Corporate battles of Q&M Dental Group
Lately, I went for wisdom tooth extractions and is in the midst of recovering from the operation. Like many people, I have deep fear of visiting the dentist. So you can imagine how traumatizing the whole experience it was for me. Incidentally, a member of SG Wealth Builder requested me to do a coverage of Q&M Dental Group. Although I do not feel like reliving the horror, I found out this counter could be an interesting stock.
Business profile
More than 20 years ago, founder of Q&M Dental Group, Dr Ng Chin Siau, was rejected a place in National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Medicine. Eventually, he was enrolled into NUS’ Faculty of Dentistry instead. But the rejection turned out to be a blessing in disguise as Dr Ng went on to found one of the largest private dental clinic networks in Singapore.
As a private dental clinic operator that caters to the mass market, Q&M Dental faces stiff competition from big boys like Raffles Medical, polyclinics and various smaller players. In addition, Singapore is a small market that is not big enough for many listed companies to develop any sort of sustainable growth. Under such circumstances, Q&M has no choice but to embark on both organic and inorganic expansions to enhance its investment moat.
From a single dental clinic in Bukit Batok in 1996, Dr Ng had certainly grown Q&M Dental to be a force to be reckoned among the dental fraternity. As at 30 September 2017, the Group has a total of 72 dental outlets, 4 medical outlets and 1 aesthetic centre in operations. He had also ventured overseas, with a total of 13 dental outlets in Malaysia and 1 dental outlet in People’s Republic of China.
The aggressive expansion came at a price though. The Group took on quite a substantially large amount of debts, with current liabilities of $90 million and non-current liabilities of $11 million. With current assets of only $58 million, Q&M Dental may have overstretched itself. [This is a premium article. The rest of the content is blocked and can be accessible by SG Wealth Builder Members only. To read the full content, please sign up as member.]
You can sign up as member of SG Wealth Builder. In addition, new members signing up now will receive a bonus investment report (16 pages) on Singapore stocks! The membership benefits include:
1) Access to the latest premium articles of SG Wealth Builder
2) Email notifications of latest blog articles
3) Access to Wealth Forum for investment ideas and discussion
4) Free bonus investment report
5) Request for coverage on stocks, insurance and other personal financial topics
6) Comment in articles and Wealth Forum
7) Future network opportunities
Note: After payment is made, you will be prompted with registration form to create your userid and personal password.
[wlm_paypalps_btn name=”SG Wealth Builder (Monthly Recurring)” sku=”0E2C0C62C0″ btn=”pp_pay:l”]
Magically yours,
SG Wealth Builder
