International expansion plans for AIM listed healthtech business
Healthtech company Surgical Innovations had a “breakout year” according to chief operating officer Melanie Ross, but the company has its eye on growing even further internationally.
The Leeds company returned pre-tax profits of £280,000 for the year to December 2016, a major improvement on the year before when it returned a loss of £2.13m.
“We’ve also grown 40% in the rest of the world,” said Ross. “That’s down to a new relationship with Mexico. It’s totally overperformed and we took some fantastic tenders. We launched new products, completed a small acquisition, bringing in new products and technology, and we’re starting to really see the benefits of that.”
But the growth is not over yet for Surgical Innovations.
“There are still lots of territories to grow in,” said ambitious Ross. “Asia is a strong point, and we’ve completed regulatory sde in vast majority of the Middle East. We’re confident in our ability to grow in the US, and we will continue to grow there in 2017.
“Changes to regulatory frameworks are definitely barriers to entry for new players, but SI is a longer established business, manufacturing our own instruments.
“We’ve got a platform to go into any territory, then do local regulatory clearance. It’s not a doddle, there’s a lot of hard work going into it but our background and history really so help us in this position.”
“We have been out there looking for opportunities to grow, organically through new product development and we have been very verbose about the fact we’re acquiring, and looking for matches and targets out there.”
A small acquisition was Surgical Innovations dipping its toe in the acquisition pool.
“We will continue to acquire,” said Ross “and next time go bigger. We’re in the very early stages.”
Surgical Innovations isn’t immune to all the political changes going on, particularly Brexit, but, said Ross: “We’re in the same position as everyone at the minute, we just do not know. Short term the indications are good, we are well placed in Mexico, where we sell in dollars.
“But we’re constantly considering, and have options in place that we can move to when the picture becomes more clear.”
So Surgical Innovations is hopeful for further growth and bullish against the wider, more turbulent international picture
Ross said: “We’re looking at 6.5% growth every year until 2025. We’d like to say we will absolutely meet that and we’d like to beat that,. We’d like to push ourselves into new territories, adding new products to our portfolio and acquiring other businesses.”
