S.Africa's Aspen earmarks $800 mln for M&A

South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare could spend some $800 million on acquisitions, its deputy CEO said, as Africa's biggest generic drugs maker looks for further targets, particularly in Latin America.

Aspen, which paid about 6.5 billion rand for the generics business of Australia's Sigma Pharmaceuticals this year, would be willing to do a similar deal to broaden its presence, Gus Attridge told Reuters.

We spent about 6 billion rand on the Sigma deal and that increased our debt, but we have already brought that down quite significantly, he said.

We certainly have the capacity to do another transaction of about a similar amount.

Aspen, 19 percent owned by Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, has said it is looking for acquisitions to further expand in fast-growing Latin America.

The biggest generic drugs maker in the southern hemisphere, Aspen is likely to benefit as name-brand drugs worth $100 billion lose patent protection over the next three years.

It posted a 20 percent rise to 523.3 cents in normalised diluted headline EPS on Tuesday, further evidence its international expansion may be paying off.

Revenue increased 29 percent to 12.4 billion rand with its domestic business adding 6.3 billion, but the company said its international business would for the first time add more to sales than its home market in this financial year.

Shares in Aspen, which are down about 5 percent this year, rose 2.4 percent to 89.09 rand by 1420 GMT, outpacing a 0.96 percent rise in the JSE Top-40 blue-chip index