The S&P Healthcare Services Index has increased by 0.1% over the three-month period of November 2014 through January 2015, thus outperforming the S&P 500 (1.1% decrease over the same period), according to the February 2015 Healthcare Sector Update from Duff & Phelps. The best performing sectors were healthcare REITs (up 12.7%) and contract research organizations (up 8.5%). The worst performing sectors were emergency services (down 8.6%), acute care hospitals (down 6.8%), and HCIT (down 6.7%).

Latest multiples: The current median LTM revenue and LTM EBITDA multiples for the healthcare services industry overall are 1.71x and 11.7x, respectively. The sectors with the highest valuation multiples include: healthcare REITs (13.32x LTM revenue, 20.1x LTM EBITDA); HCIT (3.06x LTM revenue, 19.9x LTM EBITDA); and consumer-directed health and wellness (3.05x LTM revenue, 26.6x LTM EBITDA).

The report also provides data on the pharmaceutical/medical devices/life sciences sectors.