Print   

 

Healthcare Locums plc

('Healthcare Locums', 'HCL' or 'the Group')

Annual General Meeting Statement

At today's Annual General Meeting, Alan Walker, Chairman of Healthcare Locums plc, will state the following:

'We are delighted to report an excellent performance for 2008.  We have continued to grow and have further consolidated our market leading position.  

Our strategic objectives for the year have been: to deliver strong organic growth, to maintain or improve our net margin, to increase our market share and to develop our international placement division.  

We increased our revenue by 23% to £166.4m. Our adjusted operating profit increased by an impressive 44% to £21.2m and adjusted basic earnings per share increased by 51% to 13p. Operating profit increased by 81% to £18.6m and basic earnings per share increased by 107% to 11.2p. We achieved a 45% organic growth rate in gross margin in the second half of the year, compared to the second half of 2007.  These results were driven by significant increases in demand in each of our divisions in the UK, and internationally.  

Today your Board recommends paying its shareholders a final dividend of 1.2p per share.

The year saw a considerable amount of change in HCL, in which we streamlined our operations, integrated our systems and processes and reduced our cost base, all of which has led to increased efficiencies throughout the business, and will support further growth.  

In our UK marketplaces, all of our divisions - Doctors, Qualified Social Workers, and Allied Health Professionals - have delivered robust performances.  These performances have been driven by continuing high levels of demand due to an increasing and ageing population, a retiring generation of healthcare professionals, and not enough school leavers entering the caring professions.

Our international permanent placement division has also performed well, having grown from a start-up business in 2005 to a business generating significant gross margin in 2008, and with strong growth forecast for the future. New offices opened in New York, the Middle East and Australia, and we will shortly be increasing our presence in Abu Dhabi. Most excitingly, we see enormous opportunities in North America, where Barack Obama's administration has committed to an initial $634bn increase in healthcare spending. This expansion of the healthcare system requires people and HCL has established a pipeline of appropriately qualified healthcare professionals to meet this need. The global healthcare market is estimated to be worth approximately $30bn, and we are committed to further developing the international division in 2009.

During the period we re-aligned our Board structure. Kate Bleasdale was promoted to the newly created role of Executive Vice Chairman, and Diane Jarvis was promoted to Group Managing Director.  Mo Dedat, who was appointed to the Board as Commercial Director in April 2008, was promoted to Executive Finance Director. We were also delighted to welcome Andy McRae to the Board as Executive Chief Operating Officer. Alasdair Liddell and I will continue as Non-executive Deputy Chairman and Non-executive Chairman respectively. We are confident that this strengthening of our Board will benefit HCL.  

2008 was an outstanding year for HCL. We have a robust and growing business which benefits from high levels of demand and solid income streams.  We have started 2009 with strong trading in all of our divisions and we expect this trend to continue throughout this year and beyond. Current annualised run rate turnover is over £189m (£185m in February) and annualised run rate gross margin is £61m (£56m in February). We look forward with confidence to another successful year in the development and growth of HCL and the delivery of long term returns to shareholders.'

For further information contact:

Kate Bleasdale, Executive Vice Chairman            020 7451 1451

Diane Jarvis, Group Managing Director

Helen Tarbet, PR Manager

Bell Pottinger Corporate & Financial                   020 7861 3232

David Rydell/Emma Kent

Fairfax I.S. PLC

Simon Bennett/Adam Hart/Laura Littley               020 7598 5368

Collins Stewart Europe Ltd                                   020 7523 8353

Adrian Hadden

Daniel Stewart                                                         020 7776 6574

Martin Lampshire

ENDAGMAAMRTMMMMBJL