Apotex CEO Jeff Watson at the company's headquarters in Toronto, on Tuesday. 'Where we find ourselves today was the thesis of the business,' Mr. Watson says.Arlyn McAdorey/The Globe and Mail
Apotex Health Corp.’s public listing was a crucial step in the company’s plans to renew its focus on Canada and the Americas, chief executive officer Jeff Watson says.
The company began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange last week and announced Tuesday it had completed its offering for gross proceeds of $1.495-billion, significantly higher than the $1-billion it first targeted.
The company raised about $850-million from shares issued from treasury, while existing shareholders, principally U.S. private-equity firm SK Capital Partners, received about $645-million from a secondary issue.
Apotex said it will largely use its proceeds to pay down debt.
SK Capital bought ownership of the company in 2023 from the family of late founder Barry Sherman. The sale capped a period of uncertainty and transformation for Apotex after Dr. Sherman and his wife, Honey, were killed in 2017.
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Mr. Watson, who has worked at Apotex for much of the past three decades, said the company decided during that period to begin to divest some of its holdings in places outside North America.
“Where we find ourselves today was the thesis of the business,” Mr. Watson said in an interview.
“The thesis was to kind of double down on the Canadian roots, build up the Canadian business further in the next phase, but ultimately lead the company to become a Canadian publicly listed company.”
About two-thirds of Apotex’s 6,500 global employees are based in Canada, as are five of the company’s eight manufacturing facilities. One major site is in India, which Mr. Watson said provides for the North American supply chain but does not sell into the local Indian market.
A major growth engine for the company is its focus on more complicated off-patent pharmaceutical products, according to Apotex’s recent prospectus.
The company’s long-time bread-and-butter, conventional generics, made up 51 per cent of Apotex’s revenue in the 2026 fiscal year, but grew at a 2-per-cent compound annual growth rate over the past three years. Those are drugs often taken orally in small pills.
Specialty generics, which can take the form of inhalers or injectables, were 33 per cent of revenue growing at a 15-per-cent compound annual growth rate. Brands and biosimilars, which are copies of larger-molecule drugs derived from living cells, were 16 per cent of revenue growing at a 16-per-cent compound annual growth rate.
Mr. Watson said a number of specialty and biologic products are set to lose their patent protections in the next few years, creating opportunities for the company, although he declined to specify any particular drugs as Apotex’s versions have yet to be approved by regulators.
“These next five years for Canada and the U.S. is a really, I would say, a robust time for loss of exclusivity,” he said.
One drug he could point to is semaglutide, the active ingredient in the blockbuster drug Ozempic, which is typically taken for Type 2 diabetes or prescribed off-label for weight loss.
Ozempic, made by Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk, is by far the bestselling drug in Canada, with $2.9-billion in sales in 2025. That’s more than three times the next bestselling drug, according to aggregated prescription data collected by IQVIA Canada, an analytics company.
Apotex’s semaglutide was approved by Health Canada on May 1 and began arriving in Canadian pharmacies by the end of the month. It sells for $78.14 for a four-week supply, about a third the cost of brand-name Ozempic.
It’s one of two generic versions of semaglutide approved by Health Canada since legal protections on the brand-name expired this year; the other is produced by Indian pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd.
Apotex’s semaglutide was developed in partnership with India’s Orbicular Pharmaceutical Technologies, which Mr. Watson said brought technical expertise.
Mr. Watson said it was a coincidence that Apotex went public so shortly after such a high-profile drug launch, though the timing was fortuitous.
“You can’t plan that, but the way it kind of rolled out, I mean, the timing was good, and certainly it was, you know, of interest for even investors to talk about,” he said.
Apotex closed its fifth day of trading Tuesday at $27.90 a share, down 2.5 per cent on the day but up 16 per cent from its IPO price of $24.