Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. climbed after Africa\u2019s largest drugmaker said it expects revenue from its own generic diabetes and obesity drugs as early as next year, tapping into what its leader terms \u201cthe largest opportunity currently in the global pharmaceutical industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Making the most in-demand shots globally and owning the intellectual property for them comes not only as there are global supply shortages, but also questions of affordability, Chief Executive Officer and billionaire Stephen Saad said by phone on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor us, the real opportunity is to have something of quality that\u2019s affordable that people, particularly across emerging markets, can pay for out their own pocket \u2014 or at least insurance companies will pay \u2014 without making them go broke,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aspen has worked to build its ability to make its own version of these drugs and Saad now has \u201ca much higher degree of confidence in getting into some markets early,\u201d than he had six months ago, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shares of the Durban, South Africa-based company surged as much as 13%, the most in two years. Aspen already has deals with Eli Lilly & Co. as a local selling agent and with Novo Nordisk A\/S as a third-party manufacturer of their blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss treatments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hundreds of South Africans marched to the South African headquarters of Novo in November calling for greater access to its human insulin and to lower prices, while also protesting against the Danish company\u2019s decision to phase out easy-to-use pens to deliver the diabetes medication. These often compete for production with the new diabetes and obesity drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aspen earlier reported a 3.2% increase in first-half net income to R2.39 billion ($128 million) as it sold more erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, painkillers and anti-epileptic medication in Latin America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African billionaire Stephen Saad says Aspen Pharmacare is ready to leverage the ‘largest opportunity in the global pharma industry’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":812971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[6193,21892],"class_list":["post-815016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-aspen-pharmacare","tag-stephen-saad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":815017,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815016\/revisions\/815017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}