Virbac SA (VIRP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased to welcome you in Paris for the Virbac 2021 First Half Results. Hosting the call today, Manuela Rodríguez, and my colleague Sandrine Brunel, Head of Communication. And we will be joined by Sébastien Huron, Chief Executive Officer; and Habib Ramdani, Chief Financial Officer. All the financials have been posted on our website, and you will be able to pose the question either on the chat for those attending virtually or live for those being there. I turn now the floor to Habib Ramdani and Sébastien Huron. Thank you.

Thank you, Manuela. Good afternoon and good morning to all of you. We are extremely pleased to be able to host that financial presentation physically with all of you as well as through the web. So as usual, we are going to have this presentation split in 2 parts. The first one will be dedicated to the presentation of the financial results. And the second part will be dedicated to more strategic information and qualitative information about our performance, and Sébastien will do it. So let's move to the first 2 slides, which will summarize the financial performance over the first semester 2021. So first, as you can see, we are extremely pleased to share with you an excellent performance that we've had on the top line for the first 6 months of 2021 with a growth of 21.3% at constant rate and scope versus last year. So this performance has been driven by all of our regions that are having a very good dynamic as well as all of our engines that are growing double digits in an extremely dynamic market, and we'll talk about that later on. This very good performance on the top line translated into a very strong increase of our EBIT adjusted. As you can see, we have added EUR 22 million versus last year at constant exchange rates, leading to close to 20% EBITA ratio to revenue, which is probably one of the highest that we have had. However, it's worth mentioning now that we don't expect to remain at that level for the year-end, as you will see in the update of our guidance. So this performance has been driven by several factors. The first one is obviously the strong gross margin contribution of all of our regions in the context that I shared with you on the top line as well as by a positive product mix despite the divestment of Sentinel that we have had. Another impact is a one-off positive impact that we have recorded for the first semester. We have had around EUR 7 million of one-off positive impact, including, for instance, EUR 4 million, which is compensation from Elanco on development costs on the project that has been transferred, whereas we don't have yet the associated R&D costs recorded in our P&L. We also had EUR 1.6 million of reversal of provision related to a dispute that we've had, which is having a one-off impact for this semester. So all of those one-off elements are accounted for 1.2 points of additional EBITA for the first semester. Finally, this performance has been sort of mitigated a little bit by a rebound on expenses, rebound in a context where, if you remember, we have had a slowdown, a significant slowdown of our expenses last year for the first semester of 2020 in the context of the COVID crisis. So we have had a rebound, an expected rebound, which is on several line of costs, such as commercial cost, R&D cost and some corporate cost as well, and we'll come back to that. Finally, on this slide, the ForEx impact. As you can see, we continue to have a negative ForEx impact. It has an unfavorable impact on our sales of around EUR 16 million. But it also impacted our cost base, which resulted into a limited EBITA impact of only EUR 2 million. So very briefly on the exchange rate. So those are all of the currencies to which we are exposed. And you see that for most of them, they have depreciated versus the euro, including the USD, the Japanese yen and some Latin America currencies as well, such as the real or the Mexican peso. So if we continue down the P&L, you can see that we have had a very positive improvement of our net profit at EUR 74.4 million versus EUR 49.7 million last year at real rate. And this improvement has been driven by the dynamic of our top line as well as the cost control that we've had over this semester. To a lesser extent, the decrease of our net cost of financing. You remember that we divested Sentinel and we've been able to reimburse a good portion of our debt. So associated to that, we have had a decrease of the net cost of financing. And finally, a favorable comparison on the exchange rate as well. Last year, we've been impacted by the depreciation of the CLP, the Chilean currency versus euro. Whereas this year, the CLP appreciated a little bit, so we had a 0 exchange rate impact. So a favorable comparison versus last year. From a cash situation, you can see that we continue to be positive at EUR 54.5 million, cash positive versus EUR 63.4 million, which is a slight decrease versus the end -- year-end 2020. And this decrease is essentially explained by the cash generation profile of Virbac, in which we are essentially generating cash during the second part of the year due to a certain seasonality, for instance, the payment of year-end rebates that are done in the beginning of the year. So this is not unusual, and we expect to generate cash, the cash for the year during the second part of 2021. This seasonality, as you can see on the slide, has been increased, I shall say, in this year due to 2 elements. The first one is payment of dividend. We have paid some dividend associated with last year result in June this year for around EUR 6.3 million as well as an increase of our working capital, so additional working capital needs that is essentially linked to the improvement of our activity and the revenue. So we have had an increase of inventories as well as accounts receivable. It's worth mentioning as well, we come back to that, that part of the increase of inventory is also associated with the implementation of safety stock in the context of the COVID. Finally, we continue to deleverage. As you can see, the net debt on EBITDA ratio is now continue to be negative for this semester, at the end of this semester, and we are at 0.2. So let's move now to the sales. We have consolidated EUR 529 million of sales for the first 6 months of 2021, which is 11% growth versus last year. At constant rates, it's even a 14% growth. And you remember that we divested Sentinel last year, which creates a perimeter impact, a significant perimeter impact. So if we restate for that divestment, the growth on a comparable basis is at 21.3% versus 2020, so an excellent performance. Let's have a look at where this growth of sales is coming from, from a region standpoint. So we've added EUR 51 million of sales, which is EUR 67 million at constant rate, or even EUR 94 million if we restate for Sentinel. So among those EUR 94 million additional sales, EUR 15 million is coming from the U.S. Sébastien will come back to that. We have had a very good performance on all of our ranges, parasiticides, dermatology, specialty product. And EUR 36 million is coming from Europe, where we have had an excellent performance, 19% growth versus last year, with all of the countries contributed to that and France leading the way in terms of contribution to additional sales. And finally, an excellent performance as well in the rest of the world, as you can see, 20.6% growth. And I suggest we go a little bit more into the details with this slide. So for rest of the world, Latin America is contributing 