South African pharma tycoon Stephen Saad's Aspen shares gain $142 million in 2026

South African pharmaceutical tycoon Stephen Saad's stake in Aspen Pharmacare, Africa's largest drugmaker, is worth about R9.21 billion ($558.7 million) after a 34% rally this year added about $142 million to its value, though the holding remains about $1 billion below what it was worth at the stock's record high.

Saad, 62, co-founder and group chief executive of the Johannesburg-listed company, owns 58,797,851 Aspen shares, or roughly 13% of the company. The stock closed at R156.70 ($9.50) on Friday in Johannesburg.

Aspen shares hit a record R448.68 on Jan. 27, 2015. At that price, the same 58.8 million shares would be worth about R26.38 billion. That is roughly $1.6 billion, or about $1.04 billion more than the stake is worth today. The stock remains about 65% below its peak.

The 2015 peak came after a string of acquisitions that turned the Durban-based company into a global supplier of anaesthetics and generic medicines. The debt behind that expansion weighed on the shares for years. Aspen skipped its dividend in 2019, and in April 2025 the stock fell more than 30% after the company lost an mRNA manufacturing contract worth about R1 billion ($60.6 million) in annual revenue.

Asia sale drives the rebound

Aspen ended 2025 at R116.79 a share, valuing Saad's stake at about R6.87 billion ($416.4 million). The holding has since gained about R2.35 billion.

The rebound began on Dec. 29, when Aspen agreed to sell its Asia Pacific business, excluding China, to Australian private equity firm BGH Capital for A$2.37 billion. The shares jumped 24% that day, to R117.35 from R94.50, and have kept climbing this year. The deal closed in May, bringing in about R27 billion ($1.64 billion), most of which went to repay debt that stood at R28.6 billion ($1.73 billion) at the end of December. Saad called the sale "a compelling outcome for Aspen."

The company ended its financial year in June with net cash of about R800 million ($48.5 million), and it has turned to buybacks. Between May 29 and Aug. 31, Aspen repurchased 13,330,879 shares, about 3% of its issued capital, for R1.98 billion ($119.8 million) at an average price of R148.17. The board has authority to buy back a further 17%.

Revenue for the year to June was flat at R34.9 billion ($2.12 billion). Normalised headline earnings per share rose 22% to 801.5 cents, or 28% in constant currency, and normalised earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation climbed 14% to R7.7 billion ($467 million). Aspen raised its dividend to 232 cents (14 U.S. cents) from 211 cents. It expects normalised Ebitda of at least R9 billion ($545.8 million) in the year to June 2027, along with net interest savings of about R1.2 billion ($72.8 million).

Obesity drugs and manufacturing

Aspen distributes Eli Lilly's weight-loss and diabetes injection Mounjaro across sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa's market for GLP-1 drugs nearly doubled to about R2.8 billion ($169.8 million) in the year to June, and Mounjaro's share rose to 53% from 15% a year earlier.

"We're hoping to do more than 2 billion rand in sales in financial year 2027," Saad said on a Sept. 3 call with investors. That is about $121.3 million. Aspen has applied to register Mounjaro in Kenya and Nigeria, and either approval could add to earnings this financial year.

The company is also preparing generic versions of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy. Health Canada has approved Aspen's generic injection, but the launch depends on active ingredient supplied by India's Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, which halted production of new batches in July over an impurity issue.

South African regulators are tightening the rules on pharmacies that mix their own versions of the weight-loss jabs. This month the South African Pharmacy Council and the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority announced revised compounding rules, with final standards due in March. The move follows a June ruling by the Pretoria High Court that barred compounding group iDexis from making products with unregistered semaglutide, after Novo Nordisk sued. iDexis disputes the regulators' findings and says it is being singled out.

Manufacturing Ebitda rose 21% to R828 million ($50.2 million) after Aspen restructured underused sterile plants in France and South Africa. The company raised its earnings growth target for sterile products by R500 million to R2.2 billion ($133.4 million) for the two years to June 2027. In May, the regulator cleared the first commercial batches of human insulin made at Aspen's Gqeberha plant under a contract with Novo Nordisk. In China, Aspen has dropped unprofitable products.

From township sales to Aspen

Saad was born in Durban in 1964 and trained as an accountant. He started in the drug business in 1989 selling medicines to doctors in townships for Quickmed, a company he later co-owned. He merged it with Covan, a family-run eye-drop maker, to form Zurich, which he sold in 1993 to Prempharm, a predecessor of Adcock Ingram. The sale made him a millionaire before he turned 30.

He co-founded Aspen in 1997 with Gus Attridge and has led it since. Attridge now serves as group chief adviser. Sean Capazorio is group chief financial officer, and Lorraine Hill is group chief operations officer.