MEDH MedQuist Holdings All-Time High

MedQuist Holdings (Nasdaq: MEDH) is a young stock that was in last week's all-time high list. As the chart illustrates, it has appreciated nicely in the past two months and volume has been increasing. Today the stock continued to show relative strength as it closed green while every group in the S&P 500 fell more than 1%. With all this in mind I thought I would delve into MEDH a little and learn more about the company.



The company is not new and was formerly known as CBaySystems Holdings Ltd which traded on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange. In February the company completed the process of changing its name to MedQuist Holdings, redomiciling from the British Virgin Islands to Delaware, conducting a reverse stock split (4.5:1) and trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol MEDH.

From a business standpoint, MedQuist manages clinical documentation. In other words, they help physicians and hospitals keep track of information about patients digitally. This is an interesting area because many hospitals are making the switch from paper to electronic systems.
What makes MedQuist unique is that they use speech recognition and transcription technology to enable doctors to record their notes without writing or typing. This is faster and potentially more hygenic as the doctor doesn't have to touch anything.

How is business for MEDH? According to their most recent quarterly highlights, it is growing:

• Clinical documentation volume reaches a quarterly high; a 39% increase versus prior year same period
• Adjusted EBITDA increases 94% versus prior year same period to $26.8 million
• Adjusted Net Income per diluted share - adjusted for the IPO and exchange offer up 82% versus prior year same period to $0.31
• Strong free cash flow
• Customers' demand increases offshore volume goal, and volumes edited post speech recognition continue to grow

More from http://www.medquist.com Our solutions convert the physician narrative into a high quality and customized electronic record, and enable hospitals, clinics, and physician practices to improve the quality of clinical data as well as accelerate and automate the documentation process. We believe our solutions improve physician productivity and satisfaction, enhance revenue cycle performance, and facilitate the adoption and use of electronic health records.

• A leading provider of integrated clinical documentation solutions for the U.S. healthcare system
• Serves more than 2,400 hospitals, clinics, and physician practices throughout the United States
• Goals of: Accelerated revenue cycles; Lower operational costs; Increased physician satisfaction; and Enhanced patient care.
• Flexible, scalable solutions to drive each stage of your clinical documentation and coding workflow, including speech recognition, voice input and voice capture, transcription and coding.

How long will a stock be 'hot'? ... that, no one can answer. - Nicolas Darvas

* Update: in January 2012 MedQuist changed its name to M*Modal and the stock symbol changed to MODL (Nasdaq). The company's website has more.

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