Ian McCrae once again has the company he founded back in private hands – but he hasn’t done it without upsetting the apple cart.
After a four-year struggle to impress shareholders, Orion Health Group's founder and biggest shareholder led a consortium to end the struggling healthcare software developer's stint as a public company.
But this wasn’t before the company made the decision to sell off its best-performing division, Rhapsody (software that allows patient records to be shared), leaving it with two loss-making divisions, Population Health and Hospitals. In a complex deal, involving a share buyback, McCrae ending up holding a majority of the shares in the company and gathered together a consortium to buy everyone else out.
The new entity – Grafton Health Holdings - delisted Orion, which disappointed investors since hitting the NZX with great fanfare in 2014. On debut, the stock traded at $6.50 a share, up from its $5.70 offer price.
When it left the NZX its market cap was about $104m compared with more than $1 billion at its peak.
Orion had been profitable in private ownership but sought to accelerate global growth by raising funds from the public while also changing to a subscription model from one-off perpetual licensing.
2018: $110 million