The biggest private nursing home group in the State is Paris-listed Orpea Groupe, which entered the market in January 2020 with the €150 million purchase of the TLC Nursing Home portfolio from its founder, Michael Fetherston, owner of the K Club golf resort in Co Kildare.
Over the following 18 months Orpea went on to buy the Brindley Healthcare care home group and the FirstCare collection of nursing homes.
The Irish estate currently spans 24 homes and 2,149 beds, with a further 231 to be added this year from two new developments. The French parent required a bailout last year, led by a state-owned investment firm, in the wake of a massive scandal over residents’ mistreatment in its home market.
The Irish unit, Orpea Residences Ireland, racked up almost €153 million of losses between 2021 and 2022, mainly as it wrote down goodwill associated with peak-of-market acquisitions, its latest accounts show.
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Mowlam Healthcare, which operates 32 facilities, including three managed on a contract basis, covering a total of 2,070 beds, is the second-largest player. Its beds have increased by almost 500 since Dublin-based Cardinal Capital Group acquiring a majority stake in the in late 2020 for more than €50 million.
Co-founder Joe Hanrahan and early investor and former chief executive Pat Shanahan remain shareholders.
Mowlam’s properties are leased from French insurer Axa’s investment management arm and Belgian property trusts Aedifica and Cofinimmo.
CareChoice, which was acquired by French investment firm InfraVia Capital Partners in 2017 for about €70 million, is the third-largest nursing home operator, with almost 1,554 beds spread across 15 homes, including one opened last autumn overlooking the Grand Canal in Dublin.
A holding company over the group, CareChoice Holdings Limited, said in its 2022 accounts, signed off on in September, that it had to rely on its owner for a €19 million cash injection over the previous 16 months as it remained unprofitable. Its combined net losses for 2021 and 2022 totalled €27.3 million.
Virtue, the next largest with 1,300 beds, consisted of the nursing homes in Blackrock and Foxrock in south Dublin and facilities in Co Louth at the time of the Emera investment in late 2020.
Emera subsequently backed Virtue’s deal in March 2021 to buy SignaCare, a nursing home group in the southeast of the country. The underlying properties used by the group are owned by real-estate funds run by Paris-based Euryale Asset Management and Aedifica.
The latest financial report for VIEC Holdings, a parent company of Virtue, shows the business’s pretax loss widened to €2.45 million in 2022 from €1.49 million in 2021, even as turnover more than doubled to €104 million. The increase in revenues came as Virtue added new nursing homes and acquired home care businesses.
French care home operator DomusVi, the fifth main operator, made its entry in January 2021 by acquiring Trinity Care, then a business comprising six nursing homes and a rehabilitee clinic that was majority owned by businesswoman Anne Heraty and her husband Paul Carroll.
DomusVi immediately sold on the properties to Belgian property company Cofinimmo. The entire deal was said to be worth between €150 million and €200 million. The company trades under the Trinity Care brand.
DomusVi currently controls 964 beds across 12 locations. Its Irish unit reported a total of €7.14 million of losses in its first two years in the market.
Rounding off the top 10 operators is Aperee. The chain of 10 homes, spanning 560 beds, was built up by Cork-based investment firm BlackBee Group, initially by acquiring the Ditchley group of homes in Munster.
The regulated BlackBee Investments arm of the group was put into liquidation last May on foot of a High Court petition from the Central Bank, amid concerns about its governance, strategy and financial position. Two of the 10 homes were shut and a third was taken over by the HSE late last year after failing Hiqa inspections, amid concerns over governance and controls.
A former CEO chief executive of Aperee, Paul Kingston, who left in late 2022 following a High Court dispute with BlackBee founder David O’Shea, led a group late last year that agreed to take over the nursing homes operating company. Industry sources say the new team is expected to seek to reopen the closed facilities, in Ballygunner, Co Waterford, and Belgooly in Co Cork, and regain management of the third, in Callan, Co Kilkenny.
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