With 110 outlets in Singapore and dozens more in Malaysia and China, Ng believes that his company is probably the largest of its kind in Asia. However, Ng is eager to expand Q&M into something even bigger. Even before he completes the planned acquisition of a dental chain in Thailand, the company announced plans to acquire a smaller local rival. In an interview with The Edge Singapore, Ng says Australia is also in his sights.
Investors who were not up to date with the company’s financials and share price might be forgiven for doubting Ng’s growth ambitions. For the better part of 2022 to 2025, the company’s earnings hovered between $10 million and $13.1 million, a significant drop from the record $39.4 million in FY2021, when Q&M and its related entities enjoyed a big earnings boost from pandemic-related swabbing and testing services.
However, with Covid-19 an increasingly distant memory, the company had to make do with normalised earnings and deal with a couple of issues involving key management figures of its subsidiaries, the separately-listed Aoxin Q&M Dental Group and Acumen Diagnostics, which were almost equally held by Q&M itself and Aoxin. Dr Shao Yongxin, founder and CEO at Aoxin, was suspended on July 31, 2025, after he was alleged to have obtained a significant amount of money via improper loans and bogus share deals.
Meanwhile, Dr Ong Siew Hua, founder of Acumen, was preparing for a boardroom fight with Q&M after the business was undermined when its licence to provide laboratory services expired. With impairments made and a settlement reached last March, Ng is no longer distracted by the issues and can focus on renewing his growth ambitions.
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However, damage had already been done to Q&M’s once-high-flying share price, which tested the patience of shareholders, including Ng’s. Ng told The Edge Singapore that he was tempted to join the wave of delistings on the Singapore Exchange, given that Q&M’s shares were trading in a depressed range of 20 cents to 30 cents for much of 2023 and 2025. In contrast, when earnings peaked at $39.4 million in FY2021, its share price reached a record of 71 cents in August 2021. “There were at least three offers on the table for me to delist the company,” says Ng.
Despite the depressed valuation, the company’s free cash flow remains strong at around $20 million per annum, and it has maintained its dividend payout ratio at around 70% of earnings. “As a result, investors have labelled our counter a dividend stock with no excitement,” rues Ng.
However, delisting the company would be costly. Quan Min Holdings, the entity used by Ng to hold his Q&M shares, has an interest in just over half of the total share base. Ng would need to borrow heavily to fund the privatisation. His wife, Foo Siew Jiuan, who is the company’s general manager, Dr Raymond Ang, Q&M’s chief operating officer, and other linked shareholders rejected the idea, deeming it too risky.
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“Only my sister supported the delisting, as she understood that the privatisation was a good deal for us. She saw through the numbers,” says Ng, referring to Melanie Ng Sook Hwa, the company’s chief financial officer.
In the face of objections, Ng decided to give the company’s numbers another look and figured that, with the projected financial performance, cash flow and overall business operations across the region, he had a good chance to leverage on Q&M’s status as a listed company to keep growing in a meaningful way. “I look at the entire Asia region, and I think that I am the largest dental group in terms of size. Nobody is a predator like us and nobody else can be a strong buyer to acquire other dental businesses out there,” claims Ng.
Ng: Only my sister supported me [for the delisting], as she understood that the privatisation was a good deal. She saw through the numbers.
In its latest FY2025 results ended Dec 31, 2025, Q&M’s revenue grew by 9% y-o-y to $197.2 million as its core dental business generated more business. However, earnings were down 35% y-o-y to $9.3 million, as it booked $4.6 million in one-offs, mainly from losses from the deemed disposal of Aoxin, which was reclassified from an equity-accounted associate to a subsidiary. It also wrote off some plants and equipment when it relocated its head office in October.
Despite the FY2025 slip-up, Q&M’s share price shot up by more than 87% from 28 cents to 52 cents over the past year, as more investors began to appreciate that Q&M, having dealt with its troubled subsidiaries, is now well poised to capture new growth ahead.
Regional acquirer
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To hear Ng say it, many are bullish about Ng’s growth story. Last July, the company appointed the three local banks as co-lead managers for a multicurrency debt issuance programme. According to Ng, his bankers were very quick to line up a few enthusiastic investors. From just $100 million he had planned, Ng claims $600 million had been lined up.
Despite feeling “shocked” by the demand, Ng quickly turned that to his advantage. He retorted that he did not need that much money and that he was “not comfortable” with the 4.35% interest rate. Upon completion of book running, the rate has been lowered to 3.95% for $130 million.
Of the $130 million raised, $70 million was used to retire earlier loans, while the remaining $60 million is sitting in a bank, generating interest income. This war chest has stoked Ng’s ambition to take the next step. “I realise that our dental platform can be used to be the only predator and acquirer in Asia,” he says.
Ng moved quickly. Last October, he announced plans to acquire an unnamed dental group in Thailand that operates more than 30 clinics, mainly in Bangkok. The clinics provide a comprehensive range of dental services, including general dentistry, orthodontics, prosthodontics, endodontics, cosmetic dentistry and implantology.
As indicated in the non-binding memorandum of understanding, in addition to the profit guarantee from FY2026 to FY2030, the target must achieve a net income of at least THB285 million ($11.5 million) from FY2031 to FY2033. Ng says Q&M is now doing further due diligence on the deal and ironing out the details. No expected deal completion date has been set for now.
Opportunities Down Under
Apart from Thailand, Ng is especially interested in a bigger market — Australia. He points out that there are just 8,000 dental clinics in Australia, operated by around 20,000 dentists. In contrast, there are 2,700 dentists here in Singapore and around 1,000 clinics.
