Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (ELAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, everybody, for joining us. With me today is Todd Young, CFO of Elanco Animal Health. I'm the animal health analyst here, David Westenberg.

And let's just kick it off. You had an exciting launch this quarter, Zenrelia, the second to market with the dermatology product. How is the launch going so far?

It's going very well. It's a little ahead of our expectations, and we're very pleased with how it continues to penetrate clinics. We're very much focused on vet education and getting them up to speed on the product, its efficacy, which we've shown in head-to-head trials to be really good and better than the competition, and that's playing out. As we get vets educated on the product, how it works and how well it works, that gets them started. Then we get them product, they have experience with it on their patients. And it works really well, and that leads to strong reorder rates. So very pleased with the progress and excited for what Zenrelia will continue to do to help itchy dogs going forward.

Well, that's great. It's a good segue into the mid-single-digit growth rate for 2025. How can you -- how should we think about the percentage coming from Zenrelia? And you'll have Quattro, I believe, launching in Q1. And maybe if you don't want to give percentage basis, can you just maybe give us a qualitative measure of how we should think about that contribution next year?

Sure. So let me just step back on the topic in general. So our basket of innovation launched since 2020, we've been talking about for a number of years. We've said that in 2025, we'll reach $600 million to $700 million of sales from those products. This year, in 2024, it's $420 million to $450 million of revenue. So it accelerated from $275 million last year, $420 million to $450 million this year, going to $600 million to $700 million next year. The primary drivers of this growth are 6 products that we're really excited about because they all have blockbuster potential, which in animal health is more than $100 million in revenue. So it starts with Experior. This is a feed additive for feedlot cattle that this year is going to achieve blockbuster status between the U.S. and Canada. This product reduces the ammonia emissions from a cow, and it's gone really well as it's penetrated the vast majority of feedlots in the U.S. The good news in November, we received approval from the FDA to now also use Experior in heifers, not just in steers. And about 40% of the feedlot animals are heifers. So this gives us a nice tailwind as we go into 2025 with Experior growth. Next, our parvovirus monoclonal antibody. We're only the second company in animal health to be selling monoclonal antibodies. This therapy works really well at saving dogs' lives who get stuck with the parvovirus vaccine. That continues to ramp. In Europe, we have a product called Adtab. This is an oral parasiticide that sold over the counter in Europe. The Europeans have taken a more expansive view on the regulatory side of allowing this class of drugs. This is our Credelio product sold inside the vet clinic and labeled under the Advantage family name for the OTC market in Europe. So this is the first full year of launch, and it's really ramped nicely. And we expect that to continue across Europe in 2025. Then we get to the 3 big ones that we've just received approval on. Bovaer is a methane reduction product for dairy cows. We have the rights to this in North America and are selling it in the U.S. This reduces the methane produced by a dairy cow by 30%. And the funding of this is driven by the CPG companies in dairy space who are wanting to impact their Scope 3 emissions. This is really big for the European companies, and it's growing as part of what the U.S. companies are also doing. Then finally, we get to the 2 big U.S. vet clinic products, which is Zenrelia and Credelio Quattro. Again, we are going to launch Credelio Quattro in Q1 in advance of the flea and tick season in the U.S. And those products are also ones that we expect will become blockbusters for us. So it's that combination of portfolio of big products we're launching that we're really excited about. We're not going to give specific product-level revenues or forecast, but that totality of big products launching is an exciting time for Elanco as a company.

Got you. Let's go to the innovation on some of those products you mentioned like Experior and Bovaer. These are new market-building kind of products. Experior, as you mentioned, is going to be a blockbuster. Why do you think the competitors have missed emission opportunity? Do you think you'll see competition in this emission opportunity? Or do you think that they would have to innovate around your patents, which would be a little bit more difficult?

It's a great question, David. I mean it's one of those where our team saw this with respect to Experior for a long time. The side benefit of Experior is it also increases the amount of protein on every cow. So it does have a -- the label is for ammonia reduction, but it does have the side benefit that farmers are very well aware of. So that one, we don't see competition coming. We can always be surprised in animal health because most companies aren't as forthright with their innovation portfolio as we have been in the last few years. So again, we feel really good about the moat we're building around Experior and our leadership in this space. With respect to the methane reduction product, Bovaer, there's a lot of other companies who are working on products in this space. We think this product has a large part of, I guess, way ahead. It's approved in 65 different countries. And so it's really gotten a lot of regulatory scrutiny over the last few years. It's approved by the U.S. recently. And we're excited to bring it to the market to both continue to have positive value from protein and milk for consumers while also impacting the environment less.