11% more, including a decrease of our sales in Chile, which is the only country where we are decreasing versus last year. And we'll come back to that with some more elements in the second part of the presentation. So in Latin America, our 2 biggest countries, Mexico and Brazil, are driving this fantastic performance. Asia has been doing well. As you can see, 33% growth. If you remember last year, for the first 6 months were sort of stable in Asia. So they've been impacted by the COVID crisis. So we've had not only a rebound but also a very good growth in all of our countries. Africa, Middle East contributing 28% and Pacific 13.4% growth. Within Africa, Middle East, Asia and Pacific, we can mention that India is contributing to half of the growth of the semester. So we have had a fantastic rebound in India, and we'll cover that as well with more details later on. Let's move to the same analysis where the growth is coming from, but by segment, starting with all of the segments within companion animals. So as you can see, it's red everywhere with double-digit growth and even more than 20% growth. Parasiticides is the only segment that is decreasing, but it's linked to the divestment of Sentinel. If we restate for the divestment of Sentinel, we are growing EUR 11 million on that line. Specialty segment. Specialty segment is leading the way with a 32% growth. In this segment, we have products such as Suprelorin that continue to perform very well, anesthetic product as well, Movoflex in the U.S. as well as the 2 products that have been acquired from Elanco, Clomicalm and Itrafungol, that are also contributing to the growth, adding EUR 4 million. Antibiotics/dermatology as well as the other segments, more than 20%; and the pet food, 25%. So a fantastic performance there as well, adding close to EUR 8 million of sales, half of it being made in France. And final comment on biologicals, 21.6% growth. You remember that last year, this segment has been impacted by the shutdown of -- for several weeks of our worldwide dog and cat manufacturing vaccine manufacturing facility. Following industrial issue, we had a pipeline rupture. So we've been able to rebound very well on that segment for these first 6 months. And we've offset nearly entirely the loss of sales that we had last year. If we move now to the food-producing animal segment, you see that the pattern is very similar with double-digit growth everywhere. Nutritional segment is leading the way with 35% growth. In this segment, we were negative last year. So we are having a base effect, and it's essentially explained by the very good performance of India. Antibiotics are growing significantly as well, 21%. 40% of that growth has been made in Europe and the rest in Latin America and Asia. And the parasiticides as well with more than 20% growth. And finally, aquaculture is the only segment, as I mentioned, where we are decreasing. And we'll come back to that later on. So from a sales breakdown by region and business, which is a presentation that excludes Sentinel, to be on a comparable basis between 2020 and 2021, you can see that the pattern has not really changed versus last year. So let's move now to the profit and loss statement at real rates. So I mentioned the net sales improvement at close to 11%. The gross margin on material costs has remained stable in a ratio, 67.4% last year and 67.3% this year. We see now on the next line, which is the net expenses, the growth and the rebound I mentioned. We are growing 6% on this line, which is even a 9% when we restate for the one-off, the Elanco contribution as well as the reversal of provision. And this 9% growth on our expenses is explained by, first and obviously, the dynamic of our activity, especially on the industrial segments as well as the rebound on costs, on commercial activities as well as R&D. And you'll see that we've spent an additional EUR 5 million in R&D versus last year on a comparable basis. If we continue to go down the profit and loss statement, you see the line amortization of intangible assets arising from acquisition, that is decreasing, moving from EUR 6 million to EUR 2.2 million. This is essentially explained by the divestment of Sentinel. If we look at the noncurrent income and expenses, we have recorded nothing in this semester. Whereas last year, we had an impairment on one of our assets, CaniLeish vaccines, for a little bit less than EUR 5 million. The net financial expenses are decreasing, as I mentioned in my introduction, moving from EUR 8.7 million to EUR 1.6 million, so a significant decrease. Half of it is linked to the decrease of our net financial cost and the rest is explained by the exchange rates favorable comparison versus last year. We had a negative exchange rate impact last year on the CLP. Income tax is growing moving from EUR 15.7 million to EUR 27.2 million, which is in line with the growth of our activity. Our effective tax rate remained stable versus last year at around 27%, 28%. So all in all, we are increasing significantly our net result of consolidated entities, moving from close to EUR 50 million last year to close to EUR 75 million this year. So an excellent performance again for this semester. So let's go into a little bit more details. I'll come back to the EBIT-adjusted evolution, sharing some elements, explaining where this improvement is coming from. So we've added EUR 25 million. You see that Europe and rest of the world have contributed significantly in line with the dynamic of our sales as well as the -- mitigated a little bit, obviously, by the rebound in commercial expenses but in the context of cost control, which enabled us to have a very good operational lever. North America is decreasing, but this is essentially linked to the divestment of Sentinel. You remember maybe that last year, we were at EUR 20 million of EBIT adjusted before R&D contribution for the U.S. So we continue to remain positive despite the EUR 12 million decrease and despite the Sentinel divestment, which is a good thing. R&D, we are spending EUR 1.5 million more. But as I mentioned, we recorded the EUR 4 million compensation for the product acquired from Elanco. So on a comparable basis, we are adding EUR 5.5 million of R&D spending. Last year, we have had to slow down our development studies and clinical studies in the context of the COVID. So we have resumed our activities in a more normal manner. Corporate is also increasing, EUR 2.8 million, which is the consequence of the rebound in expenses that I mentioned. So this translates into a nice improvement of our cash flow. As you can see on the slide, we are adding close to EUR 20 million of operating cash flow, EUR 20 million also more of net cash flow, which is a 19% improvement on the operating cash flow and 29% improvement on the net cash flow. Let's stop for a couple of minutes on the free cash flow generation. You can see that we have had close to 0 net free cash flow for these first 6 months, which is, as I mentioned, essentially explained by the seasonality of our generation of net free cash flow. And if we give some more details on the different components of the evolution, the first one is the CapEx investment, which has increased from last year, moving to a little bit more than EUR 10 million to slightly more than EUR 20 million for this semester. The working capital requirement has increased as well at EUR 66 million. I mentioned that we have had our inventories that have increased comparing to end of 2020. This is in line with the increase of our activity and the dynamic of our sales as well as to a