Compumedics Limited (ASX:CMP) CEO, David Burton Discusses the Company’s Latest Developments and Breakthroughs As a background of Compumedics Limited
(ASX:CMP), we’re a global leading supplier of medical products. In particular, we provide patient monitoring for neuro diagnostic and sleep diagnostic purposes. Some of our core products are in hospitals and clinics worldwide. The company was founded in 1987 by myself, after developing the first computerised sleep centre at the Epworth Hospital. In the ensuing years, we won two NASA contracts and the world’s largest NIH, or National Institute of Health sleep study, which was a 14,000 patient home study.
We then listed as the company grew in its revenues and its business. We listed in 2000 on the Australian Stock Exchange. So today, we have some half billion exported equipment around the world, it’s predominantly export. We also have 20,000 installations worldwide, including Mayo, Stanford, Albert Einstein. And these are some of the finest clinical and research centres, along with home monitoring centres, across the world. We employ 130 people and we have 60 in Australia.
The performance of Compumedics in the most recent six months reported to market, demonstrated very strong results, as outlined in our ASX release. In particular, sales increased 11 per cent. This was also highlighted by 23 per cent increase in orders on hand, which demonstrated the strong demand and ongoing demand for Compumedics products.
In the context of profitability, net profitability increased from $0.9 million to $1.9 million, compared to the prior six-month period. So good strong growth in profits as well as sales and also in debt, the overall debt levels of around $2 million, were historical lows. And this was in the face of significant investment in outlook and growth platforms, both step-out and core growth.
Sleep diagnostics was our core business. But in 2002, following the ASX listing, we acquisitioned Neuroscan a world leader in neuro diagnostics, in particular research. So that allowed us to develop an international market. So we have ambulatory monitoring systems with wireless, Wi-Fi, mobile and they range from about $7,000 up to top-end systems. Today our top-end system is a $4 million to $6 million. But typically, our ambulatory monitoring systems and clinical bed systems, range from about $7,000 up to the $30,000.
Then on the Doppler blood flow, which is an ultrasonic Doppler blood flow, we acquisitioned DWL in 2004. And this allowed us to continue the legacy of DWL, as a world leader in transcranial Doppler blood flow products, which today is continuing as a robust solid business. Neuro diagnostics is an important field to us, it’s complimentary to our core sleep business, but it allows us to provide systems for long term monitoring EEG.
And most hospitals in the world have an epilepsy centre. And in Australia for example, we have 75 per cent of the sleep diagnostic and neuro diagnostic market, which means most clinics’ hospitals have equipment with Compumedics. And this is important, because of the growing demand in terms of and awareness, in terms of neurological disorders but also sleep disorders.
An important part of our neuro diagnostic family, as of course measuring brain via the transcranial Doppler, which is effectively a non-invasive ultrasound for the brain. It’s one of the few ways we can measure the increase in intracranial pressure, which evolves from all car accidents’ ICU cases, where there’s been a head injury. And most importantly traumatic brain injury, it’s one of the few ways we can actually measure in an objective manner, traumatic brain injury. So we announced the patent recently, which gives us an automated version of this. And this will see growth for a decade ahead in the transcranial Doppler monitoring of DWL.
Our customers now can see in this decade of the brain, where diagnostics is so important and particularly cognitive factors of the brain, we are the single company that provides that full suite. From the low-end ambulatory monitoring of neurological disorders, right up to the top end $4 million to $6 million systems. This has changed our competitive position in USA.
Later in the year, we’re rolling out our low cost platform, which also changes our position. We’ll be tripling our market access, by way of for the first time now, having competitive middle tier and lower tier products. So there’ll be a lot of changes in Compumedics, over the six to 12 months as we roll these new product platforms, which of course have been developed over five to 10 years. But now have been commercially activated in full earnest.
Next year, we’ll see significant gains in terms of our new low cost product roll out, which is the new platform for our core business. We’ll also see deployment of the new MEG imaging systems, which will be a substantial structural change to the business. Along with that our core sleep business, great strides there. And recently in the press, we started to see some of the traction with our new consumer sleep, but also Cloud deployment of neuro and sleep diagnostics. So a busy year, a good year in terms of growth opportunities and certainly financially, we’ll be focused on the fundamentals. And we’ll keep that performance continuation.
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