Stock price when the opinion was issued
Just announced they will be splitting into 2 companies. Made a fair number of missteps over the past 1-3 years. Bought a respiratory type of company, integrated it, and then decided to spin it out. He is not sure why they went this route. It was already a small company to begin with, and now you have 2 companies below $100 million market cap. Usually you want a company above that level, because that’s when fund managers can buy the stock and analysts start to cover it. Doesn't feel there was a big "value add" for splitting these 2 out. Wait for a quarter or 2 to see what the results look like. He is not a big fan of either company.
This was making a number of acquisitions. One of the biggest was Sleep Management. About a year ago they announced they were going to spin the business off into 2 different segments, one company being Sleep Management, and the other would be the rest of their companies. Viamed will be the old Sleep Management and the rest will be under Apparo Home Care. Sleep Management appears to be growing the fastest with about 20% annual growth. This is trading at a fairly cheap multiple of their cash flow and earnings.
This had a strong run through 2014-2015. When you are doing growth by acquisition, you have to be able to execute on them. It pulled back down significantly. It is difficult in this type of environment. When the market is doing really well, there is a lack of opportunity for Canadian investors to go into other places. With energy doing so poorly, a lot of growth by acquisition stories were favoured. Chart shows a big correction that has taken place followed by a little bit of a bounce. He would wait for it to show a little bit more strength before stepping in.