Stephen Saad Biography
Stephen Saad (Stephen Bradley Saad) was born on 23rd June 1964 in Durban, South Africa. He is a South African businessman and the founder and chief executive of Aspen Pharmacare.
Stephen Saad Education Background
He attended the Durban High School in Durban. He graduated from the University of Natal, where he received a Bachelor of Commerce. He played rugby in Ireland and studied to become a chartered accountant.
Career
He started his career at Quickmed, a prescription drug distribution company in black townships during apartheid. At the age of twenty-nine, he sold his share in Covan Zurich for US$3 million.
In 1997, he co founded South Africa’s largest pharmaceuticals maker, Aspen Pharmacare, a public company traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, together with Gus Attridge. Aspen Pharmacare markets generic medicines in 150 countries. He is the Chief Executive officer of Aspen Pharmacare and serves on its Board of Directors.
He was appointed the Aspen Group Chief Executive in January 1999. As the Aspen Group Chief Executive, his responsibilities extend to include the strategic positioning and global transactions, geographic expansion and product diversification of Aspen in developed and emerging markets as a leading multinational pharmaceutical company.
In 2012, Saad became chairman of The Sharks, a Durban rugby team. In October 2016, Saad won the Entrepreneur of the Year award at the All Africa Business Leaders Awards gala.
Stephen Saad
He spends his free time at Exeter, his private game reserve at Sabi Sands, which is adjacent to Kruger National Park, the largest national park in South Africa.
Stephen Saad Age
He was born on 23rd June 1964 in Durban, South Africa.
Stephen Saad Networth
He became a millionaire at age 29 when he sold his share in the drug business Covan Zurich for $3 million. In 2011 he was worth US$640 million, becoming one of Africa’s 40 richest people. His stock portfolio went up 75% in 2013 and is worth US$1.4 billion. In 2017 he was worth US$1.6 billion according to Forbes.
Stephen Saad Awards
- 2014: He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University for the positive role of Aspen in the city of Port Elizabeth
- Convocation Award, University of Kwazulu-Natal
- South African Chapter of the World Entrepreneur Award, Ernst & Young
Stephen Saad Wife – Stephen Saad Family
He is married with four daughters.
Stephen Saad Contact Details
Johannesburg, South Africa – Pharmacare – Aspen Pharmacare
Healthcare Park, Woodlands Drive
Woodmead
Johannesburg
South Africa
+27 11 239 6100
Stephen Saad Interview With Moneyweb
Source: Article Courtesy of Moneyweb
Moneyweb: Well let’s kick off with that one, Stephen. The Competition Tribunal’s award against you – are you going to appeal it, or what happens now?
Stephen Saad: We’re in partnership with four multinationals and certainly the intention is to appeal it. From a personal business point of view, what Kinesis did do for us is put us in opposition to wholesalers, which was disruptive to our business because we couldn’t give them the commissions that they got before for distribution. The negative Competition Commission ruling has in fact seen an increase in our turnover and we have to review our position in Kinesis very carefully. As I say, we’d like to be cautious in what we say, because we do have flour other partners.
Moneyweb: Does it mean, Stephen, that you might actually have to move out of Kinesis?
Stephen Saad: Yes, it could mean that.
Moneyweb: Well, let’s have a look. You’ve certainly done everything right up until this point – 73% growth in headline earnings per share. You’re now making R250m in headline profit, which is a long, long way from where you were a couple of years ago, but the big question mark was always debt – how did you do on the debt side in this past financial year?
Stephen Saad: If we look at our consolidated debt, we had an opening position of R895m and, as we sit today, at financial year end, we reached a consolidated debt position of R263m, which was quite a significant reduction. And obviously at that rate, with the operating profit at R250m and consolidated debt at R263m, we’re very comfortable where we are.
Moneyweb: Are you debt-averse? After having R2.5bn worth of debt when you did the acquisition initially, do you want to get all that debt off your balance sheet?
Stephen Saad: No, no. We’ve generated cash flow per share of 65c-odd which was almost double our earnings per share, which is consistent with the previous year where we had 19c earnings and 38c in cash flow per share, so we’re very strongly cash-positive and I think to create a cash pool would be counter-productive.
Moneyweb: Let’s find out what you’re going to be doing from here now. You’re a young man, 35 years old, you’ve achieved a great deal in the past couple of years – where to now for Aspen , because surely, after having the excitement of acquiring and bedding down as you’ve done, SA Druggists, you have got to be looking for something with a bit more action than just rolling up to work every day?
Stephen Saad: It’s not quite there yet. We haven’t bedded down the businesses in total, there’s still a lot of growth to be extracted from the businesses. There is a lot of organic growth to still be achieved. There are some acquisitions locally which could be interesting and we do have a good intellectual capital base in this country – and I’m talking about people, contacts, research, development, manufacturing processes etc, which we have in South Africa and we are hoping to cross-leverage those skills into an offshore market. And on two fronts we are taking a bold stand here, we’re going to be manufacturing from South Africa for First World markets offshore, and we’re going to do that from an oral contraceptive facility that we’ve just got up in East London, and we are just fixing up a section of our PE facility – and also we’re hoping to maybe look at a small platform company offshore that we can leverage our OTC products into. We’ve been very strong on OTCs, we’ve more than doubled what the old SA Druggists used to do on the OTC level and we’ve got very big skills there. We’re hoping that those skills we can get into offshore markets quite quickly. A lot of those products don’t need registration, we can almost move right away into that.