Sunway Bhd to pump RM1 bln in healthcare sector

PETALING JAYA: Sunway Bhd, which plans to expand its healthcare sector, has allocated RM1 billion in capital expenditure to build five hospitals in the next five years.

Sunway Group Founder/ Chairman, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, said healthcare business was the way forward for the group with the new hospitals and the expansion of its Sunway Medical Centre from 630 beds to 1,000 beds in the next two and a half years.

He said the new hospitals will be in Sun way P en ang (2 hospitals ), Sun way Velocity (1), Sunway Damansara (1) and Sunway Ipoh (1).

"The Sunway Velocity hospital is already under construction and is expected to be completed by end -2018, while the rest are awaiting approval from the Ministry of Health.

"The group expected profit contribution from the hospitals to increase to RM50 million from a pre-tax profit of RM37.65 million this year, " he told reporters after the annual general meeting yesterday.

Sunway Medical Centre recently was awarded a runner-up for Medical Tourism Hospital 2017 alongside Singapore''s Mount Elizabeth, one rank behind Bumrungrad Hospital of Thailand.

"The award will encourage us to do more for our healthcare sector and we are also hoping to list our healthcare arm in the next few years.

"We can do so now as we already have the track record, but we will wait for a few more years and develop a better value," said Cheah.

Sunway Bhd is a well-diversified company with 12 different businesses, and is in the midst of reclassifying its listing sector from "property" to "trading and services" as other sectors were contributing more to the group, he said.

On the construction division, he said, the group was still looking for more jobs and its tender book currently stood at RM10 billion and was confident of securing over RM2 billion this year, adding to its current order book of RM4.6 billion.

Most the jobs, he said, were related to infrastructure projects as the the group was the only company with expertise and experience in Mass Rapid Transit, Bus Rapid Transit and Light rail transit construction in Malaysia.

Meanwhile, on the property segment, Managing Director Property Division, Sarena Cheah Yean Tih, said the group was planning to launch 10-11 projects this year with gross development value of about RM2 billion.

The overall property industry has been consolidating in the past three years, but with good gross domestic product number to spur the market confident coupled with lower ringgit and competitive interest rate, the demand for property was expected to pick up in six months time, she said.