An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Ten­sion is ris­ing be­tween crick­et leg­end Bri­an Lara and Med­corp Ltd fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery that his name was used with­out per­mis­sion in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre. Lara’s le­gal team has for­mal­ly re­quest­ed an­swers af­ter the health­care com­pa­ny re­cent­ly launched a $16.8 mil­lion ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) ref­er­enc­ing the cen­tre.

Sources close to the sit­u­a­tion told the Sun­day Guardian that Lara wants his name re­moved from the can­cer treat­ment cen­tre man­aged by Med­corp. The cen­tre, es­tab­lished in 2007 and named in ho­n­our of Lara fol­low­ing the loss of his moth­er to can­cer, has long been as­so­ci­at­ed with the crick­et leg­end’s lega­cy.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Lara re­vealed he on­ly re­cent­ly be­came aware of the IPO. 

Re­spond­ing cau­tious­ly, he said, “My le­gal team sent a let­ter to the board of di­rec­tors, and that is all I have to say about the mat­ter. I think we just have to wait for an an­swer from them.”

Asked if he wished to have his name re­moved, Lara replied, “No, that is not the case. It’s a sit­u­a­tion where we sent them a let­ter, and they have to re­spond. Un­til then, I pre­fer to have no com­ment. We wait for their re­sponse.”

Deputy Chair­man of Med­corp Dr Di­nesh Mor said he was un­aware of any le­gal cor­re­spon­dence but not­ed that the com­pa­ny’s lawyers and sec­re­tary would han­dle such mat­ters. 

“The sec­re­tary of the com­pa­ny han­dles all the let­ters, and they would be the best per­son to tell you that,” Mor said. 

How­ev­er, Mor added, “There were ru­mours that Lara want­ed his name re­moved from the cen­tre, but I have not seen the proof of the le­gal let­ter.”

Asked fur­ther if Med­corp con­tact­ed Lara on the plans to launch the IPO, Mor said, “Lis­ten to me, I can­not tell you all the de­tails at this time, as it is a con­tentious mat­ter now. So, it will be dif­fi­cult for me to com­ment.”

A se­nior of­fi­cial at St Clair Med­ical, who asked to re­main anony­mous, is ques­tion­ing the tim­ing of the IPO.

A vis­it by Gur­dian Me­dia to Good Health Med­ical Cen­tre along Mar­aval Park­way, St James, yes­ter­day—where the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre is lo­cat­ed—found that the sig­nage was not bear­ing the crick­eter’s name.

How­ev­er, on Med­corp’s web­site, it is still called the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre.

The IPO of­fer­ing 

Med­corp, found­ed on De­cem­ber 31, 1993, by a group of physi­cians as a lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny, orig­i­nal­ly ac­quired Parks Nurs­ing Home—the longest-es­tab­lished pri­vate hos­pi­tal in Trinidad and To­ba­go—now op­er­at­ing as St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre.

Last week, Med­corp launched an IPO of­fer­ing 350,000 or­di­nary shares at $48 each.

Based on Med­corp’s af­ter-tax prof­it of $41.30 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, and with 7,479,977 shares cur­rent­ly is­sued, the com­pa­ny re­port­ed earn­ings per share (EPS) of $5.52, yield­ing a price-to-earn­ings (P/E) ra­tio of 8.69X (times). If ful­ly sub­scribed, the EPS would de­crease to $5.28, and the P/E ra­tio would in­crease to 9.10X.

In­for­ma­tion on Med­corp

In its prospec­tus be­fore Oc­to­ber 1, 2024, Med­corp was the sole share­hold­er of Can­cer Cen­tre of the Caribbean Lim­it­ed and Med­ical X-Ray and Di­ag­nos­tic Clin­ic Lim­it­ed and was a 50 per cent share­hold­er in Caribbean Heart Care—Med­corp Lim­it­ed. 

Med­corp’s cap­i­tal com­prised 7,479,977 or­di­nary shares rep­re­sent­ing $33,409,119 in stat­ed cap­i­tal. On Oc­to­ber 1, 2024, Med­corp Lim­it­ed amal­ga­mat­ed with its whol­ly owned sub­sidiaries and con­tin­ued as one amal­ga­mat­ed com­pa­ny, which is the is­suer of the in­vi­ta­tion.

As a re­sult of the amal­ga­ma­tion, the num­ber of shares in is­sue by Med­corp re­mained the same, and its stat­ed cap­i­tal was re­duced to $7,479,977. Cur­rent­ly, Med­corp is owned by a group of 70 share­hold­ers. 