certain extent to the creation of -- or increase of safety stock in some of our units. Accounts receivable has increased as well during the period. But also, they're completely in line with the increase of our activity. And finally, we can mention and remind everybody that last year, we had benefited from COVID-19 preservation measures in many countries where we have had the possibility to push back some payments such as social payments or tax payments, which we benefited. So those payments have been pushed back to the second part of the year. And this generated a positive, around EUR 10 million positive working capital requirements impact in 2020. And obviously, we no longer have that positive impact for this year. So all of that translates, as I mentioned, I shared earlier, to an evolution of our net debt, which is slightly decreasing versus the end of the year at EUR 54.5 million. And we expect, and we'll come back to that later on, to generate around EUR 60 million of net free cash flow during the second part of the year and thus during the entire 2021. If we move to the balance sheet analysis, not a lot to say there. If we compare 2020 to 2021, we see essentially the increase of our working capital in line with what I shared earlier on the net free cash flow generation. From a financial ratio standpoint, they are all negative due to our positive cash situation. And as I mentioned, we continue to be in a very favorable financial situation with a cash-positive situation for the group. And the final slide on this financial section is to share with you the shareholding structure of Virbac. It has not changed materially versus the end of the year. The Dick family continue to have, to hold close to 50% of the shares and a little bit more than 65% of the voting rights. With that, I will hand over to Sébastien for the second part of the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Habib. So welcome to all of you. So I will update you briefly on the strategy execution and the perspective of the group. So among our priority, it's written '21 priority but they are pluriannual priorities, we are focusing firstly on people and doing everything we can to have the best and most engaged staff of the industry. Of course, it seems to be words that everyone can put on the screen. But in fact, it means a lot to us and we are doing a lot. And I will commend the Great Place to Work results we had this year, for instance, where we had a huge improvement. And this is because we are really convinced that performance and pleasure are 2 things that must go together, and it's not one instead of the other one. The second objective was to generate accretive growth. And by this, we mean to beat the market, to grow much faster than the market. And you will see we have accelerated the gap versus the market growth. Trying to do that in a very profitable and sustainable manner, which means to work on the margin ratio of the product, trying to improve the product mix and the margin of the products while containing the OpEx in order to improve the bottom line. And we had, many years ago, said that we wanted to try to reach the 15% EBITA target. And you will see that we will start to communicate about a new target around 20%, as we have now reached the 15% target. At the same time, we mentioned that we were taking advantage of the good health of the company to further invest in, what I will call, simplify and digitalize the company, trying to make investments in system, improving the productivity and trying to prepare the future. And we do the same with R&D, where we are investing more in R&D and trying to bring more product in the pipeline while also trying to reorganize the industrial settings. You will see we have divested a plant in -- near Paris, who was producing antibiotics. And we are trying to make investments in biology and vaccines in [indiscernible]. So a lot of things ongoing. And we are very pleased with the performance. So I'm not going to comment on it. Habib has already explained that we are growing 21% at constant rate and perimeter. So we are quite happy. But maybe for you, the most important element is to see that we are growing faster than the market, at least for the last 3 years. So for the 3 consecutive years, we are beating the market. And on the last data, we are beating the market in all the regions with 4 points above market over the last 12 months if you look at the rolling forecast, and more than 7 points in the first half of this year, which means that we are accelerating the gap versus market growth. And we have a really good execution of the strategy and a good performance. Because of that, of course, the EBITA is now around 20% in the first half and the cash situation you know. I'm not going to comment all the list. You can read it yourself. Just to say that we have been quite successfully in managing the COVID situation. It's much easier for us because we're in a pharmaceutical industry, so we know what COVID is. And so maybe it helps a lot. But the team has really displayed, what I was mentioning before, a level of engagement and resilience, which was quite incredible. We have been quite successful in small acquisitions, which may not have been so commented. But we got the rights of an innovative parasiticide product, which is under development now in Virbac. And it could come to market in the coming years. It is not very short term but could be a nice product midterm. We have acquired the worldwide rights of Clomicalm and Itrafungol. We have acquired iVET, which is a pet food company in the U.S., which will help us have very original and totally controlled distribution system, which will allow us to make home delivery and delivery to vets also directly under our own control. So it's something that we talk about market access. That's something we are looking at. We have divested the manufacturing side of Magny, I mentioned it. And we have the Virbac 2030 plan, which is a long-term strategic plan. And I will comment on it later as we have started to work with the team. Great Place to Work, I mentioned it before. We have a very significant improvement to the point that the people from Great Place Work said that they have never seen such an increase in only 1 -- in 2 years, which means only 1 gap between 2 studies. So they were really impressed with the gap. And we are accelerating the digital transformation of the company. In terms of performance, what is really striking this time is that it is really, really homogeneous everywhere. All countries, all product line, you have double-digit growth. So we see in the country, I have listed some: India, Brazil, Mexico, U.K., but also in Europe, like France, Spain. In terms of buster, we are for many years now publishing the double-digit growth, but it's still pushing high: 25% pet food; 26% in the chews, Veggiedent; 29% on Suprelorin. So you see it's a strong dynamic. And here, there are no geo extension. For instance, pet food, we have not yet launched neither in the U.S., neither in China. So it's purely organic growth in the market where we are present. And then we have launched some new products. Tulissin is tulathromycin, for instance, in Europe and Latin America. It's not yet launched in the U.S., where the biggest market is, but it is our attention. So now I'm focusing on the 5 countries. Just to give you a quick overlook with a bit more details. So in the U.S., we have a very good performance overall, growing 36% if we exclude Sentinel. It comes from all across the range, especially products like Movoflex but also the