Aspen Pharmacare Holdings said yesterday that revenue for its financial year to June 30 would be impacted by the divestment of certain products.
This was after it last week indicated that its Covid-19 production lines may soon go idle due to a lack of new orders. Aspen currently produces vaccines for Johnson & Johnson and, in March, it struck a deal to produce, price, and sell its own-brand version of the shot for African markets.
That deal was considered a game-changer for a continent frustrated by sluggish Western handouts. But, while only a fifth of adults in Africa are fully vaccinated, according to the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, demand for shots have failed to materialise.
The group said in a trading update yesterday that as per guidance at the interim stage, the Commercial Pharma and Manufacturing segments performed as expected in the second half of the financial year - revenue growth was impacted by “the divestment of certain products in South Africa, volume-based procurement in China as well as the geopolitical situation in Russia and Ukraine”.
Aspen’s Manufacturing segment recorded stronger revenue growth as it recovered from the Covid-19 induced headwinds experienced in the first half of the financial year.
Growth in earnings for the year had been positively impacted by a widening of the Ebitda margin percentage and lower net finance charges.
Total revenue growth for the year is expected to be in the range of between 1 percent percent to 3 percent, and between 4 percent to 6 percent in constant exchange rates (CER)
Normalised headline earnings per share (Nheps), consisting of continuing operations, were expected to increase by between 2 percent to 25 percent for the year to June 30 compared with the same period in 2021.
Headline earnings per share (Heps) were increasing by between 27 percent to 32 percent. Earnings per share (Eps) were expected to be between 32 percent to 37 percent compared to the prior year. The results are expected to be released on August 31.
Nheps were expected to be between 1571.7 to 1637.2 cents per share. Heps was expected to between 27 percent to 32 percent per share,
The higher growth in Eps relative to Hps was attributable to the profit on the sale of a product portfolio divested in South Africa during the current financial year.
The stronger rand per dollar exchange rate, relative to the prior year, diluted the growth in all earnings measures.
BUSINESS REPORT