AptarGroup, Inc. (ATR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

My name is [ Mallika, ] and I work with the JPMorgan Healthcare Investment Banking team. It is my pleasure to introduce to you today, Stephan Tanda, President and CEO; Vanessa Kanu, Chief Financial Officer; and Gael Touya, President, Aptar Pharma. Thank you for joining us here today.

Thank you, [ Mallika ]. Great pleasure to be back at JPMorgan. I look forward to introduce you or reintroduce you to our great Pharma franchise. I'm joined here on stage, as [ Mallika ] already said, by our CFO, Vanessa Kanu; and Gael Touya, the Head of our Pharma franchise. Now let's get into it. Excuse my raspy voice, we've all done a lot of talking this week. So of course, Pharma is not the totality of Aptar, but it is our largest business and about 2/3 of our EBITDA, going on 70%. These are 2023 numbers. Our most profitable business is growing the fastest in the portfolio, and that's what drives the value. We are certainly also very happy about our Beauty business, with our Closures business, and we'll get a little bit into that. Fundamentally, we are a technology company. You will hear that on and on from me. We own the IP of everything we're selling. We have proprietary drug delivery devices. We participate in the injectable space. We're in active material businesses. And one thing that you might not hear as often, we are recognized as a sustainability leader in our industry, not just last year and the year before, but for more than a decade. Just some highlights, almost 100% of our energy is renewable source. We're very transparent about our carbon footprint. All of this got built, of course, in our consumer business, but starts to become quite relevant in our Pharma business, especially in consumer healthcare, but also lower greenhouse gas, global warming potential propellants for inhalers. People turn to us to help them fulfill their sustainability goals. We're very much a global company, strong roots in Europe for historical reasons. A lot of our products that we sell in Europe actually then end up in other parts of the world. So conceptually, think of us being exposed about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 to the Americas, to Europe and to Asia. We serve the leading brands of the world, the leading pharma companies of the world and many smaller companies, regional champions and especially in pharma, often the process starts with 2 people in a molecule as we often call it. It is really a global powerhouse in our niche of the industry. Why? Because we are a technology leader. Again, we own the intellectual property. We drive innovation. And we do that because we have a deep expertise in understanding patients, understanding the regulatory environment, understanding consumers and then working with our clients to get their drugs through the development process and get them launched often over a decades-long process. And increasingly, we do this also with sustainability in mind, for example, here, mono-material pump for the consumer healthcare industry. You look at our results and you think of us in the vertical columns here. You got a Pharma business, you got a Beauty business and so on. The fact is we leverage a ton of technologies horizontally. You go in any Aptar factory, you will see the same core technologies. You will see precision injection molding of submillimeter parts, 1/16th of an inch for the Americans and followed by high-speed, highly automated assembly processes, followed by AI-assisted quality control, vision systems and so on. So these core processes, we practice across the board. Our Pharma business was actually born out of the Beauty business. You take a high-end fragrance spray, and you produce it in the right environment, voila, you have a nasal spray. Here's our value creation network -- framework, sorry. It's quite simple. We are active in attractive end markets that are advantaged by macro trends, that are advantaged by population trends, demographics. And we offer in these areas proprietary solutions. Already talked about our deep technology know-how, our innovation drive and the leadership in sustainability. We continue to evolve our portfolio, driving to higher returning faster-growing businesses. Of course, Pharma and parts of Pharma being very, very important in that sense. And more recently, and I'm talking the last 4, 5 years, we've also significantly increased our focus on cost and productivity and being focused on growing the bottom line faster than the top line with significant operational leverage. Last, not least, we have a very conservative balance sheet. We're happy in the 1 to 3 range right now, we're more closer to 1x levered. And here, you see kind of the summary of capital allocation over the last few years. As I said, more than 50% goes to the Pharma business, both on CapEx and acquisition. And we -- on this particular time frame from 2019 through the first 9 months of 2024, we invested about 70% in the business organically and inorganically, and we returned 30% to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. About 18 months ago, we raised our long-term targets, primarily on the back of the strength of our Pharma business. We raised the long-term top line growth target by 100 basis points to 7% to 11%. Actually, we've been 8% for more than the last decade. We raised the profitability target for the company by 100 basis points to 21% to 23%. We're actually in the range. We raised the return on invested capital by 100 basis points from -- to 11% to 13%. We're also there. Our consumer businesses have not always been within the target range. In Q3, our Closures business came within the target range, and we've done a lot of work in our Beauty business, and it is with some more help from demand and continued productivity work well on its way to get to its target range. Also, we pay an annually increasing dividend, and we have done so for 31 years. We're going on a 32nd year, clearly a dividend aristocrat. We're very proud of that. We have a lot of long-term shareholders for who this is very important. Next to all our growth and innovation drive, we always make sure that our dividend is there. Zooming out, what are some of the growth drivers for our Pharma business. Number one, an increasing importance of delivering drugs through the nose. Of course, we always had our -- for a long time, our franchise in allergies and decongestion. But more recently, central nervous system drugs, emergency treatments, pain management, the