Q&M Dental QC7 has reported a loss of $2.2 million for the 4QFY2022 ended Dec 31, 2022, down from the earnings of $3.2 million in the same period the year before.
The earnings decline was primarily due to the lower Covid-19-related revenue.
For the FY2022, earnings fell by 63% y-o-y to $11.3 million due to impairments and a decrease in Covid-19-related revenue.
Loss per share for the 4QFY2022 stood at 0.23 cent while earnings per share (EPS) for the FY2022 stood at 1.20 cents.
Revenue for the 4QFY2022 fell by 10% y-o-y to $47.8 million as revenue in both segments fell. Revenue for dental and medical clinics fell by 1% y-o-y to $43.2 million during the quarter while revenue for medical laboratory and dental equipment & supplies fell by 53% y-o-y to $4.6 million with lesser demand for Covid-19 testing in Singapore.
FY2022 revenue fell by 12% y-o-y to $181.2 million as revenue for medical laboratory and dental equipment & supplies fell by 55% y-o-y to $20.3 million. Revenue for dental and medical clinics stood 0.4% higher y-o-y to $160.9 million as Singapore no longer requires Covid-19 testing and government grants were phased out.
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As at Dec 31, 2022, the group has 107 dental outlets, five medical outlets and one dental college in operations in Singapore, 10 more dental outlets from the year before. It has 44 dental outlets in Malaysia, six more than the year before and one dental outlet in People’s Republic of China, which stood unchanged.
As at Dec 31, 2022, the group has one dental equipment & supplies distribution company and a medical laboratory company in Singapore and one dental equipment & supplies distribution company in Malaysia, unchanged from the year before.
As at Dec 31, 2022, cash and cash equivalents stood at $39.7 million.
A second interim dividend of 0.6 cent per share was declared for the quarter. This brings the total dividend for FY2022 to 1.0 cent per share. The 4QFY2022 dividend will be paid on March 24.
"We are pleased to note that our core healthcare business has continued to demonstrate strong resilience and is well-positioned to grow in the coming year,” says Q&M’s CEO Dr Ng Chin Siau. “We are heartened by the fact that core healthcare’s revenue and ebitda compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the last five years (FY2018 to FY2022) are 9% and 26% respectively. We believe that with the strategies that we are implementing, this will continue to be the case.”
“The group had been very nimble in the Covid-19 period, treating and reacting to threats as opportunities with resulting outstanding results. As we transition to a ‘living with Covid-19’ stance now, long term growth will be driven by improved utilisation of our professional staff, optimising the use of clinics and improving margins,” he adds.
“The key to this approach is continuing training and upgrading of our dentists and professional assistants and use of technologies,” he continues. “The group is very well placed to implement these strategies with the Q&M College of Dentistry, our investments in technologies and an experienced management team, which has led the exponential expansion of our core businesses.”
Looking ahead, Ng says the group will “continue to prioritise in investing in our people as they are the bedrock upon which our long term success lies”.
“We see the future of dentistry lying in combining the dentist's domain expertise and valuable experience with data-centric analysis to generate objective and highly accurate dental healthcare plans that are specifically tailored to individual needs… Whether frontline or behind the scenes, [our people] play a vital role in ensuring that we deliver the best dental healthcare to our patients, every single day,” he says.
In its outlook statement, the group says it will embark on a strategy of intensive organic growth of dental clinics with an expanded team of dentists to support the future growth of its operations in Singapore. The group is also actively exploring opportunities to expand its dental business to Southeast Asian countries at this time.
Shares in Q&M Dental closed flat at 33 cents on March 2.
