Aspen’s marginal rise in revenue disappoints, but is in line with expectations
Africa’s largest pharmaceuticals company’s earnings hamstrung by high financial costs
Africa’s biggest drug manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare reported a mere 1% increase in group revenue to R18.67bn for the six months to December after the market closed on Thursday . While management said the results were in line with expectations, they were likely to disappoint investors and knock the company’s share price when the market opened on Friday morning. In September the market took a dim view of the share when Aspen turned in a dismal 3% growth in group revenue for the year to June and announced a lower-than-expected price for the sale of its infant milk business to French dairy giant Lascalis. Aspen sold the infant milk business for $860m, considerably short of the $1bn-$1.5bn the market had been expecting, in order to pay off debt. The double whammy saw Aspen shares take their biggest intra-day knock in two decades in September, plunging as much as 26% in intra-day trade, before recovering slightly. The company’s shares also took a battering last January, slumping 10% on sp...
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