16 July 2010 – acquisitions and placing
Three specialist nursing and healthcare staffing businesses are being acquired. This is a further string to the company’s bow and can be operated from its existing call centre operations. Although there has been some concern shown that this may stunt the growth of the international business, the company does not believe that this will be the case. A placing at 150p per share has been completed, bringing in £11m before expenses. This was necessary to finance the deals and although it may be disappointing that the placing was set at a relatively low level compared to where the shares have traded in the recent past, the funds were required to finance what look to be very attractive deals. We rank the shares as a BUY at the current level.