dentals, the new products have helped. What is maybe important for you is upcoming launches. We have launched Milbehart in July. So it's not in the first half figures. But Milbehart is milbemycin flavored tabs, which is basically a generic of Interceptor. So you will remember, we have divested Sentinel. But we have managed to make a deal in order to come back in this market with a generic of Interceptor. We have -- we are going to launch HPM pet food. We have had a little bit of delay. But because this is so important, we prefer to do it perfectly well even if it means to delay it for 1 or 2 months. So it's still planned but a little bit delayed. And so it will be in the next 6 months that you will be -- see this product on the market. And same thing for Tulissin. Even on this one, we have good news recently from the FDA. So normally, we are in the last stage before registration and launch. And we will launch this product both cattle and swine. So that means that for the U.S., we should have a good dynamic with pet food launch and FPA entry in the coming months. Chile. Chile, we mentioned it last year. We knew it will be difficult. We knew it will be a difficult year. It's a very cyclical market, but also, we know in advance what the market will be. The beauty of this market is we know when the producers are putting small fishes in the water, smolts, whether there will be more fish to be vaccinated or not the year after. So we knew that last year, there was 10% smolts less in the water. So the market will be decreasing at least by 10%. Then there was other factors like the fact that last year, the people -- the producer were stuck with their stocks of salmon because suddenly the restaurant were closed. And so to keep the salmon in the water, they have put more antibiotics and put more parasiticide during the year last year. So we had a very good sales in 2020 at the beginning of the year. And of course, this makes a negative base effect when we compare the first half of this year. And then we had some other elements, like for instance, we have a delay in the renewal of a parasiticide product. And we lost significant amount of sales in the first half of this year, which we should recover in the second half now that we obtained the renewal from the authorities for this product. So all that to say that we believe the market will improve, the condition will improve in the second half and next year. We are continuously spending money in R&D to be on track for the April 22 vaccines new restoration process. You know, up to now, the vaccines were registered only for 1 year, and it was renewed every year. Now there will be a definitive approval of the vaccine, definitive one. So forever normally and -- but with new requirements. So we need to submit the dossier dose by April '22. We are on track at the moment, but there is still some work to be done. And we are trying to improve and focus more on the margin now with the manufacturing site. We have acquired 50% of the share of Centrovet. You know we had an option, a call that was to be decided at the mid of this year. So we decided to acquire more shares. We have bought the share -- all the shares of one of the shareholders. And we are discussing with the second shareholder to see what we will do. And normally, we should progress in the coming weeks with finalizing with the second one. In India, we have a tremendous performance over the last 1 year now. It started mid last year. It's starting -- it's keeping now. So we are growing 50%, 51%. We explain that by 2 major reasons. One is the shutdown of some of our competition. You know we are the #1 animal health company in India. So we have close to 1,000 people in the country. We are very visible, very powerful. At the same time, we are an easy target for all the smaller players that try to copy us. And so in the past, we were damaged, in fact, by many copies of small products that were trying to copy from price. And with the COVID, many of this very small players seems to have disappeared. So we are enjoying a very healthy growth over the last 1 year. And the demand remains solid. And the team is working, that's the second reason. The team is really doing a great job. We have a really excellent team there. And our #1 position give us also strong power negotiation with supplier, with the distribution system. So we are in a very good shape at the moment to keep growing. And according to our affiliates and based on the feedback we got from them, they see that the business keeps growing at the moment. So it seems that the demand remains quite strong at the moment, even if we will have a negative base effect on the second half because last year, we had a very good year -- very good end of the year also in India. And then we focus on profitability there as well. The margin has improved over the last 3 to 4 years. And with the top line increasing so quickly, the OpEx ratio is decreasing. So we try also there to improve our profitability. France. It's rarely that we talk about France, but France is our second largest affiliate. So after the U.S., it was the second one. So it's nice to talk about it, especially because they are gaining market share as well for a long time. And to see that they are growing close to 20%, it's not every day we see that. So it's a very good performance in France. I wanted to highlight that we have 18% market share or near 18% market share in pet food because many of you ask what is the potential in pet food. So it just gives you an indication of what we can achieve in the best country we have. Of course, France is atypical. I mean atypical because it's our first country. We have a very strong image, a very strong relationship. So we don't say we can duplicate or replicate that in other countries. But even if you take 1/3 of that, 6% or 10% or whatever, for other country, it will give you a clue of what could be done in pet food because we are capable of being #2 or #3 in the vet channels in pet food. We are launching -- we are growing everywhere, almost. And we start to have more significant price increases. With the inflation raising, we take the opportunity of a more important price increase. And that will probably help the top line as well in the coming semester, in the coming year. And here, what maybe you want to note is the fact that we are going to launch a very innovative product. It's a once-a-week antiinflammatory treatment for arthritis, Daxocox, which is quite innovative because normally, you give a tablet once a day to the dog. And for the one who have a dog and try to give a tablet every day, the fact to be able to give it only once a week is a very nice advantage. And Habib was quite positive about the vaccine. So I will be a little bit less positive in the sense that we have many lost opportunities. So yes, we have recovered perfectly well. But the market is growing very fast. The vets have had a lot of visits. And so in fact, we are still suffering from lack of vaccines. We still have very significant back orders. And if we will be able to produce more, we will sell more. So we expect a slow recovery of what could be the potential. Even if the figures looks good, it does not look good enough at the moment. China. China has been a bit deceiving over the last 2 years, I could say, because we had a very strong growth and then -- for the last 2 years. But we have a change in the team. We changed the management because previous General Manager was retiring. And so we have a bit of a transition. And with the COVID and everything, it was a bit difficult to really