The ResMed (ASX: RMD) share price hit a record high of A$16.23 this morning with its primary U.S. listing only a couple of percentage points off a record high after closing at US$113.87 this morning. This performance is all the more impressive in the context of tanking global share markets in the US over the final quarter of 2018 with leading indices off between 15%-20%.
ResMed is a market-leading business in the treatment of sleep apnea and other respiratory-related sleep disorders via its portfolio of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) masks and breathing support apparatuses. It's core market is the U.S. although it also has substantial operations in Europe and the Asia Pacific region, with room to move deeper into high-growth markets such as China over time.
It's also moving into the digital health space via acquisitions of cloud services and software-as-a-service data analytic healthcare businesses that help it build and present data sets that demonstrate to public healthcare bodies (and reimbursers) the cost saving benefits of its preventative treatments.
In fact it's even teamed with Alphabet's (Google's) healthcare arm Verily in order to help it make use of its mountain of data that includes 1 billion nights of sleep data across 6 million cloud-connected devices.
The company remains founder family led which is important as this helps it maintain a focus of investment for long-term growth, although the stock is on the expensive side at 31x forecast earnings on an FX-adjusted basis. However, forecasts should be taken with a pinch of salt given its recent acquisition spree.
The company will provide a second-quarter trading update in early February 2019.
