TMC Life eyeing more M&As in financial year of 2018
PETALING JAYA: Healthcare provider TMC Life Sciences Bhd ( TMC Life) is planning for more mergers and acquisitions ( M& A) in the medical and healthcare-related business for the financial year ending Aug 31, 2018 ( FY18).
Group chief execut ive off icer/execut ive director, Roy Quek said the group was eyeing more M& A activities in both Malaysia and overseas, especial ly Southeast Asia and China, to expand its scale and to serve more patients.
“I am a big believer in scale because the operations cost per unit could be much lower with a bigger company, and this is what we are going to focus on in the next three to five years,” he told reporters after the company’s annual general meeting yesterday.
Meanwhile, Quek said TMC Li fe was not interested in acquiring Prince Court Medical Centre ( PCMC), although it had plans for more M& As in FY18.
It was reported that IHH Healthcare Bhd is currently in talks with Petronas for the acquisit ion of PCMC as the hospital was not the national oil company’s core business.
On the development of the RM1.2 billion Thomson Iskandar medical hub project in Johor, Quek said the company was in the f inal stage of obtaining the approvals from the authorities.
“I believe we will get the approvals between the first and second quarter of this year,” he said.
Aside from the Thomson I skanda r proj e c t , TMC Li fe had also spent nearly RM400 million to expand the Tropicana Medical Centre in Kota Damansara, which is expected to be completed and operational in the second half of 2020.
As k ed wh e t h e r the appreciation of the ringgit would have an impact on the company’s revenue , Quek said it was unlikely as medical cost in Malaysia was sti l l lower compared with Singapore.
“The ringgit is still three times lower than the Singapore dollar, so I believe overseas patients will still opt to come to Malaysia,” he said, adding that 10 per cent of the group’s patients were foreigners.
“We are targeting foreign patients to account for 25 per cent of the group’s revenue in the medium term,” he said.
On the healthcare sector’s outlook, Quek said demand for healthcare and quality private healthcare had escalated due to the bigger middle- class population segment.
However, he said, statistics showed that Malaysia was still lagging behind developed countries in terms of the ratio of doctors to patients and the number of hospitals against the total population. — Bernama