Aspen buys Mono-Embolex

C'mon Harry, let us go some place warm, let's go to Aspen is what Lloyd said to his pal in that classic from 1994, Dumb and Dumber. OK, it is not a classic, it was exceptionally funny slapstick humour that I enjoyed. What has been a great investment and a wonderful company has been Aspen Pharmacare. Stephen Saad and Gus Attridge never sit still, they are the founders of this business. The company listed in 1999, there were 367 million shares in issue, the turnover was 522 million Rand. At last June, 15 years on, turnover was 29.5 billion Rands, number of shares in issue 455.9 million. OK, that aside, the company has bought numbers of businesses over the years, businesses from majors that they could sweat harder and "do better" than the big cumbersome majors. The company has announced this morning a transaction in which Aspen International will acquire the rights of a therapy called Mono-Embolex from Novartis, which as per the release is "an injectable anti-coagulant, for a consideration of US$142.3 million." At the ruling exchange rate, that amounts to 1.623 billion Rand.


The therapy (which sounds like a one trick druid from the Asterix series), is an anti-coagulant and compliments their recent acquisitions in this space. It is currently only available in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Subject to approval from the German competitions authorities, they will fork out that fairly sizeable sum. The product is pretty small for now, having revenues of only 68 million Euros. So the therapy is small, if you require further reading material, be my guest, Wikipedia -> Certoparin sodium and this page -> Certoparin Sodium: Sodium salt of depolymerized heparin obtained by isoamyl nitrite degradation of heparin from pork intestinal mucosa. Pig stomach mucous, to manufacture anticoagulants, which treat blood clotting. That is the simplest way of explaining it. As Byron said from across the table, all you need to know is that the guys at Aspen know exactly what is going on. The stock is up on the news and is in fact, if it closes here, will be at an all time high.