SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: 1st Group, the Australian digital health group, announced its proposed acquisition of Visionflex Limited, a rapidly growing Australian-based international provider of integrated proprietary telehealth software and diagnostic devices that interface with most existing Medical Record and Medical Practice systems.
Klaus Bartosch, Managing Director for 1st Group said today, “our vision is to simplify access to healthcare for all, and especially for special needs groups for whom this access is even more difficult.
By combining 1st’s digital patient engagement and online appointment booking solutions with Visionflex’s video conferencing software and devices we are creating a world-class solution to deliver end to end clinical telehealth services to almost anyone, almost anywhere.
The demand for telehealth has grown rapidly due to COVID-19 and has now become permanent feature of healthcare systems globally. A report by McKinsey in July indicated that telehealth had grown by a whopping 38x since pre-Covid-19 baselines.”
On completion of the acquisition, 1st Group will also undertake a placement of shares to Adcock Private Equity (the largest current shareholder in Visionflex) to raise $2.5m to provide growth funding for the combined group.
The Company will also launch a non-renounceable entitlement offer to enable shareholders on the register at 31 January 2022 to subscribe for shares at the same price as the Placement.
Visionflex has specifically developed a video conferencing platform targeted at and optimized for the telehealth sector.
Its Clinical Telehealth Video Conferencing platform (‘Vision’) has been specifically designed to deliver the full suite of capabilities that its own Australian designed, built, and manufactured medical devices have been designed to provide.
Visionflex’s software and devices have in many cases been designed to meet the specific functional and software interface requests of each of the State Health Departments and other large organizations such as those in Aged Care and The Royal Flying Doctor Service.
1st Group has entered into a share acquisition agreement with Visionflex pursuant to which it will acquire 100% of the shares of Visionflex from the shareholders in consideration for the issue to those shareholders of 484,020,008 shares in 1st Group.
Following completion of the Acquisition, Visionflex shareholders will hold approximately 57% of 1st Group’s issued shares (inclusive of the shares issued to Adcock Private Equity under the Placement and assuming $0.5m is subscribed under the Rights Issue).
These shareholders (excluding Peter Shandley and Vanilla Milkshake, who are two smallest shareholders in Visionflex) have agreed for the shares issued to them to be escrowed for a period of 12 months from the date of the acquisition, with up to 25% of those shares subject to early release from escrow if unanimously agreed to by 1st Group’s Board.