Northland Capital’s Ralph Garcea Initiates Coverage of Nightingale Informatix

Late last year, the Markham-based healthcare software junior signed a ten-year contract with the Association of Ontario Health Centres to provide its electronic health record and practice management solution, Nightingale On Demand, to health centres across Ontario.

The deal, which covered more than 3,500 health care providers and will generate more than $9-million in revenue over three years, looked to be the kick in the pants the company’s stock, which had been languishing since midway through 2010, needed. While the news did provide a temporary boost, shares of Nightingale have since fallen below the $.30 cent level once again.

Northland Capital Partners analyst Ralph Garcea, however, says Nightingale is a name investors should be paying attention to. Garcea says that while under the radar, the company has has a real opportunity to capture a large share of the growing North American electronic medical records market. In a recent report to clients, Garcea initiated coverage of Nightingale with a “Sector OutPerform” rating and a twelve-month target of $1.

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Formed in 2002, Nightingale has become one of the fastest growing health care IT service and software and electronic medical records companies in North America, with over 5.3 million patient records under management. The EMR market is growing rapidly, but remains in its infancy, with nearly half of all North American doctors still using paper-based records. Those physicians, however, would seem to be part of an increasing minority. Dallas-based research firm Markets and Markets says the The global EMR Market is expected to grow from $4.3-billion in 2009 to nearly $10-billion in 2015, an an estimated compound annual growth rate of of 14.9% during said period.

Garcea says one of Nightingale’s advantages is its foothold in the Canadian market, where it is one of just a few companies with a compliant and registered EMR product, and its first-mover advantage in the US, where it has already cleared the initial hurdles in approval for the freshly adopted Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program there. But Garcia also says the lithe Nightingale has been busy making improvements to its technology, such as making it compatible with the iPad and Android tablets. He says this is part of the company’s overall focus on making its product flexible and easy to use, while ensuring it is among the most economical choices.

Shares of Nightingale Informatix closed today even at $.28 cents.

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