FRANKFURT/ZURICH (dpa-AFX) - Positive revaluations of Redcare Pharmacy and DocMorris by Berenberg Bank triggered a share price rally among the two online pharmacy stocks on Friday. Against the backdrop of the mandatory launch of electronic prescriptions (e-prescriptions) in Germany at the beginning of January, analyst Gerhard Orgonas raised his price targets for the two shares significantly and now also recommends both shares as a buy. He now sees a target of 190 euros for Redcare, up from 120 euros previously. For DocMorris, he raised the target from 60 to 100 francs.

This caused the share price to jump sharply. Redcare (formerly Shop Apotheke) in the MDax rose by 5.35 percent to 134.90 euros. In Switzerland, DocMorris shares gained around eleven percent to 78.10 francs.

Orgonas wrote that the momentum generated by e-prescriptions in Germany could not be ignored, but was still being underestimated in some cases. The figure of 9,000 daily e-prescriptions in June, or 0.6 percent of the total number on a weekly basis, had risen to over 400,000, or around 32 percent of the total number at the end of December, he explained.

According to him, further ways of dispensing e-prescriptions are likely to follow soon. In face-to-face pharmacies, for example, these can currently be filled using the electronic health card. For online pharmacies, however, it is still unclear when exactly a solution will be found. Orgonas estimates that this will most likely be the case in the first quarter.

For Redcare, the Berenberg expert is therefore forecasting annual sales growth of 100 percent for German e-prescriptions from 2024. In conjunction with continued market share gains, rising margins and a positive free cash inflow in the area of over-the-counter medicines, this should drive the share price significantly higher. With a price target of now 190 euros, this currently means a share price potential of just over 40 percent.

He also expects annual e-prescription growth of 100 percent for DocMorris' German business from 2024. Based on the current share price, this would mean a remaining share price potential of just over 20 percent.

The Redcare share, which achieved the largest price gains among the three most important indices in the Dax family in 2023, recently fell slightly from its pre-Christmas high. Last year, the share price had roughly tripled, as had that of the DocMorris share./ck/tih/mis