ASPEN: No need to take a Myprodol
After winning its battle with the branded painkiller, the pharma company has its sights set on infant formula in China
If Aspen’s Myprodol moment is anything to go by, thinking big is worth it. Talking analysts through the company’s year-end numbers last week, CEO Stephen Saad, with no small degree of relish, produced a chart showing how, in April, Aspen’s generic brands Mybulen and Mybucod overtook the big daddy of SA pain-killers for the first time. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be bigger than Myprodol," he said. "Plugging away" has clearly paid off for Aspen, which has almost doubled the size of its commercial pharma business in the past four years, to R31.7bn in sales for the year ended June. The division is now its biggest revenue spinner, with overall sales of R41.2bn for the period — a gain of 16% in real currencies, and in no small way helped by its acquisitions of the anaesthetics portfolios formerly owned by the mighty GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and AstraZeneca.The irony of its Mybulen victory, however, is that generics now account for just 10% of Aspen’s turnover. And it was cle...
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