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Image Plus hunting new location

Published:Friday | February 3, 2023 | 12:28 AM
CEO of Image Plus Consultants Limited, Kisha Anderson.
CEO of Image Plus Consultants Limited, Kisha Anderson.

Image Plus Consultants Limited is on the hunt for a new location, having outgrown its Winchester Road, Kingston complex, which is one of four sites it operates.

“We want to upgrade our nuclear medicine services, but we can’t do that because the space is just not enough. We’re looking for somewhere to relocate, so that it will allow us to offer more modalities of service,” said CEO Kisha Anderson.

The medical services company, which listed on the junior market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange on January 20, is targeting July for the fruition of its other expansion plans.

Image Plus, operators of Apex Radiology, will be outfitting its new Ocho Rios location with a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine and a mammography machine, used to test for breast cancer.

The Molynes Road location will be also outfitted with a new mammography machine.

Anderson says the new machines, to be supplied by Siemens through its Dominican Republic representative, DSS, will cost the company about US$2 million. The investment is in fulfilment of some of the commitments under its IPO.

“Part of the reason for going public was that we wanted opportunities to gain capital to finance what we want to do for our growth,” Anderson said, adding that Image Plus wanted to take advantage of the growth momentum evident in its year-on-year revenue growth.

“In the nine months so far in the current financial year, we’ve done over $800 million, which surpassed the total revenue for the previous financial year,” Anderson said.

The company released the results last week showing a 44 per cent spike in nine-month revenue at November 2022, and a rise in profit from $58 million to $148 million. Third-quarter profit, September-November, improved by $2 million to $23.7 million.

Anderson said with the company’s case count increasing from about 47,000 last financial year and heading towards 54,000, Image Plus needed capital to invest to meet the increased demand.

The company recently relocated its Ocho Rios branch from Pineapple Place to the White River North Commercial Complex, a move that Anderson said will allow space for the MRI and breast-screening services.

Shares in Image Plus Consultants are trading close to the IPO price of $2 per unit, having previously climbed up to $2.25. The company has a market value of $2.5 billion.

Armed with fresh cash from the $495-million IPO, Anderson said that given Jamaica’s ageing population, the company was actively scouting locations in Mandeville and Montego Bay to expand its Jamaican footprint.

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com