Apothekenwirtschaftsbericht

The Apothekenwirtschaftsbericht is the annual economic report the profession publishes about itself through the ABDA. It gathers the year's figures on turnover, cost structure, results and the number of pharmacies, and it is the document trade articles and bank conversations quote when they describe how German pharmacies are doing. The most recent edition was published on 5 May 2026 and reports on the 2025 financial year.

Two sets of numbers from it come up most often. On results, the ABDA Apothekenwirtschaftsbericht published on 5 May 2026 put the Umsatzrendite of German pharmacies at 4,2 percent in 2025, down from 4,4 percent in 2024 and from 6,5 percent in 2015, and reported that 33 percent of pharmacies showed a pre-tax operating result below 100.000 euro while 7 percent made a loss. On structure, the same report counted 16.541 pharmacy Betriebsstätten at the end of the first quarter of 2026, the lowest number since 1977.

Reading it well means resisting two reactions. The first is reassurance, because an average result is not a forecast for any individual pharmacy and a positive average sits over a distribution in which a third of businesses were below 100.000 euro before tax. The second is panic, because a declining count of Betriebsstätten is a statement about the whole market and not about a particular location, and it says nothing about the local competitive position, the rent or the payroll. The report is a background against which a pharmacy reads its own Betriebsergebnis, not a substitute for it.

It is also worth knowing what the report does not settle. It describes the position after policy has taken effect, so it lags the mechanisms that produced it. The per package deduction discussed under Kassenabschlag and the changes gathered under the Apothekenreform work through the accounts before they appear in an annual average, which is why a report can look calmer or bleaker than the current month feels in a single pharmacy.

Everything above is annual. Each edition replaces the last one, the percentages move, and the pharmacy count is restated every quarter. Any text that quotes these figures, including this entry and any calculation built on it, needs a review once a year when the next edition appears, and each figure should carry the source and the year it refers to wherever it is used.