EBITDA to cross 4% next year: Apollo Hospitals

On estimation of H2 numbers, Krishnan says, "If you look at our H1 numbers, our revenue was Rs 1,850 crore. So, if you annualise that, we are almost at Rs 3,700 crore and we are expecting our H2 numbers to be better than H1 numbers."

Also read: Add Apollo Hospitals in your portfolio, says PN Vijay

Below is the edited transcript of Krishnan's interview with CNBC-TV18.

Q: Can you break up your expansion plans for us in terms of how many beds Apollo Hospital plans to add by the end of 2013? How much of an incremental bump-up do you think it could give to your margins by the end of 2014 that currently stand at around 17 percent?

A: If you look at our expansion plans now, the immediate focus is in Chennai. We have started a hospital. We have done a soft launch of a hospital in a Chennai suburb called Ayanambakkam and that will be fully commissioned by Q4 of this year. That is a 250 bed hospital. We are planning to start another hospital in Trichy as well. The hospital will have 200 beds. In Q1 of next fiscal, we will be opening an orthopedic and spine specialty center in Bangalore

These are our near-term expansion plans. We are adding a hospital in Nellore next year and there are other hospital plans too.

If you look at the total hospitals over the next three years, we are looking at an addition of almost around 3,000 beds and Rs 1,800 crore is our investment plan. That is a phased expansion plan. We have Mumbai expansion coming up in FY15. So, we are looking at an addition of almost around 500-600 beds in the next six-eight months.

Importantly, if you look at the Chennai cluster, we are also evaluating as to how we can further focus on our hub hosptial in Chennai, which is the main hospital. We are trying to see whether we can add more beds by relocating the outpatient services etc.

Those are at preliminary stages but that would further augment the revenues in the Chennai cluster. You will hear from us about that hopefully over the next quarter or so.

If you look at the margins in the healthcare sector for healthcare services side, there is almost around 24 percent today. We are looking at increasing it over the next 12-18 months by almost around 200 bps as we are able to increase our occupancy in other locations like Hyderabad. Bhubaneswar is doing very well with 190 beds occupancy at 76 percent occupancy, Madurai is doing well with 180 beds occupied. All our other hospitals at Bangalore, Calcutta are doing well. So, on the back of that, we are hoping that we should be able to expand our margins by 200 bps over the next 12-18 months.