nose has been discovered as a delivery mechanism to get quickly in the bloodstream or -- and cross the nose-brain barrier, the blood-brain barrier. We're very proud of being the supplier of the Narcan device or naloxone device generically that has helped to reduce opioid overdose deaths. And you see just a significant growth of projects and revenue through nasal drug delivery. And coming back to our long-term allergy franchise, allergy season just gets longer and longer. Some people suffer year-round, partly driven by climate change. And we also see significant geographic growth with Asian consumers getting more and more into the allergy market. Thirdly, a switch to over-the-counter medications. Narcan is one example, but a lot of the allergy sprays, a lot of the decongestion went over-the-counter, which immediately gives us broader distribution, higher volumes. And last, not least, we have good exposure to biologics to our injectable business, including some of the GLP-1 products. One of the reasons why we raised our long-term top line growth target is because we track our pipeline very closely, like every other pharma business, it is a pipeline business. We worked for a decade with our clients until something gets to launch. And we see our pipeline, risk-adjusted, continue to grow. We update it every year, and we will update for 2024 in a few months. Here is a more granular depiction of the growth in nasal drug delivery, showing the launches for the first 9 months in 2020 in that category and in 2024. And obviously, you see more application fields on the 2024 side, especially again, in systemic nasal drug delivery, emergency medicines, pain management, central nervous system drugs. And there's a lot more in our pipeline that drives that growth. On the injectable side, of course, GLP-1 is driving nice growth in our injectable business. But -- and just to be clear, we're talking about a few tens of millions of revenue today, but very nicely growing. So over the last 4 years, it has doubled. And we're also very much focused on expanding the margin of our injectable business, principally 2 ways: On the one hand, upgrading our product mix to higher margin, higher-value products. And secondly, as our new capacity comes online, increase the economies of scale, increase the operating leverage and increase productivity through automation. So as our injectable business grows very nicely, the margin is expanding. Let me deep dive into the Pharma business a bit more. Again, proof point for our intellectual property, our technology know-how, more than 4,500 patents. We've come off 2023, a year with significant product launches. And at the same time, we have replenished at least the same value back into the pipeline. Obviously, once the product is launched, it comes out of the pipeline. That also tells you about the velocity of replacing and filling the pipeline. We have more than 1,500 customers around the world. And again, the average project length is 10 years plus, very much GMP, FDA regulated and work with our customers on creating the DMFs, their NDAs and so on. If you don't take anything else away from this presentation, the following: The way this works is 2 people in the molecule knock on the door and say, we have an idea. We want to get this to market. Narcan was one example. Then we work with them on characterization, on formulation, on designing the device, characterizing the device with a data package. It's not just about the device itself. It's about the spray cloud. It's about the absorption rates. It's where this thing goes, then it goes to clinical trials. During this 6-, 10-, 12-year process, we invoice service revenues, we collect milestone payments, sometimes capacity reservation fees. Once the product is approved, it's an approval of the 3 things: The API, the formulation and our delivery device. That forms the medicine that is captured in the drug master file. Product is launched, hopefully, it's successful. Once it goes generic, the API goes generic. Still our device in the drug master file. We continue to participate at the same margin in the generic phase. Product goes over the counter, same thing. We continue to participate in -- so this is very rare in the pharma world that once we have a successful launch of a product, we basically have a growing perpetuity with -- that's the underlying engine that drives our profitability. Here, you see the result of constant significant top line growth, constant, of course, you have variations quarter-by-quarter, year-by-year, but a very proud track record. And just to summarize again, we own the technology in our device. There are many CMO companies here. Those are great companies. I've been part of one in the past. We are not a CMO company. We own the intellectual property of everything we produce. We have deep regulatory expertise to help our clients to get through the drug development and the approval process. And then we have global scale to roll things out. Over the last few years, we've created significant service capabilities. We'll get back to that, that really ensures that we engage with clients as early as possible in the development process. Quick snapshot of the different divisions. Proprietary drug delivery devices is 70% or 72% of our Pharma business. You see on the bottom, a selection of the products we're in. Of course, we don't make the finished product. We make the drug delivery component of that. See the NARCAN device; SPRAVATO from J&J; inhalers, neffy for epinephrine delivery, recently approved; some of the decongestion, saline rinses. You get my point, if it's inhaled, if it goes to the nose, there's a high likelihood it's -- our device is involved. On the injectable solutions side, that's a business we added about 12 years ago. And it was a small French-owned company called Stelmi, and we built it into a global company, added U.S. capacity, added Chinese capacity and now significantly expanded and modernized capacity in France. We participate with all the SKUs in all the end markets of injected medicines, including biologics and the GLP-1 drugs. We've also embarked on a process of upgrading our product portfolio, more higher-value products. You see fluoropolymer-film coated products, PremiumFill products, ready-to-use sterilized products, and that helps us to capture more of the pipeline and upgrade the profitability of the business. And last, not least, in 2018, we bought the CSP Technologies, an active material business. It's a very nifty technology that conditions