Street talk confirms CW tendering out wholesale business, page-23

The proposed Discount Warehouse model will be interesting ..... if the Pharmacy Guild is arguing that 1700 Pharmacies are at risk of closing down because of PBS changes then how can Chemist Warehouse be making enough money to be able to list on asx and presumably claim its got a good future? I can only assume that they will be copying the Priceline franchise model which might multiply their chances to expand faster than Priceline, by gobbling up some of those 1700 closing down?

The history of Chemist Warehouse was interestingly given a free leg up by a Sigma executive who decided they could show higher sales and profits by extending credit terms out to 12 months and holding their stock in chemists instead of in their warehouses. Sigma nearly went broke when new management discovered the manipulation as I remember it [and there was a court case which followed] and decided to abruptly reduce credit terms to 30 days. This saw a number of pharmacies go bankrupt because some other owners decided to invest in horses and not the business. Now Sigma faces a possibility of losing the supply contract of the child it fostered into high places..it seems.
imo it would be an adventurous person to be investing in any pharmacy shareholdings at this stage and will be interesting to read the Warehouse prospectus.

Can anyone explain why evidence from Treasury shows 15% of Australian pharmacies are not earning taxable profits? This was used as an argument to keep current PBS rules but seems too simplistic to take on face value.
Does Treasury do more analysis of such figures provided by the ATO maybe?

Anyone know how many Pharmacies go broke every year and if Sigma carries much in the way of bad debts?