AC Health poised for record year

MANILA, Philippines — AC Health, the Ayala Group’s health care arm, is looking at a good pipeline of potential hospital acquisitions for next year, with the company poised for a banner year this 2025.

“This year I think will be a record year for us. Every month, it’s like a record month. So we just have to use our money wisely,” AC Health president and CEO Paolo Borromeo told The STAR.

Last August, AC Health sealed the sale of a 16-percent minority stake in the company to a Singapore-based impact investor backed by Temasek Trust and Temasek.

The fresh capital will fuel AC Health’s expansion across its core pillars of hospitals, multi-specialty clinics and retail pharmacies through a combination of organic initiatives and targeted acquisitions.

“So we’re putting the money to use. And we have a nice pipeline of acquisition targets. So we’ll first see where that will get us. We’ll see if we need to raise capital in a few years, but nothing imminent right now,” Borromeo said.

Borromeo said the company is opening two new multispecialty clinics before the year ends, with two more to be added in the first quarter of next year.

“We’re getting bigger. We have seven hospitals, and that will be 20 multi-specialty clinics plus 300 corporate clinics,” he said.

In October, AC Health acquired a 60-percent stake in Cebu Velez General Hospital, a 200-bed tertiary hospital in Cebu City.

The acquisition is in line with AC Health’s thrust to expand in the Visayas region.

“We’ll announce a public-private partnership (PPP) soon with Iloilo. PPP for provincial hospitals for their renal facilities. That is a big investment for us too. But any big acquisition will probably happen next year,” Borromeo said.

AC Health earlier said that it is making progress in its unsolicited proposal to put up hemodialysis centers across 13 district hospitals in Iloilo.

Established in 2015 as a wholly owned Ayala subsidiary, AC Health aims to provide Filipinos accessible, affordable and quality health care.

It aims to expand its network to at least 10 hospitals, 300 clinics and 1,150 pharmacies by 2027.

Aside from aggressively expanding its network in the next three years, the company also aims to become a $2-billion health care company by 2035.

To achieve its 2035 ambition, AC Health intends to deepen and expand its presence in key cities through organic and inorganic expansion of its hospital and clinic network.

The company will also expand its retail pharma presence nationwide through a multi-brand retail approach.

In the first nine months, Ayala reported that AC Health slashed significantly its net loss year-on-year to P9 million from P417 million on the back of a strong performance from its provider business, a P103 million gain on the sale of KMD shares and the absence of KMD losses.

Revenues from the provider network’s hospitals and multi-specialty clinics for the period jumped by 69 percent, underpinned by a higher patient census, increased average spend per patient and the expansion of corporate clinic accounts.