Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed health group Life Healthcare on Thursday announced its results for the six months ending on March 31 this year. The group operates 66 healthcare facilities in South and Southern Africa and owns the leading independent medical imaging services provider in the UK and Europe, namely the Alliance Medical Group (AMG).

“We have again shown solid operational performance across all markets, maintaining momentum, and making steady progress in executing on our long-term strategy,” affirmed Life Healthcare Group CEO Peter Wharton-Hood. “We remain well-positioned for sustainable growth in 2023 and beyond.”

Over the period under review, the group’s revenues grew 12.9%, to R15.3-billion. Its operating profit increased by 13.5% to R2.7-billion. Both its acute and non-acute healthcare businesses registered “excellent” operational performances.

Year-on-year, the group’s Southern African business increased its revenues by 11.6%. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) grew by 13.5%. Utilisation of its facilities improved, with hospital and paid patient days (PPD) increasing by 12.5%.

“Our operations saw a good increase in underlying activities, whilst improved occupancies resulted in good revenue growth and improved margins,” highlighted Southern Africa CEO Adam Pyle. “Increased activity came off the back of normalising operations after Covid-19, and the successful completion of our network deals. We launched our value-based, integrated care product for renal dialysis in January 2023, to provide more consistent, holistic, and cost-effective care for patients and negotiated our first renal value-based contract with one of South Africa’s leading medical schemes. These results include an additional cost of R40-million related to increased diesel usage as a result of the electricity challenges.”

Again year-on-year, the revenues accrued by the international business rose 15.5% in South African rand terms, and Ebitda grew by 10.8%. Although inflation remained relatively high in Europe, energy costs had started to come down and high interest rates were expected to moderate inflation.

“Our business has delivered solid growth across all the main markets within which we operate,” reported International CEO Mark Chapman. “Revenue in the UK grew by 13.2% year-on-year, driven by the continued demand for PET-CT [positron emission tomography-computed tomography] scanning and also boosted by the opening of two Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs). We have continued expanding our footprint of CDCs. We now have seven CDCs in operation, working in partnership with the [National Health Service] and a healthy pipeline of CDCs in the advanced negotiation phase. In Italy, revenue grew by 9.5% year-on-year and in Ireland, revenue was up 33.7%.”

Life Healthcare has received unsolicited offers to buy AMG. The group was, through its advisers, still talking with these suitors, in nonexclusive terms, to ascertain whether these proposals were viable and suitable and whether selling AMG would be in the interest of all stakeholders. In South and Southern Africa, the group continued to grow and diversify its non-acute healthcare portfolio.

“We are bullish about seeing further volume growth in the remainder of the financial year and we expect to see PPD volumes grow [by about] 10% in Southern Africa for the full year,” stated Wharton-Hood. “We also anticipate scan volume growth of between 6% and 8% in our UK and European diagnostic imaging market. There has been positive progress on the development and approval of disease modification drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease. This is good news for Alzheimer’s patients, and augurs well for our Life Molecular Imaging business.”