Al Noor share sale on London Stock Exchange puts value above $1 billion

Al Noor Hospitals Group closed its share sale on the London Stock Exchange with a price of £5.75 each, valuing the company at more than US$1 billion.

Abu Dhabi's biggest health company, which owns three hospitals and nine clinics across the emirate, sold 38.5 million shares as it become the second UAE healthcare group to list on the UK's major bourse, following NMC Health last year.

The sale of that allotment, valued at £221m, allows Al Noor to raise £97m to finance its expansion. The company will be admitted for trading on the London bourse on Wednesday.

"We have seen significant demand from international institutional investors for Al Noor's shares demonstrating both the strength of the company and the opportunity for growth, and [we] expect that demand to underpin healthy trading in the secondary market," said Ian Tyler, Al Noor's chairman.

Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs are acting as joint sponsors and joint global co-ordinators for Al Noor, as well as joint bookrunners alongside HSBC. Rothschild acted as adviser on the deal.

The initial valuation exceeds that of NMC Health, another Abu Dhabi-based health provider that raised £117m when it listed on London last year, and which currently has a market capitalisation of £554.4m.

UAE healthcare companies have been generating a large amount of interest among financial firms recently, with companies reporting outsized profits because of the population's increasing incomes and the prevalence of so-called lifestyle illnesses such as diabetes.

The implementation of mandatory health insurance in Dubai is expected to provide another windfall for the industry.

However, some investors are growing wary of the valuations expected by healthcare firms.

Waha Capital, which recently bought a 97 per cent stake in Anglo-Arabian Healthcare, said many private firms were expecting higher premiums than it was willing to pay.