Selecting an aged care provider is one of the most crucial decisions of most people’s lives, considering the consequences of getting it wrong.

This challenge prompted industry veteran Lauren Todorovic to create a technology company that gives the elderly a voice – building a market-dominating and profitable business in the process.

In most cases, the sensitive and critical decisions around finding aged care are made by family members following the sudden health deterioration of a loved one. With Australian hospitals only giving 7-10 days’ notice to move patients along, this puts everyone under great stress. And that’s if you are lucky enough to have family helping with this process.

The scope of this problem is sizable and growing, with over 200,000 Australians living in aged care homes as of June 2021 and the number of over-85-year-olds set to triple in the next four decades. The care home provider market itself is highly fragmented leading to poor transparency, consistency and advocacy for consumers, as flagged by the 2021 Royal Commission. Residents are often at the mercy of their carer and completely defenceless.

Enter CarePage, the Australian technology business giving the elderly a voice and peace of mind when it comes to finding and receiving aged care.

Reach Markets will soon be opening a wholesale capital raise for CarePage. The proven and profitable business has used a private-equity-style approach to build a strong moat in the aged care matching market, featuring the #1 and #2 search websites. It is now looking to capitalise on this position, forecasting EBITDA to grow from $0.7 million in FY23 to $9.5 million in FY26.

Click here to request the wholesale investment offer docs or click here to attend a webcast we are running with Lauren Todorovic, the Founder and Managing Director of CarePage at 12pm (AEDT) on this coming Tuesday, 17th of October 2023. 

A careful buy-and-build approach towards market dominance

CarePage’s Founder and CEO Lauren Todorovic spent 15 years in senior healthcare positions where she experienced the challenges faced by the elderly first hand. In 2015, she found that the best way to drive change was to build a company that helps people with this process. She hasn’t looked back since. 

Over the years, CarePage has been using a private equity style buy-and-build strategy with the goal to own the entire value chain in the large but underserved aged care matching market. 

First, Ms Todorovic and her team created or acquired what are now the #1 and #2 ranked aged care search websites, and expanded their media profile to reach an audience of over 3.6 million. These are now expected to yield 10,000 highly qualified consumer leads per month in the next year. 

But it is CarePage’s latest acquisition of ‘lead conversion engine’ MyCarePath which completes the puzzle, giving the company access to placement agreements with providers representing over 40% of aged care beds in Australia.

Source: CarePage

Click here to request offer docs or click here to attend a webcast with Lauren Todorovic, Founder and Managing Director of CarePage at 12pm (AEDT) Tuesday, 17th of October. 

Making sure that consumer advocacy does not end at the door of the care home, the CarePage team have also built a SaaS solution that helps aged care providers monitor the consumer and employee experience in their homes and fulfil their regulatory requirements. The product already covers over 51,000 aged care beds, across 567 homes, which makes up 27% of the aged care market.

Now that it owns the entire value chain – from initial search to placement – CarePage is in the enviable position to do good and do well i.e. running a successful business while helping the elderly. 

FY23 delivered $6.3 million revenue and $0.7 million EBITDA, but their latest acquisition is expected to bring this to $17.7 million revenue and $9.5 million EBITDA within three years. 

This does not include a number of additional growth avenues that revolve around monetising their position, such as legal, financial, property and medical services or the expansion to even larger markets like retirement living and disability services.

One of Australia’s biggest sectors

The federal government funds all aspects of the aged care sector. This amounted to $27 billion during 2018-19, and $32 billion was budgeted from 2023-24. This was subsequently boosted to $36 billion due to the government’s endeavours in bridging the gap in services and public scrutiny. 

By 2030–31, aged care is projected to account for 5.0% of all Australian Government expenditure compared to 4.2% in 2018–19. 

It is projected that the number of Australians aged 85 years and over will increase from 515,700 in 2018–19 (2.0% of the Australian population) to more than 1.5 million by 2058 (3.7% of the population).

CarePage’s journey of innovation

CarePage offers Software as a Service (SAAS) products for compliance and feedback purposes that generates invaluable data for providers to improve their offerings.

2015 saw the launch of CarePage’s directory, a service that was first in the market to introduce consumer rating and reviews of aged care services in a ‘TripAdvisor’ style. This remains an important part of their business and is not a service that the government can provide.

2018 was the pilot launch of CarePage’s customer experience software and measurement tools with a leading residential aged care provider. The pilot was a success, and the company launched the 360 degree CX and EX software to market. It was just the next year in 2019 that CarePage completed the first full rollout with an enterprise size client, which was a significant turning point for the SAAS business.

The company recognised the strategic importance of having a ‘one stop shop’ offering in this industry and began extensively evaluating acquisition opportunities that would pave the way for an aggressive entry in the care matching and directory markets. This review resulted in the acquisition of both DPS and ACOL, the number one and two care finder directories, respectively. Both acquisitions heavily contributed to group revenue growth and delivered significant additional levels of traffic and lead generation for CarePage’s news integrated marketplace.

Source: CarePage

A key concept to understand about CarePage is that all the different divisions of the business feed into each other, and each interaction that takes place is an opportunity to upsell a different part of the business. Software sales lead to more providers in the directory and vice versa.

Click here to request offer docs or click here to attend a webcast with Lauren Todorovic, Founder and Managing Director of CarePage at 12pm (AEDT) Tuesday, 17th of October. 

Key growth catalysts

A range of growth opportunities exist for CarePage when the full reach of their integrated model is quantified. They are operating in an industry that is desperate for innovative technological solutions that come with a high quality service, and can be implemented across legal, financial services, transport, medical services, allied health, retirement and living disability services and equipment. 

With the recent Government mandate for aged care providers to collect Customer Experience (CX) and Quality of Life (QoL) data, CarePage’s software business is experiencing fast growth. Providers in the industry are both strongly compelled and increasingly willing to take up the service.

Excitingly, there is the MyCarePath acquisition, which may drastically reduce CarePage’s time to achieve significant market penetration. CarePage’s ability to generate potential customers (leads) is already robust, and adding MyCarePath’s network of providers means that CarePage may be able to immediately start placing leads with providers and collecting referral fees.

MyCarePath delivers 72,720 aged care beds (40% of the market), 808 aged care homes (29% of the market) and 61 home care providers (7% of the market). MyCarePath also has an excellent reputation in the aged care market for quality service, and has extensive experience building a national call centre and placement agency.

The MyCarePath acquisition bolsters CarePage’s continued market penetration with the addition of aged care directories that receive over 2.5 million unique visitors annually and consistently rank in the first and second spot during Google searches. Notably, all this traffic is organic – there is no ad spend. Existing call centres are being used to qualify leads and ensure they are ready to purchase aged care services.

We are completing a raise for $4 million via exposure to a convertible note or equity. We expect the offer to open next week and that there to be significant demand for this offer, so click here to be on the shortlist to receive offer docs. 

You can also join our live investor briefing with Lauren Todorovic, Founder and Managing Director of CarePage at 12pm (AEDT) Tuesday, 17th of October. Click here to book your spot.

Reach Markets have been engaged by Aged Care Report Card Pty Ltd “CarePage” including to manage this offer and may receive fees for its services.