UEM Edgenta banks on healthcare business, eyes Singapore

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 4 -- Total asset solutions provider, UEM Edgenta Bhd is banking on its healthcare support business to continuously drive growth for revenue and profits in the current financial year ending Dec 31, 2019.

Chief executive officer Datuk Azmir Merican said the company sees tremendous business opportunities in Singapore following the ongoing exercise of re-clustering healthcare facilities by the country's Ministry of Health that resulted into numerous new tenders being issued.

He said the Healthcare Support division had participated in the tenders and successfully won contracts worth over RM500 million.

"The tender process from the restructured hospitals are still not completely done, there will be more tenders and obviously we are going to participate.

"We should be able to win more (contracts)...but overall we are quite aggressively growing our healthcare business," he told press conference on the company's outlook for the second half of this year. 

In the first half of 2019 (1H19), UEM Edgenta's revenue rose 10.4 per cent to RM1.11 billion from the same period last year mainly driven by higher revenue contribution from the healthcare support division.

Revenue from the division increased 19.7 per cent year-on-year, to RM548.3 million due to new projects secured from its regional operations in Singapore and Taiwan.

The division contributed 51 per cent to the company’s total revenue in 1H19 against 46 per cent recorded a year ago.

For a long-term sustainability strategy, Azmir did not rule out the possibility of the company exploring business opportunities in the healthcare industry of Indonesia. 

He indicated that the company would be working with the local players on building businesses in the republic, which he referred to as an ‘attractive market’.

-- BERNAMA