Europe's online pharmacy platforms have spent the last decade building something valuable - large, loyal digital customer bases across multiple markets and channels. The question now is how that value is best realised, and increasingly the answer is in combination. Bringing digital reach and physical networks together gives each side capabilities and scale they would otherwise have to spend years and serious capital building on their own. CEPD's acquisition of Atida, which Aalto Capital advised on, is the clearest example of this type of value-creating combination.

CEPD is already an omnichannel operator, with a large pharmacy network across Poland, Lithuania and Sweden and an established online business alongside it. Atida brings a leading digital platform and consumer-health brands across Western Europe, with data and AI capability. The two fit in geography and in capability: Atida's digital and data capability can be applied across CEPD's markets, while CEPD's network and operational scale broaden what Atida offers its own customers.

That is why the combination matters beyond the two companies. It creates a pharmacy group present in eleven European countries and strong across both physical and digital channels. Each side gains immediate reach into the other's geographies, along with the procurement and own-brand scale a larger group commands. None of this would be quick to build organically. A physical network in new markets, or a digital and data capability to match, takes years and significant investment. This combination delivers real synergies, grounded in capability and reach.

Across digital health, the audiences and customer bases that took years to build are most valuable in the hands of an owner equipped to do more with them. For the businesses that hold them, the strategic question is shifting from how much further they can grow alone to who can extend what they have already created. We expect more of the sector’s value to come through that kind of combination than through stand-alone scale.

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