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Healthcare Locums hits for six

by Dan Coatsworth

The entire board of recruitment agency Healthcare Locums have celebrated a 135% rise in pre-tax profit for 2007 with a blanket share purchase. All six directors dipped into their own pockets to buy shares in the company, led by chief executive Kate Bleasdale and a £49,838 investment.

Bleasdale is no stranger to investing in Healthcare Locums. She reached 10% of the business last summer, having topped up to 9.8 million shares. A stock issue of 3.3 million shares in March 2008 and 2.5 million shares in November 2007 – as final payment on previous acquisitions – diluted the CEO’s holding, but the latest investment takes her back to 9.57%.

Finance director Diane Jarvis has also been a prolific investor in the company. Last week, she bought 2,185 shares at 91.485p each, taking her stake in Healthcare Locums to 0.043%. In November 2007, Jarvis invested nearly £5,000 in company shares. Four months earlier, she was awarded 19,318 shares as a bonus.

Also, picking up a bigger stake, was chairman Alan Walker, investing £13,800; operations director Carole Hepburn invested £915; and non-exec director Alasdair Liddell stumped up £9,858 for stock. Completing the circle is Mo Dedat, the newly appointed commercial director who bought £2,500 shares at 92.9p each.

Healthcare Locums has held up well on the stock market compared to its staffing sector peers. Michael Page has lost 36% in value and Hays is down 16% in the past six months on economic uncertainty and worries over job losses in the banking sector, but Healthcare this week made a full recovery on price losses in the period.

Stockbroker Daniel Stewart says a new partnership deal in the Middle East will transform the business. It values a contract to provide over 40,000 staff for 20 hospitals being built by Emaar Healthcare at £39.3 million, more than a third of Healthcare Locums’ market cap