Rays of light in the listed aged-care sector

Radius Residential Care chief executive Andrew Peskett. Source: Radius.

Forsyth Barr analyst Aaron Ibbotson reckons the aged care sector isn’t doing as badly as some people – and the share prices – suggest.

Apart from Ryman Healthcare, whose pricing of its new retirement units has dropped about 5% over the past year, the prices of retirement units have been stable, Ibbotson reckons – he estimates Summerset’s pricing has dropped about 1% in the last year.

But the wider industry has managed to increase pricing of its care units by 2% year-on-year, which should bode well for Oceania Healthcare which has a large proportion of care suites in its portfolio, he says.

“We are all waiting for the recovery – with a capital R – in the New Zealand housing market,” Ibbotson said in a recent note.