Gary and his wife Carmen Lewis founded the company from very humble beginnings, starting with only £1350 of capital in the first 5 years and without any outside finance developed a successful multi-million Pound turnover healthcare company.

Today we are a well established company that is financially strong with over £5 million of it's own working capital. The company aims to achieve a minimum annual stock turnover rate of 14 enabling it to work on a small competitive margin per transaction but achieve a high return on capital (ROC) in excess of 40% per annum (industry top 5% performance). The key principles that fuelled our early success have been used to inspire a well motivated team led by a young home grown managing director Chris Dancer which knows the key to future success remains the same hardwork and determination and then willingness to continually shrive for improvement and change.

"We aim to double our profitability or sales turnover every 5 years." -- Gary Lewis Chairman & Co-Founder

Performance 2007/8

A1 pharmaceuticals has in last 12 month rationalised and removed a number of financially inefficient products from its product portfolio this has enabled the company in spite of reduction in projected annual sale turnover (April 2008) of 16% is still on course for a record year increasing gross This clearly demonistrates that the judges recognise that the A1 team has achieved the outstanding performance in its sector. The company is one of the most people efficient in the UK with sales turnover of £1.33 million per employee.

Trend in Sales Turnover

In the last 7 years, the company has shown strong growth in sales peaking at £35 million in 2007 in spite of a reduction in projected sales by 16% in 2008 to £30 million Efficient financial management of a well organized and motivated team has enabled the company to buck the market trend and achieve a record annual net profit performance of £1.8 million in the year ending April 2008.

"Turnover is vanity profit is sanity and cashflow is king" --Gary Lewis Chairman & Co-Founder

Graph Demonstrating Sales Turnover Trend

Trend in Profitability

In spite of a major contraction in the overall market size of parallel imported pharmaceuticals and shortline pharmaceutical wholesaling by as much as 50% in the last 12 month A1 has increased its market share inspite of a comparatively modest decline in turnover of 16% but strong profit growth with gross profit (GP) increasing 17% and net profit (NP) up 13% to a record £1.8 million. This is all been achieved during a year which has seen the pound weaken by 14% against Euro (£1/€1.3)

Graph Demonstrating Profit Trend

People Efficiency

The company is one of the most people Efficient in UK. The Chariman and founder Gary Lewis has strategically planned the company to be as people efficient as possible.

Graph Demonstrating A1 Team Efficiency Trend

Return on Capital Employed

The company is in the top 50 for the top 1000 pharmaceuticals companies for return on capital employed.