QIC and Sunsuper chase benefits from NZ’s greying population
QIC and Sunsuper have teamed up to buy New Zealand Evolution Healthcare as it looks to benefit from an ageing population and public health constraints.
Retirement costs have continued to increase:(Image Unsplash)
There was no price disclosure but media reports suggest Evolution was on the block for between $700 million and $800 million.
It’s the second largest corporate hospital platform in New Zealand with a decentralised network of 10 comprehensive and day hospitals in addition to a portfolio of ancillary healthcare facilities in New Zealand and one private hospital in Australia.
QIC said the company also provided elective surgery and was supported by a large surgeon cohort with over 300 surgeons performing more than 57,000 procedures across the portfolio in 2021.
QIC said it would leverage its Australian healthcare sector experience through its investment in Nexus Hospitals to assist Evolution to continue to deliver high quality healthcare to New Zealanders and also deliver on significant organic expansion opportunities to meet the strong forecast growth in elective surgery volumes.
QIC’s head of global infrastructure Ross Israel said Evolution was a platform with an experienced management team that had a strong potential for future growth and expansion.
“This investment is wholly aligned with our sector centric, thematic-based infrastructure investment strategy. It leverages one of our key megatrends, an aging population, and the secular tailwinds of increased chronic illness and growing healthcare needs arising from public health constraints,” Israel said.
“We look forward to working with the Evolution chief executive Sue Channon and her high calibre team to grow the business into the future.”
Sunsuper head of private markets Michael Weaver it was the fund’s first investment into the healthcare sub-sector with Evolution representing a strong platform to leverage the sector thematics around aging demographics and technology and medical innovation.”
QIC has committed over $4 billion globally in 2021 in key thematics relating to decarbonisation, decentralisation and healthcare. It has also executed the successful final close of the second fundraise for QGIF which achieved its hard cap of $1 billion in October 2021 after a seven-month fundraise period.
The Evolution transaction expands QIC’s global infrastructure footprint to 22 assets in six countries across the transport, energy and utilities and social/PPP sectors. It further diversifies QGIF’s portfolio to 12 assets, across 4 countries and with multiple exposures in each of our three core sectors.