Got you. Well, your 2025 guide, well -- or I wouldn't say guide, I would say your high-level ways of thinking about 2025. If you do the math, it implies you're probably not cutting R&D despite the fact that you just had some pretty big launches. You've now caught up in terms of you have a derm product, you have a trio or you have a triple -- multi-parasite combination parasiticide. Are you going to be thinking about new classes of drugs? And it's not new -- I mean you always have. I mean parvo is definitely an innovative class. I would argue Galliprant was a new class. I don't think it's normally necessarily the same kind of insight. So as we look at Elanco 3 to 5 years from now, are we going to see some new markets that you've built or are building?

Dr. Ellen is doing a phenomenal job with our R&D team. You've seen it with all these blockbuster potential products getting approved over the last couple of years. And she's building out both these late-stage products, but also the research side and the early stage. We're very excited about the monoclonal antibody platform. Our next one to come out of that will be an IL-31 product for itchy dogs. We've got a long-acting IL-31 product that will come after that and continuing to do a lot of research in the monoclonal space as we do think that's a very big opportunity in both pet and farm animals. We're continuing to invest in a number of areas in the big markets. We want to have big, high-impact innovation. That's where Ellen's focus is and where it will continue to be. And certainly, we're investing more in R&D in 2025. It's the lifeblood of a health care company, and we're going to continue to do that. What we're going to do is continue to drive productivity in the back-office portions of R&D. So our pharmacovigilance spend is in R&D. I want to continue to get more efficient at that to drive more money available for project spend to develop new, innovative, first-in-class products, and that's very much what the team is focused on.

Got you. You've used the word like no-regrets launch in terms of Zenrelia. So I personally think that you're still going to see response -- you're going to see adoption from Apoquel nonresponders. I mean I think the estimate I have is around 20% of dogs don't -- do not respond to Apoquel. Why do you think it's so important to use that marketing spend rather than just having vets feel comfortable after they get used to using something for, say, Apoquel nonresponders?

We think Zenrelia, based on all the data, is the best product that really helps dogs stop itching. And the itchy dog is the #1 reason a pet owner goes to the vet because it's so impactful on their life. And it can create other problems for the dog if the itching turns into abscesses and the like that has to be treated. We do know it's getting used by the nonresponders as the first part especially if you think about -- there's about 200 to 300 kind of Board-certified specialists in dermatology, but this is really a general practitioner class of drugs. The hard case is the nonresponders get referred to the dermatologist. They're thrilled with Zenrelia because it just works so well. I mean we just -- we're talking with an investor who talked to a vet, who's like -- had somebody who wasn't responding. And man, within a week, it was a changing moment. And that's the anecdotal feedback we're getting is just how well Zenrelia is working. We're also excited when we look at the data, we're getting new dogs using it. It isn't just the nonresponders. And so our view of this is there's a real opportunity to take share for both new dogs as well as those. And that this investment is going to be focused on driving a good ROI over the next 3 to 5 years versus being concerned purely about our EBITDA in 2025. These are no-regret launches because this will drive our value proposition. And we're looking at this over a multiyear period to make sure we're optimizing the launch curve and the adoption rates because, again, we believe Zenrelia is the best product in the market. We think Credelio Quattro is going to be the similar. It's going to have the broadest coverage for intestinal parasites, worms compared to any other product on the market. And it's got faster tick kill than the competitors as well based off the lotilaner study we published earlier this fall. So again, these are the reasons we're going to invest behind the launches in 2025. I'm going to keep squeezing spend in all of our other G&A areas. My finance team has to spend less in '25 than they did in '24 because we're freeing up money to invest behind these launches.

Well, you touched on a little bit the experiences of dermatologists, and they're happy to have another option. So can you -- I mean, you're about a month, 2 months into the launch here. Can you talk about the conversations with dermatologists? And can you talk about the vet generalists and what the experience has been so far with the 2 docs?