keep the dynamic we wanted to establish. But now we are back on track, and we have obtained a very, very long list of new product registration. I listed some there, Milpro, Effitix. And you know in China, when you look at companion animal, there are 2 main segments, parasiticides and vaccines. So we will be coming with many new products, many parasiticide. And so we are very confident about what China will deliver next year. And we will be aggressive in investing in commercial forces, in people on the ground in '22 and '23, like we did in the past in India and it was very successful. So we will do the same in China. And we are quite positive about the trend in this country over the next 2 to 3 years. Over the last 5 years, we did 26%. So it's not very bad, but it's not as good as we would have expected. And we expect it to be more in the coming years. That was a focus on the country. Now briefly, I had -- I have presented this slide on the Virbac 2030 strategy at the last meeting. Just to say that we have 3 main area of focus. One is pet food and pet care that we want to accelerate. Two, focus on vaccines because we believe vaccines is a very high barrier of entry. And when you look at food-producing animal, it's mostly a vaccine market because antibiotics production, because the -- by the type of production, this is really what dominates. Whether it's pigs, poultry or aquaculture, it's -- close to 70% of the market is vaccine. So we want to be more in vaccine. We want to further invest in vaccines to participate more in these segments and to be more focused on the pharmaceutical specialties. So that's what we have explained last time with a goal to grow much faster in these 3 segments. And what we have done since then is to establish cross-functional teams, where we are currently working on 10 projects and streams. One of them is the purpose, the moment everyone works on the raison d’être, so the purpose of the company. So that is something we have initiated. It is also quite engaging for the team to think and to try to contribute to that. But there is also the dimension of the culture. And the culture of the company is quite important because this is what put all the people together and bring this dynamism that we see and this engagement that we see. We have a team working on where do we stand in the market trends. We have seen in the past that Virbac was not very well positioned. We had, for instance, a very high proportion of swine antibiotics. So we were with premixes and antibiotics in swine when some of our competition was on poultry vaccines. And so when we were comparing the growth of the 2 companies, we say, Virbac is a bit underperforming versus others, but we were outperforming the market, but we were not in the right market. So suffering on the antibiotic in swine while others was enjoying the poultry vaccine growth. So we are looking at that on the country level, on a segment level. And we try to adjust when it is possible, of course, to try to be more in line with the market trends in order to benefit from the market dynamics. Pet food, pet care, biology, pharmaceutical, it's what I mentioned before. This is the 3 area of focus. So we are working with our teams to see what we do exactly, what kind of innovation we can do in pet food. And you will see things coming in the coming years. Industrial strategy and competitiveness, this is things we will update you over the time. From time to time, we will maybe make a focus on one of these projects. Differentiating innovation, it's for instance, to try to accelerate innovation through more outsource. We are structuring our team in order to be able to do more collaboration, more partnership and to outsource more R&D in order to speed up and increase the bandwidth of new products and trying to bring more new products at once. Programmatic M&A, this is what we have explained. We want to try to find a small- to midsize company. We don't want to make a huge, big transformational acquisition, but we are looking. And there are a few things currently that we are looking at. Market access is something very important. I mentioned it with iVET. And, of course, the environment, social and governance, which is something very important as well that we are focusing on. Because we have reached -- we have informed that we will be around 16% this year, the target 15% is not a target anymore. So now we wanted to confirm what we have said already 1 or 2 years ago. We started to mention it 1 or 2 years ago when we were asked. There was no structural reason why Virbac could not reach 20% EBITA. So this is a new ambition we will fix to the company, to reach 20% EBITA. It's difficult to say when we will reach that because it will depend about so many factors. We knew that when we divested Sentinel, we thought we will take more time to reach 15%. Because of the market dynamics and a good strategic execution, we have been able to reach the 15% target before what we announced despite the divestment, but this was not so evident a few years ago. So we have not precisely informed a date because it will depend if we make an acquisition or how the top line will evolve. But we say that there is no structural reason why we cannot keep improving the performance and reach the 20% EBITA, which is our ambition now and our target now. And what we say that probably we need first to consolidate the 15%, 16% ratio we have reached -- we will reach this year normally because there may be some rebound in OpEx and something like that. So we need to be cautious that the first year may be a consolidation of where we are today. But we really thrive to go to the 20% as quickly as we can, of course. And you see that for that, we have a quite rich pipeline. We have some delay. If you look at March, I think March of last year a template, you will see that in 2021, we had planned for more sales. And some of these were delayed. Just to be totally transparent, pet food in the U.S. and food-producing animal in the U.S. were delayed by a few months. It doesn't change the picture, but it just moved from 1 year to another one. So you see that you have very good pipeline starting next year. And of course, these are peak sales, which by convention, is the third year of sales, right? It's listed at the bottom of the chart, it's important. This is not the sales in the year you see. This is a year of launch, 2022, for instance. This is a product will be launched. They will do EUR 54 million in 2025, okay? And so the guidance has been revised and increased. And now we plan to reach between 14% and 17% growth at constant rate and scope. We expect to be around 16% of EBITA ratio at constant rates. So CapEx, we still try to make around the EUR 60 million. You saw that we were above EUR 20 million at the end of June. So we are a bit below, but we still would like to invest to -- for the productivity and everything we explained before. And in terms of net free cash flow, as Habib explained, the second half is normally where we generate most of the cash. And we have decided to have a higher stock level at the first half on purpose because when the COVID crisis hit it at the beginning of the year, there was a lot of logistic disruption. There was a lot of discussion about packaging, plenty of things like that. And we didn't want to take any risk. So it was on purpose that we have increased our stocks. But this is things we can improve in the second half. So we should be able to generate around EUR 60 million of cash until the end of this year. And this is all for today. Thank you very much.

