Covid-19 impact on EBITDA margin of pharmaceutical wholesale and retail in Italy 2020

Soft scenario: incorporates the lockdown of 1.5 months that most of the activities have passed through and assuming that the curve of contagion will keep decreasing avoiding a new lockdown period; this will determine a remarkable and fast boost of business confidence even though some sectors will have some trouble to come back to previous business levels as the demand for highly discretionary goods and services remain capped. The macroeconomic emergency measures will turn to be effective to restore confidence and companies will manage to limit the negative economic consequences to the FY2020. Export driven sectors will benefit from the rebound in the international trade.

Intermediate scenario: assumes a longer lockdown period (total lockdown period ranges from 2 to 4 months); after the initial lockdown release, a second wave of COVID-19 contagion will hit the country making necessary to re-impose some lockdown measures. According to the aforementioned paper of the Imperial College of London “Report 20: Using mobility to estimate the transmission intensity of the virus in Italy: A subnational analysis with future scenarios”, if the population will not respect social distancing, Italy could experience a significant amount of new COVID-19 cases with just 20% of mobility increase; thus, the introduction of new lockdown measures must be taken into consideration; the economic recovery will be very slow and not homogenous. The loss of confidence from consumers due to a second wave of contagion will be extremely dangerous for the economy.

Hard scenario: considers the possibility that an effective cure will not be ready for at least 12 months or even that a vaccine will not be found at all. People will learn to live with virus and several waves will affect the world in the future. The Agency assumes that after the initial ease of the lockdown measures, the number of positive cases will pick-up again, forcing the authorities to re-impose the precautionary measures for a longer period (total lockdown period up to 6 months). Eventually, the entire economic system will be completely transformed and a severe recession will hit the entire world; some sectors wil never operate in the way they use to do before the emergency and the “normal” habits of people will change permanently. The economic measures enforced worldwide will have very limited effect and a significant reduction of the international trade is expected. Export driven sectors will not benefit as the target market will shift to the internal one.