Of Med­corp’s 70 share­hold­ers, four share­hold­ers are deemed to be ‘con­nect­ed per­sons’ for the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, and such per­sons joint­ly con­trol 65.51 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s is­sued or­di­nary shares.The com­pa­ny’s prin­ci­pal ac­tiv­i­ty is the op­er­a­tion of pri­vate health­care fa­cil­i­ties in T&T. 

Med­corp’s strate­gic net­work en­com­pass­es three cam­pus­es across north­west Trinidad, pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive range of med­ical ser­vices.

Med­corp’s fa­cil­i­ties are St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre (for acute care and spe­cialised fa­cil­i­ties); Good Health Med­ical Cen­tre (for pre­ven­ta­tive and am­bu­la­to­ry care); The Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre (for on­col­o­gy, ra­dio­ther­a­py and chemother­a­py); and Doc­tors Ra­di­ol­o­gy Cen­tre (for di­ag­nos­tic imag­ing). 

The Board of Di­rec­tors are Dr Kong­shiek Achong Low, Di­rec­tor and Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man; Dr Di­nesh Mor, Di­rec­tor and Deputy Chair­man of the Board; and Alyssa Achong Low, Di­rec­tor and Com­pa­ny Sec­re­tary.

Al­so, Di­rec­tor-In­de­pen­dent Di­rec­tor Ger­rard Lee-In­niss; Di­rec­tor-In­de­pen­dent Di­rec­tor Mr John Tang Nian; Di­rec­tor Dr Boris Yufe; Di­rec­tor Richard Yufe; and se­nior of­fi­cers Josanne Rocke-Pan­tin, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er; Re­nard Teelucks­ingh, Nurs­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tor; and Ve­ra Man­gal, Chief Ac­coun­tant.

Rea­son for IPO

In a state­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian re­cent­ly, Med­corp said the com­pa­ny has been the pi­o­neer in health­care de­liv­ery for years and is seek­ing to pro­vide a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­vestors to di­ver­si­fy their port­fo­lios in­to an es­sen­tial sec­tor that has his­tor­i­cal­ly demon­strat­ed re­silience dur­ing eco­nom­ic fluc­tu­a­tions.

“The way we see it, this IPO is sim­ply ex­tend­ing that lead­er­ship in­to the fi­nan­cial mar­kets. We’re of­fer­ing some­thing tru­ly dis­tinc­tive—the chance to own a stake in health­care de­liv­ery with­out the enor­mous cap­i­tal re­quire­ments of build­ing hos­pi­tals or buy­ing ex­pen­sive med­ical equip­ment.

“Re­gard­ing the tim­ing, we’re at an in­flec­tion point in our growth jour­ney. The ex­pan­sion of our new wing at Good­health Med­ical Cen­tre and con­tin­u­ing in­vest­ments in cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy re­quire cap­i­tal, and this IPO pro­vides that while po­si­tion­ing us for con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we will re­main vig­i­lant re­gard­ing po­ten­tial ac­qui­si­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties that align with our strate­gic ob­jec­tives and val­ue-cre­ation cri­te­ria. Be­yond our do­mes­tic ini­tia­tives, we will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op med­ical tourism op­por­tu­ni­ties, strate­gic re­la­tion­ships, and satel­lite op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the Caribbean re­gion. The TTSE has pro­vid­ed us with ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty with­in our ap­proved cap for fu­ture is­suances, giv­ing us flex­i­bil­i­ty as we grow.’

Med­corp ex­plained, “The ini­tial of­fer­ing may be per­ceived as a lim­it­ed num­ber of shares, but our ap­proach is de­lib­er­ate. Our val­u­a­tion re­flects our mar­ket lead­er­ship, unique po­si­tion­ing, and com­pre­hen­sive ser­vice of­fer­ing. We’ve struc­tured our is­suance this way to en­sure strong per­for­mance up­on mar­ket en­try.”

The com­pa­ny fur­ther said it rep­re­sent­ed in­sti­tu­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty and con­ti­nu­ity.

 “We are here for the long term. Our suc­cess doesn’t de­pend on any sin­gle in­di­vid­ual or small group of peo­ple. We’ve es­tab­lished ro­bust man­age­ment struc­tures and a sus­tain­able op­er­a­tional mod­el that will con­tin­ue as a lega­cy for gen­er­a­tions to come. This in­sti­tu­tion­al strength is pre­cise­ly what makes us an at­trac­tive mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“This IPO rep­re­sents a sto­ry of lega­cy, growth, and in­no­va­tion. We refuse to rest on our lau­rels. To ad­vance health­care in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we must ex­pand our ca­pa­bil­i­ties and em­brace new ap­proach­es. This pub­lic of­fer­ing al­lows us to pur­sue ex­cit­ing ini­tia­tives while em­brac­ing the trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty that come with be­ing a pub­lic com­pa­ny,” the health com­pa­ny added.