So we're moving to the Q&A session.

So again, moving to the Q&A session.

Okay. In English, I guess. So 3 questions maybe to start. One would be on M&A. Can you help us to see and provide some granularity on the states of your discussions and what you're looking at and maybe in terms of timing, size and so on? That's the first question. The second one would relate to the volume activities that we have seen very robust last year and since the beginning of the year. How sustainable would you see those volumes and how recurring are those levels of growth? And last question with regards OpEx and operational expenditure. Let's put it this way. If we were to think about a basis of 100 pre-COVID, how would you consider that post pandemic, the normative level of expenditure, notably given that some of your expenditure in marketing would probably be below the pre-COVID levels? On what basis should we land?

I'll try. You complete that. So I'll start by the second one first on the volumes. I will try to be as complete as possible. So I think that first, to understand in the current growth, we have -- a significant part of it will come from the volumes, okay? There is a part coming from the price increase. And there is a part coming from the new products, okay? But if I talk about volumes, just talking about the base business without the new product and without the price increase, so it's only a portion of the increase. And if I put apart the fact that we are beating the market because there is a gap also versus market growth so the market could slow down and if we keep accelerating versus the market, we could have a different dynamic. But answering just your question, the growth is coming from 3 things: higher level of adoption; much higher level of vet visits, vet visits to the vet clinics; and higher spending from the pet owner, who goes to the vet clinics. So there are 3 elements. The adoption, I don't believe people will get rid of all the animals we have just adopted. We have always some publication that they took about 7,000 of abandoned during the summer in France, so okay, but I don't think that at a macro level, this will be very significant. So maybe, I don't know, 10% of the people who have adopted will regret and abandon their animal, but I don't believe this will be major. So I'll say the adoption, it's a step we took and it will remain. But I don't think the growth we had seen will keep. So you have the -- what we have will remain. But it will not be every year that there will be an increase in adoption like that. This, I don't believe. So -- but then when you adopt a puppy, normally, you go to the vets every 3 months or whatever, every 6 months for the first 2 years. Normally, the dogs go to the vets a lot for the first 2 years. And then they go again to the vets when they are older. But when they are adult, they go less frequently. They go once a year normally for the vaccines. So all that will contribute a bit. The second thing is the number of visits, which has increased. That is maybe linked to the home office work. People working from home, they see their dogs, their cats. They see them scratching or working, having something. And so maybe that helps also the number of visits to increase. This probably will slow down. We expect that there will be much less visit to the vet once people will totally reopen. But totally reopen, I don't also -- I don't know when it will happen, either. So it's difficult to say. But of course, the dynamic in the frequency of visits to vets should probably reduce. And the third event is the spending. This, I don't know how it will evolve. But we could also assume that because the people have saved a lot of money, not going to the restaurant, not going outside, not traveling, not going on vacation, this will also be more balanced in the coming years. So I guess the -- what we have -- increase will remain. I don't see that it will go down, but I don't see it to keep increasing like that, if I can answer on this way. At the -- in place of that, in place of volume, I see that price will increase higher and faster. I believe there is a comeback of inflation, which we were not used to. And so in many countries, we see that people start to increase price. So you may have a different dynamic with maybe less volume, maybe more price increase. And for us, we may have more new products. So in the end, I expect a slowdown, I will say, versus what we see because it's not sustainable probably at this level. But I'm still quite positive about the outlook. On the OpEx ratio, it's a very difficult one because we are really -- as I mentioned in the slide, we are trying to be very adaptable, very flexible. The same way we have a crisis, we shut down everything and we cut OpEx as much as we can. When we have good opportunities, it's the case in China now, we want to overinvest. So we try to be smart and not to be preconditioned too much by dogma, whatever. We look at the activity, and we adjust to it. So what is for sure is that the level of spending will not go back to the 100% we had in 2019. That's for sure because people will travel less. We have put in place new habits. But there are so different source of spending. So marketing, A&P, I don't know because we're spending more in digital now. So it's a different source of spending, but they will still be spending. Seminars, we will start again to do some seminars. People need to get together. They need to meet. They need to talk. So -- but there will be much less travel, many more video conferences. It will also depend on the competition, what we will do. It will also depend on the main events, for instance, the congresses and things like that. Many of them are virtual today still. Maybe we will start to do them physically next year, and in which case, you need to attend. So it's difficult to put a percentage. What I can say that we will certainly not come back to the 100% we had before the crisis at constant scope. Now it depends on the activity.

