Our core competencies

Quality

All business segments make an overall contribution to increasing the quality and efficiency of health care.

For Fresenius Medical Care, patients’ health as well as product safety mean creating a safe clinical environment. The quality and safety of its products and services are the foundation of Fresenius Medical Care’s success.

Fresenius Kabi’s corporate philosophy “caring for life” expresses the company’s commitment to improving the quality of life of its patients. The quality and safety of its products and services is thus of paramount importance to Fresenius Kabi.

Fresenius Helios hospitals are characterized by high standards of treatment quality, hygiene standards, patient safety, and quality of care.

Fresenius Vamed bases its quality processes on clearly defined and generally established standards.

Innovation

Fresenius’ goal is to continue building on its strength in technology, its competence and quality in patient care, and its ability to manufacture cost-effectively. Developing products and systems that provide a high level of safety and user-friendliness and enable tailoring to individual patient needs is an inherent part of our strategy of sustainable and profitable growth. We will continue to develop ever more effective products and treatment methods for critically and chronically ill patients in order to offer best-in-class medical standards. Digitization is playing an increasingly important role – whether it is in health care facilities or in production. It drives innovative technologies and treatment concepts and can contribute to solving numerous challenges in the health care system.

Fresenius Medical Care will focus on creating the future of health care for chronically and critically ill patients across the renal care continuum. In 2020, Fresenius Medical Care strengthened its position in acute dialysis. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDAFDA (U.S. Food & Drug Administration)Official authority for food observation and drug registration in the United States.) has cleared Novalung®, a heart and lung support system for the treatment of acute respiratory or cardiopulmonary failure. Fresenius Medical Care also strives to identify new opportunities in value-added technologies and approaches on an ongoing basis, for example through the Fresenius Medical Care Ventures fund.

Fresenius Kabi focuses its research and development activities on products for the therapy and care of critically and chronically ill patients. With our products we want to support medical advancements in acute and post-acute care and improve patients’ quality of life. We are also committed to providing access to high-quality, state-of-the-art therapies for an increasing number of people worldwide. Our development expertise covers all relevant components such as drug raw materials, pharmaceutical formulations, primary packaging, medical technologies for the application of drugs and infusions, as well as production technology. In the area of biosimilars, we have specialized in the development of products for the treatment of oncology and autoimmune diseases, making affordable treatments accessible for even more patients. We were able to successfully continue all development projects in the reporting year. Although some activities – such as the collaboration with internal and external stakeholders – could only take place virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no relevant delays occurred in our development projects.

Fresenius Helios’ goal is to foster knowledge sharing across its international hospital network and use innovation to develop the best health care services and therapies for its patients. In order to comprehensively drive forward digitization, the company is focusing on the further expansion of the IT infrastructure in the hospitals and the online patient portal, which accompanies our patients before, during, and after their stay in hospital. For all clinics in Germany, Fresenius Helios has set itself the goal of introducing additional medical data such as nursing care documentation and medication in the digital patient file by the end of 2022, and fully implementing the online patient portal across the network. Moreover, Fresenius Helios also focuses on health apps for chronically ill patients.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an increasing demand for telemedical applications. The aim is to further expand this service in the health care facilities of Fresenius Helios. All Fresenius Helios health care facilities can already set up consultation sessions via video. Some of the hospitals already offer such video consultations on a regular basis. Moreover, Fresenius Helios is driving forward initiatives focused on occupational medicine for company employees, as well as prevention programs.

Fresenius Vamed’s goal is to realize further projects in integrated health care services and to support health care systems more efficiently. In addition, state-of-the-art standards such as the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the construction of health care facilities, new concepts for operational management through the application of innovative technologies, and digitization measures contribute to the improvement of medical care as well as to the relief of medical professionals.

Improve Profitability

Fresenius is committed to continuously improving Group profitability and capital efficiency. For example, our financial medium-term goals foresee that over the coming years we will increase net income1,2 more strongly than sales (see Group sales and earnings).

To contain costs, we particularly concentrate on making our production plants more efficient, exploiting economies of scale, leveraging the existing marketing and distribution infrastructure more intensively, and practicing strict cost control.

Moreover, we foster intra-Group coordination and collaboration, and continue to identify specific measures that optimize our portfolio and make Fresenius an even more effective organization.

By focusing on our operating cash flow and employing efficient working capital management, we will increase our investment flexibility and improve our balance sheet ratios. Another goal is to optimize our weighted average cost of capital (WACC) by deliberately employing a balanced mix of equity and debt funding.