the space in which a drug lives, in which a test strip lives, a sensor lives. So for example, diabetes, test strips, we make the parts for Abbott Libre, sensitive drugs like HIV drugs like DESCOVY that have stability challenges, there's an active material film in every single blister. So we solve problems for our clients. By the way, the same technology is also used in our food safety business. Reinforcing our approach and the context we operate in is that 70% of new developments come from small companies. They take it to a certain point, sometimes the approval process and then the big companies buy them. But in this development process, they need our support, our services to get through this drug development process. And at the same time, the regulatory complexity is just increasing every day, and we are a trusted partner to all the regulatory agencies in the highly regulated markets. So we follow this approach that we call from formulation to patient, starting with what are we trying to solve, how do we optimize the experience for the patient, working with our clients through the drug development process, the formulation, designing our devices and components and then making sure that we maximize the chance for patient onboarding, patient adherence, patient compliance and even creating companion apps to maintain the patient on the regimen with our digital health business. So it's really all encompassing. Looking at it in a different way from a process point of view, from the formulation, the device development, the clinical trials, the regulatory filings to post-launch and in-market monitoring, we're a complete partner with the drug development company and the drug company. And this ecosystem has been built out over the last 3 years and is highly effective. For life-saving drugs, regulators really expect or demand the reliability of 99.999% or in other words, better than 1 in 100,000 reliability. So of course, if you want to save somebody's lives, you cannot afford a failure. That is a very high bar to cross. Now given that we've been in this business for 30-plus years, we have the data package that goes with that. We have the know-how to assure that. And it's a critical capability that, of course, if somebody wants to come to market with a life-saving drug, that's what they're looking for. I mentioned we have a digital health business. We started with connecting our devices digitally to track patient compliance, to track administration. And then we bought the market leader, Voluntis, who actually has companion apps, FDA-approved or EMA-approved algorithms that allow us to manage the patient experience, that allow us to manage chronic diseases. You see several of the therapeutic areas here from oncology to diabetes, respiratory and so on. And more recently, we've also even taken over the digital activity of customers like Biogen and manage it for them. So this is the only area where we -- if you want, also be a little bit of a CMO, managing the digital activities of larger clients. It's a very promising area. If you're in a place like this, everybody wants to talk about what is your digital program? What is your digital capability? If you can get a patient on the drug sooner, if you can have a patient adhere to the regime and manage your side effects and you retain the patient longer for -- on the drug, that's gold for our clients. And so it's a very important capability that we bring to the market. By the way, we also purchased a business around human factors, really understanding how a patient engages, for example, with an auto-injector or with a nasal device, and we manufacture what's called training devices in the industry, basically train how you use the injector even though there is no needle in it. So clearly, end-to-end support. Again, deep, deep expertise and collaboration with the various regulatory agencies including being retained by them to help them figure out an area, 2 that we've been public about, one with the FDA around greenhouse warming -- reducing greenhouse warming potential of propellants, how to think about that, how to test it, how to get it approved. Another one is how to reduce nitrosamines, for example, in drug products. So a huge credibility based on a longtime track record. I want to come back to sustainability. You hear us a lot of talk about this. There's kind of the hardcore CDP A ratings since 2020; EcoVadis Platinum, which is kind of the top 1% of the industry since 2021, we've been at this for a decade or longer; and then, of course, the more public recognitions from TIME Magazine to Barron's to Forbes. Why do we do this? It's not because we want to be just good corporate, citizens. We do this because it's good business. On the one hand, starting with our consumer product clients, they need sustainable solutions. They need refillable, recyclable, reusable, recycled content-containing products. And increasingly, that moves over to the pharma side, especially consumer healthcare. If you are -- can you -- if you're -- what's the GSK spinout?

Haleon.

Haleon. If you're Haleon, you are consumer-minded and you go after sustainability very quickly. Equally important, it's a competitive weapon in the war for talent. We are a purpose-driven company. People want to work for a company that not only does great things like life-saving drugs, but does them in a way that they can be proud of. And we show you here the U.S. examples of Forbes' top companies for women to work for; Most Sustainable, Time Magazine, Newsweek. We can show you the same for China. We can show you the same for France, where we're a big employer. We are a very desirable company to work for because we are purpose-driven and that is a competitive weapon. Let me finish up with our value creation framework that I already covered. We've taken this from our Capital Market Day. This has not changed. Significant top line growth over the coming years, faster bottom line growth because of our productivity drive, higher profitability and EBITDA margin driven by, on the one hand, the faster growth of our Pharma franchise. That's why we're here. At the same time, higher cost focus, operational level leverage, operational productivity focus. And that raises at the end of the day, our return on invested capital. We are in the EBITDA range. We are in the ROIC range. So that's our current target. We have another Capital Markets Day in September. We look at this every time we go to a Capital Markets Day. And with that, let me finish here, and we can go to Q&A.