[indiscernible].

No. Again, when you go to 20% growth on the top line, it depends if you think about the ratio or absolute value. So in absolute value, you may not see any savings. But in ratio, you will see savings, for instance, in travel and things like that. That's for sure, you will have savings there. And we will not reallocate the money spend on trial and other things. What I'm saying is maybe there will not be savings on A&P, for instance. On A&P, maybe there will be no savings. Do you want to complete on that?

No. Maybe just a comment on the inflation as well, which could be slightly different for next year. So that's why it's so difficult to compare.

And your first question was?

M&A.

About acquisition and what is in...

M&A, so that's, of course, confidential and difficult to share. Now we have a few discussions going with a small company. You have more and more pipeline companies. So you have a company who come to you when they are close to launch a product. And we have 3 or 4 products in the pipeline, for instance. This is the kind of acquisition we are looking at, which is very accretive by definition because you will get a new product that will go and that you can launch the way you want. So that's one way of looking at acquisition. Then we have another one, which I cannot comment. And -- otherwise, we look also at some joint venture in certain markets. But all this is confidential, so I can't comment too much.

Manuela, do you have any question in the chat?

Not yet.

I'm arriving to take the microphone.

Could you quantify out of the EUR 66 million increase in working capital requirement, what is the impact of the safety net inventory buildup? Is it marginal, EUR 5 million or significant EUR 20 million?

EUR 37 million, I think. Stocks...

So the amount of stock is around between EUR 35 million and EUR 40 million out of the EUR 60 million, EUR 66 million. That's the part of the stock. And obviously, the increase of inventory is driven by the activity and to a certain extent to the safety stock. I would say 10% is probably -- 10%, 15% probably linked to the safety stock. That's the order of magnitude. So the majority of it is really linked to the activity to what -- to the increase of revenue that we are having.

Manuela, any questions through e-mail, Hangouts, SMS, text, or nothing?

Let me check.

Okay. One additional question on cost of goods. Would you have interesting comments to share with us regarding cost of transportation, raw materials? And is it possible to quantify already some increasing cost for you? And when, how much should we have an impact also on that?

Yes. I think overall, I see inflation as being positive to us because the price elasticity of our market is not very important. And normally, you can pass on the price increase you have. So it forced even you to pass or justify the price increase. And so when you increase price, you increase the price on 100% of the top line. And when you increase the cost of good, you increased on the raw material, which is a small portion of the total. So it's even better over the margin, I would say. But to answer your question, it's -- so far, except in certain kind of product category where it would be more important in the classical pharma business, it's not far away from the inflation, what I have seen so far.

