2024-04-22 16:25:03
This was the most commented IPO on the Casablanca Stock Exchange (Morocco) of the year 2022. With 4.5 billion dirhams (around 415 million euros) in subscriptions, or almost four times the requested amount, the Akdital group, owner of the first network of private clinics in Morocco, carried out the largest fundraising that the stock market has seen in fourteen years.
More than 8,000 carriers of 32 nationalities, individuals and institutions alike, rushed to the action. At the issue price of 300 dirhams, its price has since soared, stabilizing around 740 dirhams. A meteoric rise usually observed in real estate or construction. “Very few companies have managed to achieve such performance”underlines Marwane Najimi, analyst at Sogecapital Bourse.
Akdital’s sensational entry onto the stock market was – and remains – the first listing in Morocco of a health company. Doctor Rochdi Talib, its founder and CEO, detailed his financing needs to investors: opening new clinics, modernizing equipment, diversifying the offer. With its sights set on a turnover that it planned to double, to reach 2.2 billion dirhams in 2023.
It was ultimately “only” 1.9 billion dirhams, but the rate of growth of its revenues (+ 500% in four years) made Akdital, a group created in 2017, the symbol of the growth of private investment in health in Morocco.
An open door to investment funds
Just look at the multiplication in the number of private clinics: less than 100 in 1990, more than 400 today, or nearly 90% of the country’s primary care structures. In total, nearly 15,000 beds – more than a third of the national hospitalization capacity –, the majority of which are in for-profit establishments.
The observation is striking: when the number of beds in public hospitals fell by 1% between 2017 and 2022, that of private clinics increased by 50%. Concerning Akdital, from one clinic in 2017, the group grew to twenty-two health establishments. And plans to open fifteen new ones by the end of 2024.
This unprecedented acceleration owes a lot to “law 131-13”, adopted in 2015. Ironically, it is a historic executive of the Party of Progress and Socialism, Houcine El Ouardi, then Minister of Health (2012- 2017), which carried this text having opened the capital of clinics to private actors, to “make the health system more attractive for investment”. An open door to investment funds.
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