JMDC Inc., the Tokyo-listed health-data and teleradiology group, posted revenue of ¥12.6bn for the quarter to the end of June, up 17.5% from a year earlier, and operating profit of ¥1.82bn, also up 17.5%. EBITDA rose 17.4% to ¥2.66bn, holding the margin at 21.1%, level with the same quarter last year. Profit attributable to shareholders climbed 17% to ¥1.13bn.
The core Health Big Data segment, which licenses anonymized insurance-claims and health-checkup data to drugmakers, insurers and health-insurance associations, grew revenue 19.1% to ¥10.96bn, with a segment EBITDA margin of 20.5%. The smaller Telemedicine segment, which matches radiologists with hospitals short of specialists, grew revenue 8.2% to ¥1.65bn but ran a far richer margin, 39.6%.
Management told investors the beat was revenue-led, not cost-driven: spending tracked plan, while demand from industry customers, chiefly pharmaceutical companies, ran ahead of budget, with data-transaction value up 26% year on year. The turnaround centered on JMDC's pharma "medical department" business, which had been weak the previous year; the company said that weakness reflected data-processing capacity and sales-resourcing problems, not any loss of competitiveness, and the business returned to growth faster than expected. Roughly ¥400mn of bookings originally planned for the following quarter were also pulled forward into this one.
The comparison base was not soft, either. A year earlier, JMDC's own EBITDA had grown 37.5% year on year in the same quarter. Beating an already-strong prior year, rather than rebounding off a weak one, is what management points to as evidence of sustained momentum.
The bigger change is in disclosure habits. JMDC has historically declined to forecast the first half because its earnings are weighted to the second half, making six-month numbers hard to call. This time it broke that pattern, guiding to first-half revenue of ¥27.1bn (up 17.4%) and operating profit of ¥4.5bn (up 11.8%), citing improved visibility from the quarter's momentum. The full-year target set on May 8 was left unchanged: ¥60.5bn in revenue, ¥11.5bn in operating profit, and EBITDA guided to grow 13.8% to ¥15bn.
| Metric | Q1 Actual | First-Half Guidance | Full-Year Guidance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ¥12.6bn (+17.5% YoY) | ¥27.1bn (+17.4% YoY) | ¥60.5bn (+19.9% YoY) |
| Operating profit | ¥1.82bn (+17.5% YoY) | ¥4.5bn (+11.8% YoY) | ¥11.5bn (+9.3% YoY) |
| EBITDA | ¥2.66bn, 21.1% margin | ¥6.1bn | ¥15bn (+13.8% YoY) |
Management said the strong quarter raises its confidence in hitting the full-year number, but it is not yet raising it, because most of JMDC's fiscal year still lies ahead.