Yes, definitely. And where it's significantly above inflation, such as transportation, some components, packaging, where we see some huge increase, it's a very -- it's not a very huge part of our cost of goods. So it's a tiny part of our cost of goods. So it doesn't really have an impact on a consolidated level. But for the API, which is obviously a very good portion of our cost of goods, that's what Sébastien said, it's more or less in line with inflation. We don't see an increase above or beyond that.

We have a question on the chat regarding the 20% margin target. So buyback, you used to have a EUR 50 million term target. And at the time, that was understood that there was some structural reason within the buyback cost structure, why margins were harder to increase materially. What are the key levers to get to the 20%?

It's the same as to get 15%. It's true that historically, before the Sentinel crisis, we were -- we have never reached above 15%. We were at 14.7%, the highest level, but the lever is the same. It is a lot of discipline. It is to grow the top line faster than the market. And we know that when we grow the top line at 4%, it is difficult to improve profitability because of the recurring cost structure, which improved more or less by the same level. When we improve top line by 6%, we manage it. And when we improve it by 8%, it's very, very easy. So it's linked to top line. We can now add M&A, which before we could not add over the last 5 years. But the #1 driver is the top line. Honestly, it's really top line. The second one is, of course, the ability within the top line to improve the margin and the product mix and the price is what we have discussed 2 minutes ago. And the last is controlling OpEx, but this one will not be a strong lever anymore because you understood that with the COVID, somebody did the job for us. So the OpEx control has been forced down to all our team. And so now we have to work on the 2 of our levers, top line and margin -- and control so that the rebound will not be too strong.

Thank you. The Virbac team has received the message.

But the other lever is more presence in vaccines U.S. and buster. Maybe the other lever will be to have 1 or 2 big, big product that will really make our life much easier. So we work on that.

[Foreign Language]

A question regarding the concentration of your portfolio and the blockbuster effect. Is it possible to have a split of your sales by the top 10, top 20, top 50 products or whatever so that we can have the current picture? And how do you see it by '25 or even 2030, please?

We have that, but we don't share it exactly. We want that. We don't share it. What I can tell you is we have many midsize products. Our midsize product being between, let's say, EUR 5 million and EUR 30 million. Let's talk a bit like this. So it's not buster on because for us, it's above 50. And for the market, it's above 100. But above 100, you have only 20 products. So let's talk about 50 as being a good reference. So we need to have more product or products above EUR 50 million. At the moment, we have many of them between EUR 5 million and EUR 30 million, and it's a very balanced portfolio. We have a normal or classical portfolio, I guess, even very solid and very diversified. Much more diversified than the competition because we have pet food, vaccines, pharmaceutical, diagnostic and so on. But we are lacking to have, well, 2, 3 above EUR 50 million product. And so this is what we have tried to build commercially, spending resources on some of these products, the Veggiedent, the pet food, the Suprelorin. Now the commercial busters, the one we would like to bring at a very high level, when pet food is above EUR 50 million. So in one way, it is a buster. But of course, it's a range of products. It's not one product. Suprelorin is not yet there. Veggiedent, it's a nonpharmaceutical product, so we consider it as a buster status. But we have also invested in R&D, in bringing new buster product, innovative buster. And these are under works. And there, I cannot comment because it's -- by definition, because it's R&D. It's very uncertain. So you cannot be sure if it will come and when it will come. But if some of these products materialize, we have a potential buster in our pipeline. And I think maybe for the first time of the history, as far as I recall it, I don't know that we had product of such potential before. So we really have buster product in the pipeline, but we are very uncertain, both on the priority of success and, two, on the timing of arrival.

And we can add, Sébastien, to that, that below the buster, we also have what we call the key products internally, which are a category of product that have been identified based on their strategic value. They have capacity to generate growth and profit, for instance. And obviously, our team are making sure that from an allocation of resources, we are investing in those products and continue to push them. And we are tracking how much they represent on a month-to-month basis.

And they represent more companion animal than for food-producing animal. Not surprising.

A question on the U.S. When you sold Sentinel, you have kept a big part of the labor. Regarding this, how is it evolving the margin in the U.S.?

So we were expecting a decrease of our profitability in the U.S., obviously, following the divestment of Sentinel, which represented a good chunk of revenue for our U.S. affiliates. I've shared the decrease. We've seen EUR 12 million less. The good news is that we are still positive, which was not necessarily expected for -- at least for this semester and especially given the fact that Sentinel last year for the first 6 months was doing as contributing significantly. So we are EUR 8 million, as I mentioned. The U.S. have contributed at a level of EUR 8 million in terms of EBITA, EBIT adjusted, prior to R&D investments. And as we will continue to grow the sales, we mentioned several times as well that we expect sort of an operational -- a good operational lever in the U.S. with a better absorption of our fixed costs at the manufacturing site as well as a commercial site beyond the additional investment that we have to launch the pet food and the food-producing product. So will continue to improve the profitability of our U.S. business in the coming months and years.

And the product margin has improved quite significantly this year.

Yes. Yes.

After Sentinel, we have been quite good in improving the product margin. And the OpEx has been slightly down because, yes, we kept most of the sales force. But remember, we have reduced 10 position overall. So...

Yes.

Any additional question here in the room or in the remote chat?

Nothing.

Shall we close the session and the discussion?

So we are very happy, and we thank you all for your...

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.