Allen Lew, a recently appointed director of Raffles Medical Group, acquired 100,000 shares at $1.35 each on July 27. A day earlier, he had bought another 100,000 shares at $1.30 each. His 200,000 shares is equivalent to 0.011% of the company.
Lew, a longtime stalwart at Singapore Telecommunications, joined Raffles Medical on Oct 28, 2020, as director. Lew bought the shares just after Raffles Medical Group reported better results before the market opened on July 26.
For the 1HFY2021 ended June 30, the company reported earnings more than doubled to nearly $39.5 million from $17.2 million in 1HFY2020. Revenue in 1HFY2021 rose 42.4% to $343.8 million from 1HFY2020 as Raffles Medical was one of the leading companies contracted by the government to provide Covid-19 related services. These included operating various vaccination centres and providing swabbing services.
Raffles Medical plans to pay a full-year dividend of at least 2.5 cents upon the completion of the current financial year.
Besides running hospitals and clinics in Singapore, Raffles Medical is present in China too. It recently opened the newly-completed Raffles Hospital Shanghai, which has a capacity of 400 beds. With the pandemic in China under control, Raffles Medical is seeing business starting to “return to normal”, with patient loads improving.
In view of the current conditions and barring unforeseen circumstances including the worsening of the Covid-19 situation where it operates, Raffles Medical expects the current FY2021 to be more profitable than FY2020.
Besides Lew, another Raffles Medical director, Oliver Lim, bought shares in recent months earlier this year. On Feb 22, Lim, former CFO of CapitaLand, acquired 60,700 shares for $1.02 each. With that, Lim holds 441,016 shares or 0.024% of the company.
On the same day, Raffles Medical’s founder and executive chairman Dr Loo Choon Yong snapped up 1.5 million shares at $1.0227 each, bringing his total stake to around 976.9 million shares or 52.393%.
Expanding its beauty business
Toh Soon Huat, a substantial shareholder of Accrelist, saw an increase in his stakeholdings once again. In a July 27 filing, the company reported Toh had acquired 99,900 shares for $6,193.80 in total. This works out to an average of 6.2 cents each. Toh holds his shares both directly and via a nominee account at Phillip Securities. With the most recent acquisitions, his total interest in Accrelist increased to 22.34 million shares or 8.01% from 7.97% previously.
Earlier, according to a July 23 filing, he had acquired 74,000 shares for around $4.3 million or 5.8 cents each and sold 20,000 shares for $1,420.00 or 7.1 cents each. Prior to this transaction, Toh on June 9 also acquired 1.37 million shares for $62,403.50 or nearly 4.6 cents each.
Accrelist, led by executive chairman and managing director Terence Tea, holds a controlling stake in Jubilee Industries, an electronics manufacturer. Accrelist, on its own, is driving an expansion in the aesthetics business with a growing chain of clinics.
On July 21, Accrelist announced the opening of its first city-centre clinic in the Raffles City Shopping Centre. Given its higher premium positioning and visibility, the Raffles City clinic complements Accrelist’s six existing Singapore clinics situated in the heartland areas and come under the A.M Aesthetics brand name. Accrelist also operates three other clinics in Malaysia — two in KL and one in Penang.
“Despite the challenges of Covid-19, demand has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, adding to our confidence that the medical aesthetics segment has significant long-term growth potential,” says Tea.
In FY2021 ended March, A.M Aesthetics generated revenue of $6.3 million, up 26% from $5.0 million a year ago. Accrelist, as a whole, reported losses of $1.18 million in FY2021, a significant improvement from losses of $12.9 million incurred in FY2020.
