Life Healthcare will focus on growing its brand in southern Africa and internationally in order to achieve its growth objectives for the year ahead.
|||Johannesburg - Life Healthcare would focus on growing its brand in southern Africa and internationally in order to achieve its growth objectives for the year ahead, it said yesterday.
The group already boasts a R685 million private hospital in Poland, which it acquired in November, bringing the total investment in that country to R2.1 billion.
Chief executive André Meyer said the Scanmed Group acquisition in Poland currently consisted of 619 beds, 12 inpatient cardiology centres and 43 medical centres.
Meyer said the Polish operation’s performance reported improved earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) margins of 13.5 percent, up from 11.8 percent as compared with the previous period.
He said another investment in India, Max Healthcare, grew its net revenue by 27.7 percent during the period, with Ebitda increasing by 38.7 percent. The overall Ebitda margin improved to 10.6 percent. The group expects increased cost pressure in the second half off the back of staff costs and a weak rand.
Meyer said the group’s growth objectives would now be focused on the region. “We aim to add more than 20 acute hospital brownfield beds in the next six months in the southern Africa region,” Meyer said.
He said the group prospects remained good as it posted a growth in profits for the six months to the end of March.
Revenue increased by 10.9 percent to R7.86 billion with profit after tax increasing by 13 percent to R1.13bn.
Normalised earnings per share went up 8.6 percent to 87.1 cents.
Solid performance
“Our solid financial performance of the first six months of this financial year is pleasing and a direct result of our continued focus on our business development in southern Africa and internationally,” Meyer said. “Bed growth is on target to meet 2016 goals and we remain focused on cost efficiencies and growth objectives.”
Life Healthcare is one of South Africa’s largest private hospital operators.
Meyer said the total investment from South Africa into Max Healthcare is R2.5bn, including R320m invested to fund the Max Smart acquisition in September.
He said Max Healthcare added 263 operational beds, 236 beds of which were from the acquisition of Max Smart to bring the total to 2 320 operational beds at the end of March.
Meyer said the company wanted to add more beds to cater for the demand of its facilities with an additional 91 beds and 17 renal dialysis stations. He said a further 100 beds were expected to be added during the second half of 2016.
The group said it was investing in its staff to equip it to carry out their duties successfully. “Investment in staff skills will continue through the Care programme’s extensive training of 24 000 employees, management, doctors, students and service providers. The Care programme’s patient-centric approach is expected to improve the quality, care and compassion of health-care services to our patients,” Meyer said.
He said Life Healthcare trained about 1 000 nurses a year, but the company still needed to import nurses from India to plug shortages, particularly in specialised areas such as intensive care. Five years ago there were 235 000 nurses in the country and this had grown to 280 000 today, Meyer said.
The group said occupancies continued to remain high. The company has declared a dividend of 73c per share.
Life Healthcare shares were up 5.18 percent on the JSE yesterday to close at R37.96.
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