“There is quite a big difference in the numbers compared,” says Ng.
From his perspective, given that dental treatment is one of the important welfare benefits in Australia and is well supported by the government and insurance, Australians are used to paying higher fees than Singaporeans.
“Therefore, this becomes a good chance for me to tap into Australia and start earning Aussie dollars, which have been depreciating against the Singapore dollar until now,” says Ng. The Australian dollar has been depreciating against the Singapore dollar since 2011, from more than $1.30 then to as low as 81 cents in April last year, before rising to around 90 cents now.
If Q&M is to expand Down Under, Ng says his long-term ambition is to own 1,000 of the 8,000 clinics. However, he is hesitant to reveal more on how he will go about doing this, other than to promise the necessary announcements once there are material developments.
Home game
Within Singapore, Ng believes that even if other smaller dental players were to list on the stock exchange, investors’ interest and focus will still be on Q&M. “They will start comparing with the rest of the players out there and realise that I am the largest in the region,” he claims.
Ng has seen increased investor interest recently. Most notably, back in August 2025, Lion Global Investors paid 45 cents per share, or $9 million, for 20 million shares. From the March 2 closing price of 52 cents, OCBC’s fund management unit, which has been a very active investor in local small and mid caps, is already sitting on a paper gain of $1.4 million.
Ng says he is focused on increasing the value for all his shareholders and he is aiming to increase the company’s bottom line “in the shortest possible” time.
Ng’s growth plan is multi-pronged. On March 4, the company announced a non-binding MOU to acquire a smaller local dental group. This unnamed target will provide a $35 million profit guarantee over five years. Ng’s goal is to increase his current clinic count in Singapore from 110 to 300.
Ng says that many dentists here operate as sole proprietors. Many of them are nearing retirement. If they do not sell their clinics, the value they can fetch from closing the business is largely the value of the space where the clinics operate, rather than significant goodwill tacked to the business.
Ng, who is 58 this year, claims he can offer better value to these retiring dentists and, with his in-house training capabilities, quickly place trained dentists in the acquired clinics, generating income without interruption.
Besides buying clinics from retiring dentists and growing by hiring and training his own dentists, Ng has also been expanding the company by seeking owner-dentists who are happy to be part of a larger company. The dentists are paid using a combination of cash upfront and a larger value in Q&M shares. In return, they are to sign long service agreements of between 10 and 15 years. The shares they hold are subject to a lock-up period that ties their value to the company’s share price performance, thereby aligning their interests with the company’s. Today, around 50 of these Q&M dentists are on such arrangements.
He plans to deploy the same formula as he expands into Thailand. “That means 15 years of service agreement and 15 years of share moratorium. These are my principles before I conduct any acquisitions,” says Ng.
As such, he prefers to use “merger” instead of “mergers and acquisitions” when describing his growth philosophy, as he feels “merger” is the better reflection that the acquired clinics are bonded together as part of the bigger Q&M. “When shares are being used, there is an interest to grow this company together,” adds Ng.
Expansion plans in JS-SEZ
Outside of Singapore, Q&M has 38 clinics in Malaysia, with the majority located in Johor Bahru. Ng admits that operations across the Causeway have not been doing very well over the past decade, as the weakening ringgit has resulted in unfavourable translation into the reporting currency, the Singapore dollar.
Nonetheless, Q&M remains focused on its presence in Malaysia. With the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) and the upcoming completion of the Rail Transit System, the flow of cross-border business and people will pick up and Ng intends to shift the majority of its clinics to the southern part of Johor to capture growth opportunities.
Instead of opening more clinics, Ng’s plan for Malaysia is to increase the intensity of care. He plans to beef up overall capacity by deploying more dentists at each clinic to serve a larger patient load, with just a marginal increase in operating costs. From 56 dentists now, he aims to increase this number to 100 by the end of this year.
Insurance; AI
As a key private-sector healthcare player, Q&M is a natural stakeholder in the increasingly complex medical insurance ecosystem, which has come under greater scrutiny of late. According to Ng, revenue contributions from customers’ insurance dental benefits are rising over the years, from just under 4% to about 12% of Q&M’s current revenue.
“However, the rising insurance claims also caught us by surprise because we did not know that the numbers could rise so fast,” says Ng. The volume has reached a point where the company needs to maintain an admin team of four or five people whose key task is to screen claims and detect fraudulent transactions.
To Ng, the rising insurance claims for Q&M are mainly due to the insurance company’s desire to switch to Q&M, as they prefer to deal with larger groups rather than smaller practices. “We are very institutionalised, given that our protocol, guidelines and internal measures are here to stay and we will improve our system efficiency from time to time.”
Q&M is also trying to grow its business on another front. Ng shares that EM2AI, an associate of Q&M, has been on track in terms of revenue contribution to the dental group. However, he declines to disclose EM2AI’s actual revenue and bottom line during the interview.
EM2AI focuses on developing AI-powered solutions and has rolled out a cloud-based integrated dental management system that efficiently facilitates patient relationship management and operational processes in the clinic.
In FY2024, EM2AI successfully deployed its AI detection module across Q&M’s dental clinics in Singapore and Malaysia and developed an AI solution that integrates with intra-oral cameras.
“The cost of this development is over and now we are just incurring maintenance costs. Therefore, it could be a very profitable business in the future, as long as the adoption rate continues to go up. For now, I will need to take time to educate my dentist on this usage and make sure that my customer accepts this new technology,” says Ng.
