SET: Thailand's Healthcare Sector Outperforms Global Benchmark

Thailand has been transforming into the world’s top medical tourism destination. Investment in the Thai healthcare & medical business provides not only promising returns but also opportunities for investors to take part in upgrading healthcare service and improving well-being for Thais and people around the world.

23 companies currently listed on The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET)’s Heath Care Services sector yield higher total return than the benchmark MSCI World Health Care Net Total Return Index (Figure 1).

SET_Healthcare_Fig One

Healthcare & medical business also creates additional values with focus on healthcare for the elderly, preventive medicine, specialized medical services and medical innovations. The number of healthcare service users who are both Thais and foreigners have increasing over the past five years (2014-2018) with an average growth of 5.3 percent and 5.1 percent per year, respectively (Figure 2), as reflected by the sector’s average net profit growth of 8.5 percent a year over the past five years¹ .

Key contributors to healthcare & medical business growth are the shift in the population structure of the Thai society into a fully developed aging society phase, combined with numerous foreign retirees living in Thailand. However, upgrading government hospitals’ services to be on par with privately-owned hospitals’ could pose a threat to the private hospitals’ service user base expansion. The solution is that the healthcare & medical business needs to focus on innovation creation and development to serve a variety of demand as value added to the growing business as a whole.

SET_Healthcare_17May19

[1] Calculated based on same companies submitted financial statements between 2014-2018