Colostomy bags, catheters, dressings and creams for chronic wounds. It is hardly the most glamorous of enterprises, if eminently worthy.
And Convatec has made extremely hard work of its business of supplying medical products to those in need almost from the moment that it floated just more than four years ago. While the group has been a long time in the recovery ward it has been making progress. It may not be the stuff of sensation but its share price is quietly creeping back towards the value it had at listing.
Convatec was created inside the American drugs group Bristol Myers Squibb in 1978 and, after several private-equity backed acquisitions, it listed on the stock market in October 2016 at 225p a share.
The company’s