Welcome to the conference call of RHÖN-KLINIKUM regarding the results of 9M 2021 and financial year 2020. The conference will be hosted by Dr. Stefan Stranz, CFO of RHÖN-KLINIKUM AG, Igor Levit, Group Head of Finance, Accounting, Tax, Controlling, and Investor Relations, and Julian Schmitt, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. I now hand over to Julian Schmitt. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Dear investors and analysts, a warm welcome to everybody who has dialed in today. Our CFO, Dr. Stefan Stranz, will guide you through today's presentation. Dr. Stranz will begin with the key aspects of 2021. Afterwards, he will share with you our financial figures and guide you through our outlook for 2021. As always, we will close the conference call after a Q&A session. Before we start, and according to the usual practice, I'd like to draw your attention to the forward-looking statement and disclaimer wording on page two of our presentation. This safe harbor language applies to the presentation, our guidance, and all comments to be made today. Again, I'd like to mention that everything will be recorded. After the call, a replay will be available on our website. With that, I hand it over to Stefan.
Thank you. Welcome to everybody from my side. Please turn straight away to slide three, and let me mention the key aspects of the first nine months of financial year 2021, together with some strategic charts. The third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic at first seems to be more moderate than the previous pandemic phases. In the meantime, however, we are experiencing an exponential increase in infections, which, together with the seasonal spectrum of diseases, may lead to a substantial worsening of the situation in the hospitals. Yet, unlike at the beginning of the pandemic, we are taking advantage of extensive experience in the treatment of COVID-19 patients and hope for well-manageable courses of the disease due to the current vaccination rate.
At the same time, we note that a further increase in the vaccination rate combined with the so-called booster vaccinations and the consistent implementation of the COVID-19 access restrictions is essential to break the fourth wave. The current situation at our clinics gives us confidence and allows us to continue to provide a high level of care for non-COVID patients. The corresponding development is reflected in both our figures for the first nine months and our outlook for the full year 2021. Despite all our confidence, however, we have a staff shortage and outstanding commitment of our employees over the period of now one and a half years, similar to the trend seen nationally. It's resulting in increased exhaustion of medical staff. Filling vacancies is proving difficult in the current labor market situation.
Hence, we see our most urgent tasks strategically in the following areas of action. Focus and strengthening nursing and medical care concentrated on the clinical core activities and pooling special know-how. We are tackling these tasks together with our employees and are benefiting from cooperation with our companies of the Asklepios Group. Furthermore, we expressly welcome the desire of the exploratory political partners, SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and FDP, to make preventive care and prevention the guiding principle of health policy. The basic idea of more cross-sector cooperation is reasonable, but should entail a radical softening of sector boundaries, especially between outpatient and inpatient care. Besides that, we are currently missing solutions for elimination of the considerable investment backlog of the German healthcare sector and call the exploratory political partners to explicitly address this issue.
Investments in digitalization make good sense and are inevitable, but cannot be an end in itself. The German healthcare industry urgently needs significantly more investment in building infrastructures and medical technology. Violations of this principle of dual financing may no longer be tolerated in the future. Instead, effective sanction mechanisms are needed. Saying this clear message to the politicians, I'd like to move to the next slide, our P&L statements. Compared to the same period of the previous year, we recorded a 1.2% increase in revenues. EBITDA improved by 16.9% to EUR 71.1 million. Consolidated profits amounting to EUR 15.5 million and was EUR 30.2 million higher than in the previous year.
Revenues for the first 9 months of the financial year 2021 included EUR 40.3 million of income related to the COVID-19 legislation. This mainly involves revenues in connections with compensation payments for the bed capacity that has been kept available. They expired on 15th June 2021. Let me now bring the key factors of financial year 2020, which we are obligated to remind you of so that we can also allow questions about the following in this call. In 2020, we reported a year-on-year decrease in EBITDA of EUR 45.1 million- EUR 80.2 million.
Decrease in EBIT of EUR 46.2 million- EUR 10.6 million, and a decrease in consolidated profit of EUR 42 million- EUR 2.5 million. Revenues up EUR 56.2 million- EUR 1,360.2 million. It should be noted that the figures of 2020 are only comparable with the prior year and to a limited extent. The year 2020 was heavily impacted by COVID-19. The decrease in the number of patients was offset by revenues totaling EUR 90.6 million as a result of the COVID-19 regulations.
EBITDA of 2019 includes non-recurring positive effects of EUR 39.2 million from the reversal of provision for legal and tax risks, and EUR 6.9 million from the agreement to compensation for university outpatient clinic. This brings me to the next slides for today, your balance sheet as of 30th September 2021. When we take a look at our balance sheet, there is nothing new but stable figures to report. In truth, we continue to have a solid and substantial balance sheet. Your equity ratio of around 73% is among the highest we found in the industry. This ultimately leads to the next page, our financial outlook. Due to the positive development of the business in the first nine months of financial year 2021, the management board of RHÖN-KLINIKUM decided to adjust the current EBITDA guidance for financial year 2021.
The current guidance accounts for EBITDA range between EUR 72.5 million-EUR 82.5 million. For the financial year 2021, the management board now expects an EBITDA between EUR 92 million-EUR 102 million. At the same time, the guidance of revenues in the amount of EUR 1.4 billion within the range of ±5% remains unchanged. The guidance reflects the regulatory legislative intervention, such as the German regulations for the threshold of nursing staff in German [Non-English content] and the German Nursing Staff Reinforcement Act in German, the [Non-English content], which have become even tighter. In addition, it should be noted that the guidance is subject to uncertainty in connection with the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and any regulatory legislation affecting the Rhön revamp structure in 2021.
Thank you for your listening so far, and we are now happy to answer your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have not received any questions at this point. I will hand back to the speakers.
Thank you. Thank you very much for joining our today's analyst meeting. If there have been no questions, we will answer them afterwards. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Investor relations is happy to answer your questions. We look forward to hear from you now. Thank you. Bye-bye.