Topic: How To Invest

Hi Pat: Can you give me your thoughts on CML Healthcare? It pays a nice dividend, but appears to be trailing down over the past two years. Could its recent drop be due to the anticipated conversion to a corporation? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

CML Healthcare Income Fund, $9.99, symbol CLC.UN on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 89.7 million; Market cap: $896.1 million) is one of Canada’s largest health-care diagnostic services providers. CML (or Canadian Medical Laboratories) has two main business segments: Laboratory Services and Imaging Services. Laboratory Services accounts for 45% of CML’s revenue, and performs a wide range of medical tests through its Ontario laboratory network, which includes the company’s central laboratory in Mississauga and 121 specimen-collection centres. The size of CML’s lab network lets it take advantage of economies of scale that are not available to smaller labs. About 85% of the company’s lab revenues are fixed by an agreement with the Ontario Ministry of Health. Imaging Services, which supplies 55% of CML’s revenue, provides medical-imaging services, such as magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), X-ray, ultrasound and mammography. The company provides these services through 109 medical-imaging clinics. Seventy-eight of these clinics are in Ontario, 19 are in B.C., nine are in Alberta, two…