South African drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd reported a 6 percent rise in first-half profit on Thursday, helped by the results of a recently acquired portfolio of medicines from AstraZeneca.

Aspen, the biggest generic drugmaker in the southern hemisphere, said normalised headline earnings per share rose to 692 cents in the six months ended December 2016, from 656 cents a year earlier.

Headline EPS is the main profit measure in South Africa and strips out certain one-off items.

Aspen said the results were largely boosted by the $770 million acquisition of marketing rights to a portfolio of anaesthetics from AstraZeneca in September last year.

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)