20/07/2006
‘I’m a woman on a mission’, enthuses former nurse Kate Bleasdale, founder and chief executive of HCL, now well established as a top three player in the healthcare staffing market.
Fast growing HCL operates in a sector where demand outstrips supply, sports healthier margins than rivals because it operates from a small number of locations and is ideally placed to pick up acquisitions in a consolidating market.
A recent update for the half to June revealed a business in rude health, with Bleasdale flagging up strong trading, especially in higher margin permanent placement. She stated first half profits would hit forecasts, hailed the successful integration of March acquisition BBL and announced more than £18m of new contracts secured with the NHS and private sector.
Concerns regarding NHS funding were also allayed, with Bleasdale pointing out the group doesn’t operate in the low-margin nursing or care worker markets where spend is being reigned in. Rather HCL – an approved supplier under the NHS Allied Health Professionals (AHP) National Framework deal – supplies high margin doctors, social workers and AHP’s, and is seeing burgeoning demand overseas, where it is meeting demand for permanent doctors and AHP’s from Australia, the US, Europe and the Middle East.
The consolidation wave is also quickening, with many NHS and private health operators now only working with approved operators with scale enough to meet rising regulation.
For calendar 2006, Collins Stewart’s Julian Cater envisages pre-tax profits of £6.6m from £93m sales, giving earnings of 7.5p and a forward multiple of only 7.7. Growth Company Investor believes HCL, which joined AIM at 55p last November, remains significantly undervalued and the shares are worth a look ahead of the half time figures in September.
| Market cap: | £35.52m |
| PE Forecast: | 7.7 |
| Share price: | 57.5p |
| AIM | £113.66m |
109.00p
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-1.00p
|
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| Other company articles: |
| 08/01/2008 |
| 08/08/2006 |
| 20/07/2006 |
| 17/11/2005 |
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