Aspen Pharmacare’s share price still doesn’t reflect the true value of the company, even though the stock has soared after the group announced the sale of its Asia-Pacific assets, its CEO Stephen Saad said on Thursday.
The pharmaceuticals manufacturer received an unsolicited A$2.37bn (about R26.5bn) offer from Melbourne-based private equity firm BGH Capital for its Asia-Pacific assets, excluding China, late last year. Its shares have risen more than 30% since the proposed deal was announced on December 29. They closed 1% higher at R124.58 on the JSE on Thursday.
“Even at the current price today, we are still well short of the balance of the sum of the parts,” said Saad on an investor call.
Saad has bet heavily on the company he co-founded with Gus Atteridge nearly 30 years ago, and spent more than R100m on two tranches of shares in May last year. The JSE’s rules class the deal as a category 1 transaction that requires approval from at least 50% of Aspen’s shareholders.
Saad and Atteridge, as well as the trusts they are associated with, have already signed irrevocable undertakings to vote the shares under their control — 13% and 4%, respectively — in support of the deal. A circular setting out details of the transaction will be issued by March 20, while the shareholder vote will take place on or before April 22, and the deal should be completed by end-May, said group CFO Sean Capazorio.
Aspen expects the transaction costs will be less than 5% of the deal value, and net proceeds could exceed R25bn, Capazorio said. Aspen will use the money to reduce debt, which amounted to R31.2bn at end-June 2025.
Asia-Pacific shines
Aspen Australia started operations in 2001 with two employees and a A$10m product portfolio. The company expanded into New Zealand in 2003, and later into other Asia-Pacific markets. It now has operations in 46 countries.
One in five generic medicines dispensed in Australia is now an Aspen product, and the company is in the top five for over-the-counter medicines, Saad said. Aspen Australia has a manufacturing site in Dandenong, Victoria, which produces in-house products and provides contract manufacturing for other companies.
The deal with BGH Capital will enable Aspen to focus on its growth drivers, said Saad. These include its operations in China, returning its sterile manufacturing facilities to profitability after the unexpected loss of an mRNA vaccine manufacturing contract last year, and its push into the market for GLP-1 medicines.
Aspen is proceeding with two injectable GLP-1 products — generic semaglutide and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide, branded Mounjaro. While both products are prescribed for patients with diabetes, there is also strong demand for their use in weight loss.
Aspen expects to launch its generic semaglutide in Canada later this year, Saad said. The patent on semaglutide, held by Novo Nordisk, also expires in many emerging markets this year.
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