In the present capital market conditions, we believe we optimize our cost of capital if we hold the net debt/EBITDA3 ratio within a range of 3.0x to 3.5x.

1 Net income attributable to the shareholders of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA
2 Before special items
3 Both net debt and EBITDAEBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization)EBITDA is calculated from EBIT by adding depreciations recognized in income and deducting write-ups recognized in income, both on intangible assets as well as property, plant and equipment. calculated at LT M average exchange rates; before special items, pro forma closed acquisitions / divestitures. For pro forma acquisitions, the missing pro forma EBITDA for the full 12 months is included. For divestments, the EBITDA contribution of the last 12 months is deducted.

Drive internationalization

Fresenius’ goal is to ensure and expand its long-term position as a leading international provider of products, services, and therapies in the health care industry. To this end, and to geographically expand our business, we plan to grow organically as well as through selective small to medium­-sized acquisitions, complementing our existing port­folio. We are constantly seeking new above-average growth opportunities in developing as well as in emerging countries. Our aim is to strengthen our activities in these regions and successively introduce further products from our port­folio into these markets.

Fresenius Medical Care is the worldwide leader in dialysisDialysisForm of renal replacement therapy where a semipermeable membrane – in peritoneal dialysis the peritoneum of the patient, in hemo­dialysis the membrane of the dialyzer – is used to clean a patient’s blood., with a strong market position in the United States. Future opportunities in dialysis will arise from further expansion in dialysis care and products worldwide.

Fresenius Kabi is the market leader in infusion therapy in Europe and Latin America.

In clinical nutrition therapy, Fresenius Kabi is market leader in Europe as well as in the key markets in Asia-Pacific (including China); in Latin America, Fresenius Kabi is one of the three leading providers of clinical nutrition.

In the area of IV generic drugs, Fresenius Kabi is one of the leading companies in the U.S. market. In the biosimilarsBiosimilarsA biosimilar is a drug that is “similar” to another biologic drug already approved. product segment, Fresenius Kabi started with launches of its first biosimilar product, Idacio, in Europe in 2019; in 2020, the company continued to launch Idacio in several European countries and has received marketing authorization in selected countries in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, Israel and Canada. In addition, Fresenius Kabi is one of the most important providers of transfusion technology. Fresenius Kabi plans to roll out products from its existing portfolio to the growth markets and to launch existing products in the United States. Market share is to be expanded further through the launch of new products in the fields of IV drugs, infusion therapy, clinical nutrition, biosimilars, and medical devices/transfusion technology.

With 89 hospitals, Fresenius Helios operates in nearly all of Germany. Building on this, Fresenius Helios is now in a position to develop new patient care models. To benefit from the trend towards outpatient treatment, Helios Germany has been expanding outpatient service offerings. Helios Spain has attractive growth opportunities through the expansion and construction of hospitals, and potential for further consolidation in the highly fragmented private hospital market in Spain. Fresenius Helios will exploit upcoming opportunities for cross-border synergies in areas such as laboratory services and joint purchasing. The cross-border exchange of experience and knowledge is creating the economic prerequisites for the further internationalization of our hos­pital business.

Fresenius Vamed plans to further strengthen its position as a global specialist for projects and services for hospitals and other health care facilities. In Central Europe, Fresenius Vamed is one of the leading providers of rehabilitation services. Furthermore, the collaboration with Fresenius Helios has been further intensified. This applies, for example, to technical services and purchasing, where both companies are cooperating on selected products.

Statements on market position according to company research

Employees

The commitment of our more than 311,000 employees worldwide is key for the success and sustained growth of Fresenius. We firmly believe in a culture of diversity, as we are convinced that different perspectives, opinions, experiences, and values enable Fresenius to continue successfully growing as a global health care company. To tackle the upcoming challenges, attracting new employees is key for the growth of our company. We regularly participate in recruiting events and career fairs to attract new talent, and invite our management to meet future Fresenius employees at “Meet the Board”. Not only do we try to attract new talent, we also want to retain and develop our people at Fresenius. We offer a variety of flexible working-time models and incentive programs to ensure that our long-term needs for highly qualified employees are met. Furthermore, we offer our employees opportunities to develop their careers in an international and dynamic environment.

Contact us

Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA
Else-Kröner-Str. 1
61352 Bad Homburg v.d.H.
Germany
T +49 (0) 6172 608-2294
pr-fre@fresenius.com

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Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA

Strategy and goals

Corporate performance criteria