SPH to buy nursing home provider Orange Valley for S$164m

SINGAPORE Press Holdings (SPH) is buying nursing home provider Orange Valley Healthcare for S$164 million as the media and property group seeks to build a third business leg in healthcare.

SPH, which owns The Business Times, is acquiring all of the shares and intellectual property of Orange Valley from private equity firm KV Asia Capital, which acquired the target in April 2014. The deal is free of debt.

The consideration is about 2.3 times Orange Valley's net asset value of S$71 million as at March 31, 2017. This would be the largest non-property acquisition by SPH.

Orange Valley runs five nursing homes in Singapore with more than 900 beds. It also provides a range of ancillary services such as meals and catering, physiotherapy and rehabilitation, and medical supplies and equipment through its wholly owned subsidiaries.

In a statement, SPH said that it expects strong demand for aged care services in the next decade, citing projections that the population of 65-years-and-older Singaporeans will double to 900,000 by 2030.

"As family sizes shrink, there will be a surge of single elderly living alone," SPH said. "This will lead to increasing demand for quality aged care services across the spectrum from home care, community-based care to nursing homes."