JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare Holdings reported a 23 percent drop in full-year profit on Wednesday as heavy losses from its Venezuelan business and a weak performance in its home market weighed on earnings.
Aspen, which makes about a quarter of its sales in South Africa, said headline earnings per share (EPS) fell to 889 cents in the year to end-June, compared with 1,149.9 cents a year earlier.
Headline EPS is the main profit measure in South Africa and strips out certain one-off items.
Excluding a 870 million rand ($60.76 million) write down charge in Venezuelan operations, headline EPS would have grown by 10 percent, Aspen Chief Executive Steven Saad said.
($1 = 14.3175 rand)(Reuters)