About

EMS S.A. (EMS) is Brazil’s largest pharmaceutical company, with more than six decades of dedication to accessible healthcare and a portfolio spanning prescription medicines, generics, over-the-counter therapies and hospital supplies.¹ Responsible for approximately 14% of all medicines sold in Brazil and operating across more than 60 countries, EMS manufactures at scale and distributes through a network of third-party partners reaching nearly 99,000 private pharmacies nationwide.¹

The opportunity

Brazil’s pharmaceutical market represents one of the most dynamic distribution opportunities in Latin America, with more than 4,500 distributors connecting manufacturers to thousands of pharmacies across the country.² EMS S.A. had already built a differentiated advantage: a dedicated direct-to-point-of-sale commercial team that maps pharmacy opportunities region by region and cultivates relationships that deepen brand presence and shelf visibility. The company’s ambition was clear: grow market share, expand availability of its generics portfolio, and reach more consumers. The financial infrastructure simply needed to catch up.

Most distributor transactions run on credit, and as EMS looked to broaden its reach, two situations highlighted a compelling opportunity to go further. A distributor in Rio de Janeiro had purchased approximately BRL 40 million from EMS in 2024, and had the capacity to grow, but when its credit limit was suspended, purchases fell 63% in 2025 as the distributor shifted to cash-in-advance buying.² Separately, a distributor that had entered court-ordered restructuring represented a region EMS wanted to serve but lacked the mechanism to do so safely. Together, these situations pointed to the same unlock: if EMS could extend its reach to distributors of all financial profiles without absorbing additional counterparty risk, the commercial upside was significant.

The solution

EMS worked with J.P. Morgan to implement an escrow account built around Brazil’s boleto payment ecosystem, a purpose-built structure that converts payment flows into a payment risk management solution. Boleto is Brazil’s standardized invoice payment instrument, in which pharmacy payments are received through banking channels and credited to the named beneficiary the next business day.² By designating EMS as the account beneficiary from the outset, the structure gave its treasury team full financial control over every transaction in the distributor network, regardless of each distributor’s credit profile.

The model created a continuous, self-reinforcing commercial cycle. EMS delivers inventory to distributors in pre-mapped strategic regions; those distributors invoice pharmacies using boletos as the payment instrument. All boleto receipts settle into the J.P. Morgan escrow account the next business day, where proceeds are automatically split per a preset commercial waterfall, directing the distributor’s margin to its account and inventory repayment to EMS.² Distributors previously limited to cash-in-advance purchasing can now align their buying cadence with pharmacies’ natural sell-out cycle of approximately 50 days, eliminating up-front cash burdens and matching purchasing power to actual performance.²

Real-time receivables reporting and API-enabled portfolio views through J.P. Morgan platforms give EMS’s treasury team continuous visibility into flows, performance, cash application and reconciliations.² The framework was designed from the outset for scale: it accommodates up to 60 distributors through a phased onboarding process, and its modular architecture allows EMS to expand across regions and industries as its business grows, a capability J.P. Morgan is now extending to clients beyond pharmaceuticals.²

The results

The impact was immediate and measurable. EMS safely resumed supply to the distributor under court-ordered restructuring, recovering regional presence while giving the distributor a sustainable path forward. In Rio de Janeiro, the distributor whose volumes had declined 63% adopted the model in early 2026, and with purchasing capacity now aligned to pharmacy sell-out cycles and freed from up-front cash requirements, volumes are on track to recover to 2024 levels and surpass them through the year.² In a market where demand had never wavered, removing the financial friction was all it took to reignite growth.

The broader commercial effect is equally compelling. EMS can now engage distributors across the full spectrum of financial health, expanding into regions where coverage had been constrained by credit limitations, not by demand, without additional risk to its balance sheet. Each distributor onboarded opens a new supply corridor from EMS’s manufacturing capacity to pharmacies and, ultimately, to patients.² The solution does more than protect the treasury: it actively drives market share growth while expanding access to affordable medicines for the communities that depend on them most.

Ready to unlock your distribution network’s full potential?

Discover how J.P. Morgan can help you extend your commercial reach, manage counterparty risk and gain near real-time visibility across your Brazilian treasury operations here.