Leederville-based startup InteliCare had a positive start to trading on the ASX today, with its shares closing at 31.5 cents each, more than 50 per cent above their issue price.
Leederville-based startup InteliCare had a positive start to trading on the ASX today, with its shares closing at 31.5 cents each, more than 50 per cent above their issue price.
The company, which is the developer of an internet-based system that uses in-home sensors to monitor the elderly, raised $5.5 million from its IPO, issuing 27,500,000 shares at 20 cents apiece.
According to disclosures made to the ASX, Leederville-based ICT consultancy firm Frontline Services holds the largest stake in the company with 22,213,543 shares, or about 31 per cent of all shares.
JP Equity Partners, which served as lead manager for the raise, holds a 1 per cent stake in the company with 1,801,190 shares.
Speaking to Business News, InteliCare founder and chief executive Jason Waller characterised himself as fortunate that his company has been able to make a tangible difference during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The virus and the state’s response to it has placed Mr Waller’s business, InteliCare, on the front lines of caring for some of WA’s most vulnerable, and helped attract investor support.
The business’s value to customers has grown recently as the virus has proved lethal in aged care facilities and among the community’s older population.
InteliCare’s technology offers a way for carers to reduce their contact with elderly subjects while allowing for a high standard of care.
Currently, the business has 250 customers nationwide.
The company’s value didn’t always seem clear to Mr Waller, who told Business News the future was anything but certain as the pandemic struck.
“We were timed to launch our listing and open the books, and we were like a fishing boat headed out into a cyclone,” Mr Waller said.
“For a period there it was hard to get in touch with the brokers. We held off for a couple of weeks before we decided this was a new normal that presented as an opportunity for us.”
Mr Waller said approaching the pandemic as an opportunity has been integral to InteliCare’s ability to pursue an IPO.
He said private investors had recognised value in the business because they often had stories about their own relatives who had struggled with the limitations of life in an aged care facility.
Now, he said the virus’s outsized impact on the elderly population had reinforced the idea among investors that the longer their vulnerable relatives could stay in their own home, the better.
Mr Waller is confident InteliCare’s suite of internet of things-enabled sensors will find a ready market when the company begins publicly trading.
“In general, the aged care industry has been a laggard on technology, and now it’s been foisted upon them,” Mr Waller said.
“We’ve seen a lot more inquires and engagement because of [the pandemic].
“Now, they’re more receptive of technology.”
Funds raised from InteliCare’s IPO will go towards marketing, research and development, as well as a scale-up of the company’s supply chain in anticipation of increased demand.
While Mr Waller said getting the technology on the shelves of major retailers across Australia was a possibility, recent clusters of the virus in aged care homes in NSW, Victoria and Queensland emphasised the urgency of InteliCare’s mission at this moment.
He argued the only safe way to keep the elderly isolated would be to reduce how often carers needed to visit them, and that InteliCare’s technology could help rapidly facilitate that.
“What we’re suggesting is that those who are most vulnerable with health issues can use telehealth to get in contact with their GP, and their GP can use InteliCare to monitor them in their homes,” he said.
“They can have everything they need in terms of that safety net, without having to have that one-on-one contact.”
