Pro Medicus CEO confident on competitors as dizzyingly expensive share price keeps rising
It is one of the great Aussie success stories, so why has no rival managed to disrupt Pro Medicus?
With a market cap that has increased almost 150-fold in the last ten years, Pro Medicus ranks as one of the most extraordinary stocks on the ASX — and one of the most expensive.
So why, in an efficient market, have competitors not been able to make a dent in Pro Medicus' market dominance? “Someone asked me, ‘you’ve been in the market for 15 years with this technology, has anyone come to the point you were [at] 15 years ago?’ And the answer is ‘no’,” CEO Sam Hupert said at the Australian Shareholders Association (ASA) Conference in Melbourne on Monday. “How is that possible? Because we developed the technology completely in-house.”
In allowing health clinics to effectively ‘stream’ patients’ scans in less than a second for analysis, the medical imaging software company has solved one of radiography’s key problems and made early investors an absolute fortune in the process.
It has also priced the technology company at 132 times forward earnings, making some investors nervous about whether it can continue to meet the market's increasingly heady expectations. Pro Medicus' share price has almost doubled over the last 12 months alone to surpass $118 on Monday. Over the same period, the benchmark ASX 200 is up 8.2%.
