6 months ago
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Medical imaging company Image Plus Consultants Limited, IPCL, was looking towards reaping a return on investment in new machines installed recently.
But according to CEO Kisha Anderson, increased costs and machine downtime have combined to shave IPCL’s gains. Still, IPCL, which trades as Apex Radiology, has shaken off its second-quarter malaise to turn a profit of $26.2 million in the third quarter, September to November 2024. However, its performance lags the prior year when profit topped $61 million in the third quarter.
The CT or computerised tomography machines at all three Apex Radiology locations experienced significant downtime. This, Anderson said, has never happened before, and it resulted in a significant reduction in scan count.
“We will not be able to close that gap for the rest of this financial year until February, but at least we know what caused it,” she said.
The scan count for the nine months ending November 2024 was 40,000, down from 44,000 in the comparative 2023 period.
“Remember, our scan count is what drives the revenue, and for the nine months last year, revenue was about $869 million. For the nine months this year, it was $835 million,” Anderson said.
Additionally, profit over the nine-month horizon was substantially diminished, falling from $164 million in 2023 to less than $42 million in 2024.
The addition of an MRI and a mammography machine in Ocho Rios, St Ann, and another mammography machine at Molynes Road, Kingston, has impacted the company’s costs – including depreciation, amortisation costs associated with loans, and utilities, with the MRI unit using up a lot of electricity. Additionally, Image Plus increased staff last year to operate the additional equipment.
Notwithstanding the hiccups, Anderson said continued diversification of income streams through new diagnostic tests was the right track for the imaging company to keep it viable. As such, IPCL is about to procure a new nuclear medicine unit.
“We’re just completing all our final calculations with our audit committee to do that,” Anderson said.
The new equipment, which is said to have low radiation exposure, will allow Apex Radiology to provide supporting information to physicians in their management of several serious diseases, Anderson said.
“This is one of the important usages and not the only application for the unit,” Anderson added.
Otherwise, IPCL is also looking towards acquisitions for growth, and is currently doing due diligence on two potential targets.
Anderson expects the acquisitions to be finalised in 2025 but declined to comment on the specifics of the transactions, citing market-disclosure rules.
“Our process would be to complete our due diligence, do our analysis and discussions as a board, and determine how we’d go about the financing. Once it looks like it’s a go and we have agreement on a price, then we would go to our regulators and then the market,” Anderson said.
In an update on the IPCL’s proposed six-storey headquarters in New Kingston, Anderson said a joint venture agreement was signed recently with Ripton Real Estate to deliver the new building by year-end.
“The ball is in their court to press for the various applications that are being made for the various approvals. They are still holding to the (agreed) timeline … December 31, 2025,” she said.
While noting that the project seemed doable within the current timeline, Anderson said that in a “worst case” scenario its completion would, perhaps, extend to “the first quarter of the next calendar year (2026)”.
English (US) ·