Global growth from Lifeline Scientific

The group's LifePort product provides a sealed sterile environment, where a medical solution is pumped through the organ to minimise damage while it is outside of the body. The group's primary product, the LifePort Kidney Transporter, is currently used in 29 countries and has effectively transported more than 75,000 kidneys. In the US, the technology has become the gold standard for kidney transportation, replacing the previous method of transporting kidneys in a 'static cool environment' - or, in layman's terms, an ice box. The LifePort is not just limited to kidney transportation, and when the group listed in 2007 it suggested that the technology could be applied to the heart, lungs, liver and pancreas.

The LifePort Liver Transporter is set to launch imminently. In February last year, the technology was featured in the American Journal of Transplantation after a study conducted by scientists at Columbia University found that use of the machine extended the life of patients who obtained livers from individuals who had previously been considered too old for donor status.

The US is the largest market for Lifeline and contributed four-fifths of revenues in 2014. At the end of last year the group announced a spate of new order wins in a number of US states expected to generate $800,000 (£560,000) of revenue in 2016. Sales are also gathering momentum in other jurisdictions; Lifeline recently announced a stocking order from its main distributor in China worth $3.3m and $780,000 of orders from new clients in Brazil.

Sales from single-use consumable products rose 15 per cent last year; the LifePort uses disposable container parts and fluid, which must be replaced with each organ transported. These sales provide a solid stream of recurring revenue, which contributed 60 per cent to overall sales last year. Cash generation has also been encouraging, with Lifeline ending 2015 with $6.9m of net cash compared with $3.1m six months earlier.

A positive trading update was released in January, in which management said operating profit in 2015 would be at least $5.6m - more than double the level of the previous year. This is substantially ahead of what brokers had been expecting, but forecasts have not been upgraded (including those in our table) due to an ongoing strategic review that was announced at the half-year stage. The review is intended to evaluate "a full range of strategic and financial alternatives to enhance shareholder value" and there could be more news on this when full-year results are published at the end of the month.

However, we don't think management action to 'enhancde value' is needed to make a compelling case for buying Lifeline's shares, though. Based on the expected $5.6m operating profit, the company's enterprise-value-to-operating-profit ratio of 9.4 times stands at a big discount to a peer group average of 17.6 times, compiled from Bloomberg data.