Education, health are new 'darlings' of investors

The region's investors are increasingly focusing on the healthcare sector.

Dubai-based private equity firm Foundation Holding aims to enter into the UAE and GCC's pre-kindergarten education sector and is also planning to float its UAE-based and India healthcare firms in the near future, its chief executive officer said.
"Typically, when we want to go public, we target five to seven years [in the] horizon, but in the case of Right Health we are close to three to five years for its IPO. Listing for Right Health will mostly be on the local bourses of UAE," Abhishek Sharma said.
"Local and regionally, healthcare and education have become the darlings of the investor community. In Saudi Arabia, there was only one listed company in 2008 in the entire healthcare space; now, there are about a dozen that shows the power of interest from family offices and institutional investors in these sectors."

Right Health - a primary affordable healthcare provider - has presence across 50 locations in the UAE, having served 800,000 patients.
"We are seeing double growth in volume and revenues this year. The plan is to open eight locations and we are on track for that. Our business plan is to get a million patients in five years, and we have already achieved 800,000, so we are much ahead of target." Foundation Holding is also in the process of closing its first transaction in India in healthcare sector which would be announced in a few weeks' time.
"It is already a pre-IPO story. In terms of investment, it's typical of our sweet spot where we invest in one single company between $15 million and up to $40 million. The Indian firm and Right Health are the two companies that could go public first," Sharma told Khaleej Times during a recent interview.
Foundation Holding was established in November 2017 with Dh2 billion capital and focus on investing in healthcare, education and consumer-focused sectors across the GCC and India. So far, the company invested Dh1 billion in a joint venture with Bloom Holding, and another Dh500 million in Right Health.
"For pre-kindergarten, the investment opportunity is similar between Dh350 million to Dh500 million, which will be used organically to build nurseries as well as to buy nurseries. We have identified partners and acquisition targets and the aim is to officially announce the deals and joint venture details in the fourth quarter."
Sharma revealed that six proposals are currently on the table for acquisitions.
"We have not announced any transactions this year so everything is bottling and there are six things on table. We are pretty confident that 50-60 per cent will close this year and the remaining will spill into next year with combined value of between $100 million to $125 million," he added.
- waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com