African Med Share Discussion Threads

[andrbea] 30/7/2009 07:56

I like the word profitable:

The airport clinic at Cape Town International airport, which opened in May 2009,
has performed ahead of the Company's estimates, benefiting from a rise in
tourist numbers and increased demand for quality healthcare. The recent
Confederation Cup (the precursor to FIFA World Cup) and the Lions Tour 2009 have
contributed to its success. In June 2009 the clinic was cash flow positive and
profitable. Additionally, operations will expand into the new terminal in
November this year, being built to coincide with the FIFA World Cup due to be
staged in South Africa in 2010.



African Medical CEO Dr. Vivek Solanki said, "Kilimanjaro International Airport
is a major tourist hub with over 500,000 tourists going through it annually,
primarily to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and visit the famous Serengeti and
Ngorongoro National Parks. The clinic will also potentially service three
international schools, the expatriate and NGO community in Arusha and Moshi as
well as established institutions including the United Nations and the
International Conference Centre which is currently hosting the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Court and also based in Arusha.



"The presence of African Medical at three major tourist and business airport
hubs in Africa places the group in a strong position for further expansion
within the sector. These airport clinics also complement our other operations,
which include a 30 bed boutique hospital, trauma centre and well woman clinic in
Dar es Salaam that opened earlier this year and a satellite clinic in
Harare."

[andrbea] 21/7/2009 09:18

AMI is already building another centre in Maputo, Mozambique. In the next three to five years, the company plans to build 10 more such centres across the continent, with Algiers, Accra, Nairobi and Alexandria on the list of possible locations.

"Just on the back of an increase in the volume of the middle classes, there is definitely a viable market for anyone who is in the healthcare space," says Tiwonge Mkandawire, healthcare analyst at international consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. "People can now actually pay for it and, better yet, they are demanding it because they recognise it as a right they can finally afford."

A specialist consultation at the hospital costs $100, with membership payable monthly at $40 plus an extra $10 per month per additional family member. Mr Solanki expects to break even within three months on the $3m that it cost to build the Dar Es Salaam site. The targeted annual net return for each of the company's planned clinics is between $2.5-$3m, with a targeted annual group return of between $25-$35m.


(full 3-page article at:)

[andrbea] 20/7/2009 10:57

here is an article from the Ft

A diversified fund such as this is probably the safe route into Africa but there are alternatives. You could buy into a diversified multinational that is buying up assets across the continent, such as Lonrho. Or you could look at individual African businesses that are quoted on Aim and give exposure to a specific theme.

For example, Camec, the Aim-quoted copper and cobalt mining company, has spun off two London- listed businesses: AgriTerra (ticker symbol: AGTA) and African Medical Investments (AMEI).

AgriTerra is arguably the more interesting of the two. It made its market debut last year. While sovereign wealth funds have been buying up tracts of land, AgriTerra has been taking a different tack. It has avoided the thorny political issue of buying land and concentrated instead on acting as a middleman, buying up maize from small farmers in Mozambique and then processing and selling it. Its customers include the World Food Programme.

Having invested more than $40m on its existing profitable plant, the company is now rolling out another mill in Mozambique and looking to expand its processing operations in other African countries. This is where Camec's expertise in trucking-based logistics operations should pay off. At its current share price of 3.5p, AgriTerra is valued at £17m, which is not cheap. But if its managers can scale up and build a network across the southern half of the continent, the value of AgriTerra to a bigger food processing conglomerate could be huge.

African Medical Investments is a play on the growing demand for specialist, high-quality private healthcare. It is built on solid foundations: an outfit providing airport clinics and a fast-growing trauma clinics business that's up and running in Tanzania's Dar Es Salaam and soon to be rolled out to Maputo in Mozambique.

African Medical is all about deploying large amounts of upfront capital on the ground in to build a leading position in a sector that would be regarded as mainstream in the developed world. Food processing and private hospitals are regarded as a fairly boring play in the UK but very few people have committed the resources to these sectors in Africa and thus you can quite quickly build a first-mover advantage.

Of course, the risk is that that first-mover advantage will amount to nothing if political chaos erupts – but that's the investment argument here: in Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda, political risk is slowly being taken off the table. So, if African Medical achieves strong growth, it'll probably be snapped up by a bigger outfit looking to expand its hospital network into Africa.

So, AgriTerra and African Medical are essentially private equity assets that happen to be listed. I'd also love to see Camec's logistics operation hived off. Unlike Lonrho, neither offer any built-in diversification. Even so, for the adventurous investor who wants to build a long- term position in Africa, these discrete trading businesses represent a bolder bet on the continent's future.

[andrbea] 20/7/2009 09:08

has risen from 11.3p (May) to current 20p:

amei

NB: a big buy of 250k at 21p on July 15th

[andrbea] 14/7/2009 09:54

good point

I hold agta too (another Edmonds company)

incidentally, bal has been on a strong run lately

[bethany3] 13/7/2009 19:54

Interested me sometime back but backed out when notice Mr Edmonds and Mr Groves of
WNI, BAL, CFM, African Gold and others were the founders. Looks a decent venture on paper but principals in the past had been rumoured/known to dabble in their own company shares to stimulate interest. As always dyor especially anything involving principals of a dubious track record.

[andrbea] 13/7/2009 17:32

nope

but a big buy, 300k

[kwh1066] 13/7/2009 17:25

andrbea,

Any insights into why the significant uptick today?