Kyle May: Got it. Appreciate that color. And it sounds like it could be a very helpful drug. So we’ll keep a close eye on that one. Maybe switching over to the Animal Nutrition & Health business. A couple of questions around this area. I know you gave some context of milk and protein prices potentially improving later this year. But I was wondering, if you could start by kind of giving us a sense of the latest percentage of business that’s represented by the American dairy market. And then how you’re seeing some of those different products, I guess the sales of those going forward, because it sounded like ReaShure is still growing and then some of the other [indiscernible] lagging, but maybe just any color on how you see that progressing this year?
Ted Harris: So I’ll try to get into that, Kyle and Martin can kind of chime in a little bit as well. But if you think about our Animal Nutrition & Health business being about $240 million and $250 million, kind of the U.S. ruminant business is about $50 million of that, let’s say. And so that’s really what’s tied to the dairy markets. And not to get into too much detail but these kinds of nutrients that ultimately address health needs for the cow, ultimately have different impacts. And ReaShure, for example, helps address fatty liver that cows often get in transition. And ultimately, if they have fatty liver, their metabolism goes down, they produce less milk. And if you prophylactically address this condition, the metabolism of the cow goes up and they eat more and they produce more milk.
So ReaShure really helps improve the efficiency of the cow. And that’s something that really is valued almost no matter where the milk prices are, even though it’s a high cost ingredient. And I think that’s partly why we continue to see nice growth in that product line. The other reason that we’re seeing nice growth in that product line is some of these studies that we’ve talked about, that we’re incredibly excited about are showing that ReaShure not only helps address fatty liver, yes, it does that, but it also helps growth rates, it helps the overall health of the cow, ability to fight disease, colostrum increases in the mothers. And so there’s much broader value proposition if you will for ReaShure than maybe we originally marketed it at.
And for that reason, we’re getting increased adoption and increased penetration. And ultimately, we have dreamt for years about having products that could be expanded into the beef industry. And we really feel like we now have some science there, and that’s something for future discussion. But in any case, ReaShure helps create efficiency in the cow. Some of the other products, some of the encapsulated amino acids, impact the components within the milk. And so, for example, an encapsulated methionine helps boost the amount of protein that’s in the milk, and protein prices today are particularly low. And that element of our product portfolio is the one that has really been impacted the most by the lower dairy prices. And as we said, we do expect the protein prices to start to pick up and milk prices overall to start to pick up.
And I think that will allow those products that are very effective to return to growth. There are products in the marketplace that help boost the fat component in milk. We do not have any of those products. Milk, I mean, fat is priced quite high these days. That’s of the kind of milk components that is probably the healthiest right now but none of our products specifically address that. But hopefully that gives you a little bit of a feel. It’s a little bit complicated and it depends on the fat price component, the protein price component, overall milk prices. But we really feel good about our products. They’re differentiated products. There’s a lot of science behind them. And ultimately these, the U.S. dairy price and really global dairy prices will start to turn as animals are culled, supply comes down, prices will go up.
And we’ll be able to return to growth for this business, that we really feel as though we’ve got a good position.
Kyle May: That’s great, Ted. Appreciate all the additional color. I’ll jump back in queue. Thanks.
Ted Harris: Okay. Thanks so much, Kyle.
Operator: Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. Mr. Harris, I would like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.
Ted Harris: Thanks, Christine. And once again, thank you all very much for joining our call today. We really appreciate your support throughout the year as well as your time today, and look forward to – it’s hard to believe it’s already February – but we look forward to reporting our Q1 2024 results in early May. In the meantime, we will be participating in the BNP Paribas Exane 12th Consumer Ingredients Conference in London on March 14th, and we know we’re going to see some of you there, and we hope to see others as well. So thanks again for joining the call today.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.