Certainly, I would say the specialists are -- the hard case is they're seeing the efficacy work. And they're very used to treating those dogs very much there. I think the general practitioners, first, you have to educate them on Zenrelia because while we're all up to speed on it as the big driver, the 60,000 vet, the 30,000 vet clinics out there are doing their day-to-day thing and taking care of animals. So part of this is just educating them on the new product. Then it's educating them on the label, how to use it and then continuing to provide the scientific data. Our booster study research that we published at the ISCAID conference in October is really compelling with the use of Zenrelia with booster vaccines on older dogs and how using that and the tighter levels from those vaccines are very much the same. That's really good evidence for the vets as they get up to speed on it. So as we've said from the start, we start with vet education. We get them that experience with the product, and then we also have a value proposition. Because of the label, we did price this at a discount to the competitor on the market. It's about 20% on average because you only need one pill for the first -- at all times with Zenrelia, it's more convenient. But because the competitor needs 2 pills for the first 14 days, it makes that discount even bigger, especially on an acute dog that's only going to be on therapy for 4 to 6 weeks. But that also provides a nice value proposition for the customers and for the vet clinics to give their customers a really effective product that's also at a lower price point.

Got you. Well, let's move on to your IL-31. I think your slide deck still had a 2025 approval expectations, but I didn't see anything where it said launch expectations. Wondering if that's intentional? Or is that -- I mean, do you still expect to launch it quickly after approval?

We do expect it to launch it quickly after approval. How one defines quickly, Zenrelia was really fast. Obviously, Credelio Quattro is taking us a few more months. One thing to note on the IL-31, we do expect approval in 2025. We'll give a bigger update on this on our earnings call in February. This is a USDA product. So we do have to get state licensure from all the states post the USDA approval. So our communication is approval in '25, and we'll give a bigger update here later on in the next couple of months.

Got you. Well, I want to stick with biologics here. When we look at most of the new patient starts when we're looking at the dermatology market, it is on Cytopoint. And we're seeing Librela actually changing the vet visit dynamics. Do you think you're going to see Elanco is the first big competitor or, let's say, the second biggest monoclonal antibody company in 5 years?

Absolutely. I mean we're the second biggest today. I don't expect to go backwards on that over the next 5 years. And as I said, Ellen's team is doing a lot of research in the monoclonal area, and we're expanding our manufacturing facility in Kansas to make those monoclonals. And we're very excited about that platform that we've been developing for both Farm and Pet Health.

Got you. So maybe we can move to Washington right now. The Trump administration was looking at RFK. Now you have a lot of products regulated by the USDA. So can you just maybe talk about what would be at risk with the FDA, maybe it's very little and how you were talking -- thinking about it as a company and predicting that? And then on another regard with Washington, Republican presidents don't necessarily tend to be for -- or less in regulation of gas emissions. If not U.S., do you think that there's global appetite around global gas emissions?

Certainly a topic we've been thinking a lot about. I think we've all been thinking a lot about the -- obviously, the changing dynamics that are going to come out of Washington. Overall, we feel very good that our portfolio of products does not have significant risk from the changing administration. I think as we look at our Farm Animal products, we're keeping animals healthy to efficiently convert feed into protein. And protein is a really good nutrient for everyone to consume, and they can consume it in a very not ultra-processed form, right? You can take a chicken breast, throw it on the grill and eat it, and that's great for everybody. So again, we feel good about that portfolio. From the tariff situation, we generally don't have a lot of inputs from those key markets that have been mentioned. So we don't think that's likely to have a big impact on our business either. With respect to Bovaer, which is our methane-reducing product, a large part of that will come from the goal to continue to have animal protein with less impact on the environment. And a lot of that comes from consumer desire. The funding for this will come from the CPG companies that have big dairy businesses. A number of those are in Europe, and Europe continues to have a bigger focus on the gas emission reductions. And so the Nestlés, the Unilevers, the Danones, Mars, Starbucks here, all of us have to start complying with the CSRD regulations in Europe to report on this. There's not a compliance requirement with that reporting, but there's a lot of commitments that companies have made. For them to really impact their Scope 3 emissions, they have to impact the farm because the dairy cow does create a large part of their Scope 3 emissions. So we believe they still have those commitments and that, that will be the big driver for Bovaer.

Got you. Moving back to companion animal on Quattro. You mentioned on the call, you do not anticipate it being cannibalistic. When we saw NexGard PLUS launched last year, the year before that, it did seem to just take a lot of share from NexGard. And the Simparica Trio customers did take a lot from Simparica before they eventually took share from the NexGard kind of customers. So can you talk about your strategy that you're implementing to make sure it's market share gaining rather than just cannibalistic?

