subsidiary in Goiás State, operating in the hormones area. This will enable the company to achieve significant operational gains in productivity.
We hired more than 300 new employees for the Demand Generation Force, expanding our scientific promotion capability among doctors throughout Brazil. As a result, the Company achieved important medical prescription records during the year. Digital transformation was behind all the initiatives we introduced, and it has become our main resource for dialogue and interaction with our stakeholders.
I must stress how immensely proud I am of the teams in our manufacturing plants that for their work on-site every day of the year. To those colleagues who worked in the field and in also in home office, I say again that we have never been so close, even in this year when our main resource for dialogue and interaction was digital.
I thank the Aché Generation for its efforts and commitment, especially during a year that was so challenging, our customers and consumers for their preference, our suppliers and partners for their support in developing our business and, in particular, our shareholders for their trust and support.
We move forward committed to offering people a better life and generating value for the whole of society.
Vânia Nogueira de Alcantara Machado
CEO