Gehe First-Half Profits Helped By AAH Acquisition

German drug wholesaler Gehe AG reported a 34% improvement in first-half 1995 pretax profits, which reached 151 million Deutschemarks ($105.2 million).

The company said that group sales for the period were "considerably influenced" by the acquisition in April of UK drug wholesaler AAH Holdings (which it acquired through a hostile bid; Marketletters passim), without which turnover would have increased only 8.5%. For the year as a whole, Gehe expects total turnover to reach 18.5 billion marks ($12.89 billion), which would be an increase of around 22% on the 1994 level of 15.2 billion marks.