Coimbatore, Oct 15 Fortis Healthcare International Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare Ltd (Fortis), will sell its 100 per cent stake in Altai Investments Ltd, the holding company of Quality Healthcare (QH), Hong Kong, to Bupa for $355million.
The decision is part of Fortis’ attempt to focus on its core hospital and diagnostic business in India and with the stake sale, expected to be completed during this month, its Indian operations would account for nearly 95 per cent of the company’s revenue, Fortis said in its filings with the stock exchanges.
Malvinder Singh, Executive Chairman, and Shivinder Singh, Executive Vice-Chairman, Fortis Healthcare, an integrated healthcare service provider, explained in the statement that the divestment aligned the company’s business with its priorities.
They said that Fortis had taken a “strategic decision to intensify our focus on our core hospital and diagnostic business in India’’ with a clear path to profitability.
The divestment would enable the company further strengthen its balance sheet and “substantially improve our net debt equity ratio, creating further room for growth’’.
The company continued to evaluate its portfolio of assets to “ensure the right alignment and strategic fit’’.
During this year, Fortis will add more than 1,000 beds from greenfield projects in India. Apart from Fortis Memorial Research Institute in Gurgaon commissioned early this year, two other projects — in Ludhiana and Chennai (Arcot Road) — would be commissioned in the next few months.
With the Quality Healthcare divestment, the income from India would form nearly 95 per cent of Fortis Healthcare’s total income and with the expansion of capacity and performance improvements, the company expected its India business to “exhibit a robust operating performance’’ in the future, the statement said.
Shares of Fortis Healthcare were up by Rs 6.60 to Rs 111.15 with a trading volume of about 2.65 lakh shares on the NSE.