Certainly. So let me start with saying we do expect it to have a cannibalizing effect. We're seeing that with our current portfolio, but it's been the competition as consumers have moved to the all-in-one. So I'm excited to be in that category because I at least want to get the sales from my customers versus losing them to someone else and then needing to switch them back. When we think about our in-vet parasiticide business in the U.S. because as a reminder, we already have our Credelio Plus all-in-one product outside the U.S. It continues to grow well and do well. In the U.S., our complement of Interceptor Plus, Credelio, Trifexis, Advocate, it's about $300 million. It's a $4 billion-plus market. So our percent to be cannibalized is less than what NexGard was. As we look at our marketplace, a large number of vets really like the complete worm coverage that Interceptor Plus provides. That means that group that may not be using Credelio because they've decided to use Interceptor Plus with a different competitive flea and tick product are going to be ones that want Credelio Plus. And then there's going to be that opportunity to say, "Well, here. Let's have this portfolio effect of sourcing more of your product from Elanco and take Credelio as well." So we do think there's an opportunity to grow Credelio and Interceptor Plus in clinics where they're not in today as we get Credelio Quattro introduced into those clinics. So again, we do expect it will cannibalize in our guidance or our high-level outlook, which I appreciate, David, how you explained that, that there will be an impact on that -- in that standalone parasiticides. But that will be more than offset by the growth of Credelio Quattro across the U.S. vet clinics.

Got it. Well, back to the no regrets 2025 and Quattro's one of those products. I mean I know you looked at your own internal ROIC on your sales and marketing spend, and you said this is something that can drive revenue enough to support the investments that we're making. Us as investors, how should we track the progress? I mean obviously, there's just sales, but there could be things like penetration of clinics, how it's impacting other product categories, et cetera. But how to think about that? And how do we think about breakeven that you're going to achieve on the ROIC on the sales and marketing spend?

I think we start with clinic penetration. That is our first and foremost metric we're looking at for Zenrelia and that we'll look at with Credelio Quattro as well. We have to get these products in the clinic. And the more clinics we get into, the more they experience it, we're confident they're going to want more of that product because of just how good these products are. And we're hearing that from the anecdotal feedback we're getting from the different vets across the U.S. With that, we're going to keep investing in those. The real big spin when it comes to marketing dollars is the direct-to-consumer advertising, both TV ads as well as digital engagement through a lot of the different online forums. We're going to continue to look at that. The nice thing about those channels is you can measure the impact in those markets very quickly. And so there isn't less of a lag. And so we'll be very cognizant that -- to adjust our spend appropriately based off uptick and confident that with the experienced team we have that's launched a lot of these products in the U.S. previously that we've got a good road map to understand that these are creating the right level of value. You're going to see it then in the clinic penetration we report as well as just our sales growth going forward.

Got you. I just want to talk about some of your product positioning in respect to pricing in the companion animal side. So Merck sounded really great about price optimism for next year. I think Zoetis said it's going to be up higher than normal next year. So when we take products like -- that you're going up against, for example, Trio, Apoquel, I'm guessing that's going to be where they're going to raise prices. You have an opportunity with this bigger gap. Do you think that this is great for getting sales? Or do you think you would raise prices and kind of close that gap? And what are your opportunities with the competitors raising pricing?

We've just launched Zenrelia. We've launched that -- this introductory price. It's about a 20% discount to Apoquel. I'm expecting we're going to continue at our current pricing strategy as we continue to penetrate. And then we'll evaluate that over the course of 2025 and into 2026. We are currently finalizing our pricing on Credelio Quattro. Again, it's going to be arguably the most comprehensive product on the market with the full worm coverage plus this fast kill tick, and we'll price it accordingly with that value. One thing we've made a decision on is Seresto. We changed that to one everyday price at retail. That's worked really well. We're really pleased with the dispensing volumes we've been having in Seresto in 2024. And so we're not looking to change that price in 2025, given the elasticity curve and how that's played out. So our pricing will be different than those that are very concentrated only in the vet clinic, given our presence of 50-50 between farm and pet as well as our retail portfolio.

It's a great segue into vet clinics being down 2.5% this last quarter. You do have some products outside the OTC -- in the OTC arena, including Seresto, $400 million kind of product. So how are you -- describe -- or how would you characterize the current vet visit environment? And how would you describe some of the economic trade downs? Are you seeing any?

We see some trade down at retail, but often that's within the retail customer segment more so than people switching from the vet clinic into retail. So retail continues to be in the U.S., a large part of it being folks that don't go to the vet clinic regularly and maybe are even treating or just loyal Seresto users because it provides so much value for 8 months of coverage. Overall, our launches give us real excitement. We factored in the vet clinic trying to -- visit trend into our numbers for next year. But given the new innovation we're bringing, that will drive a bigger part for us than a needed change in vet clinic visits.

Thank you so much, Todd.

Thank you.