Medical property trust Generation Healthcare is poised to build the new $120 million Casey private hospital in a joint venture with the St John of God Health Care group.
The news comes as Generation Healthcare announced a $52 million equity raising and a move into the aged-care sector.
Generation Healthcare (GHC) has signed a deal with St John of God Health Care (SJGHC) to build the 18,000-square-metre hospital in Berwick in Melbourne's outer south-east, across the road from the Monash University Berwick campus.
The new hospital will have 190 beds, six operating theatres, six birthing suites, a cardiac/vascular catheter laboratory and two endoscopy theatres.
GHC chief executive Miles Wentworth said the new hospital will result in an investment for the fund of about $45 million with SJGHC acting as both tenant and joint landlord.
GHC has recently completed stage one of the Casey project, a $20 million 3500-square-metre specialist centre leased to SJGHC, GenesisCare and MIA Radiology.
The medical REIT has also boosted its $340 million portfolio with three aged-care properties sold by Queensland-based group, RSL Care, which will lease them back on initial 20-year terms. The average purchase yield was 7.65 per cent.
The centres include the 101-bed Baycrest in Hervey Bay, which cost $14.4 million; Tantula Rise, with 120 beds, in Maroochydore, costing $17.9 million; and the Darlington in Banora Point, NSW, which has 90 beds and fetched $13.5 million.
Mr Wentworth said the move into aged care was always part of the strategy.
"It's the first time for the fund but we always said we would invest in aged care depending on the opportunity and the right partner," he said.
"Our arrangement with RSL Care includes a collaboration agreement. They want to double in size in the next five years and expand across the eastern seaboard."
The acquisition will be funded from a $52 million capital raising, offered at $1.50 for each new unit – a 5 per cent discount to the five-day weighted average up to April 24.
Peter Scanlon's Taverner Group will take a $5 million placement as part of a deal struck last June to buy the Spring Hill medical office building in Brisbane.
The remaining $47 million is a non-renounceable accelerated entitlement offer of three new units for 17 existing units. Fully underwritten by Macquarie Capital and Morgans Corporate, the new units will not be entitled to the June 2015 half-year distribution.
