KPJ

KPJ Healthcare Bhd is looking into expanding its network aggressively in Asia beginning next year through acquisition, joint venture and management contract.

The destinations being considered were Indochina, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and possibly Middle East, Managing Director Datin Paduka Siti Sa'diah Sheikh Bakir told reporters on the sidelines of Invest Malaysia 2010 Conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

"We have received a few offers from these countries and currently, KPJ is reassessing the offers. We hope to finalise them by end of this year to be able to kick off the plan next year onwards," she said.

KPJ presently owns 20 hospitals in Malaysia and two in Indonesia. It also manages two hospitals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.For this year, Siti Sa'diah said, KPJ would only focus on domestic expansion and was in the midst of building two hospitals in Klang and Muar.

On the Al-Aqar KPJ Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs), she said KPJ hoped to complete the exercise of injecting three other hospital buildings (one in Indonesia and two in Malaysia) into REITs by June this year.

The company was waiting for the approval from the relevant authorities.

"This exercise creates more opportunities to acquire more hospital buildings, in particular in Indonesia, for further REIT injection," she said.

To date, KPJ has injected 18 hospitals and a nursing college building into REITs.Meanwhile, she said KPJ had allocated about RM100 million to expand its existing hospitals and to upgrade facilities in Malaysia.With the increasing demand for private healthcare services and its expansion plans locally and abroad, KPJ is confident to achieve a revenue of RM2 billion by 2012.

Currently, KPJ’s market capitalisation is RM1.5 billion and hopes to increase it to RM2 billion.

26.04.10 - KPJ Healthcare, in a bid to expand its Indonesian operations, plans to offer CATscans and cardiac services for the 2 hospitals it is currently operating in Indonesia.The expansion in its Indonesian offerings is based on the large Indonesianpopulation base of 240m and the country’s move to subsidise medical care via a%D¬ard system. We view the development positively as: (1) In providing cardiacservices, it will be able to capture part of the higher-end market which is currentlyserviced by hospitals abroad; and (2) The growth in the demand for healthcare is expected to be strong in the coming few years based on Indonesia’s growing economy and its large population base. KPJ Healthcare is currently trading at FY11’s P/E of 12.4x and DY of 4.4%, compared against Singapore’s Raffles Medical’s 17x and 1.9% and Thomson Medical’s 12.7x and 4.1% respectively.

KPJ website