Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (NYSE:ELAN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Simmons: Nate, relative to the IL-31, yes, we’re excited to announce that research has confirmed differentiation of the product. So this now confirms that all of our late-stage pet assets are differentiated and that leads to the investment and our belief that we have an opportunity to take more share as we go into the market, which leads to the investments. Relative to the change in — and I’m not going to get into the differentiation at this time, but it would fall in the categories that I’ve mentioned before. I think the shift in expectations, again, I won’t get into the great detail, but again, this is a USDA, not an FDA product. I think that’s important. So, it doesn’t fall under an ADUFA, which is maybe a process that’s very well defined on the FDA side.

But this is a shift of expectation that was really driven by the USDA’s increased data requirements across the monoclonal antibody platforms here in the U.S. And again, I won’t get into great detail. Those increased requirements, I will say, though, are related to more of the magnitude of the data. And it doesn’t really, we believe, oppose any technical risk, only a time line shift.

Katy Grissom: Great. We’ll take the next question.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Vazquez from William Blair. Your line is open.

Brandon Vazquez: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to kind of focus a little bit on the progression of margins and sales, especially as we’re kind of updating our models for ’24 and maybe ask a slightly different question. But maybe you can talk a little bit about when you have some of these new product launches in the first half of ’24, what are your expectations maybe around controlled launch periods? Is that — should we be factoring in a little bit of a period where you ramp sales more so than normal? And then, on the other side of that, how does the manufacturing side look? When can they start to be kind of margin accretive?

Todd Young: Thanks, Brandon. As you well aware, we’re not going to give guidance today. But we’ll again, talk about same information we’ve provided last quarter, with respect to approval to launch, usually, it’s about two to four months, post approval, before we get the launch, as labels get finalized, in those sorts of elements. With respect to margin, again, we feel very good about the margin prospects in all of these products over time. But clearly, as you ramp sales and get to higher levels, we get better economies of scale on those. With the Credelio Quattro as well as the JAK inhibitor, we expect those to be higher margins at the start. With respect to Bovaer, given that significant pull forward of approval versus when we acquired it, it means we’re going to have third-party contract manufacturing supply that will be at a higher margin and thus less accretive to our overall portfolio than the Pet Health products.

But overall, we’re looking forward to getting these approved, getting them launched and they’ll be the big drivers over the next few years to increase margins, increase free cash flow and drive EBITDA higher.

Brandon Vazquez: Great. Thank you. And then one other question just on the international side. I think you mentioned some pockets of international weakness in some countries. Can you just give an update on the macro backdrop internationally? And where there might be any pockets of weakness or strength? Thanks.

Jeff Simmons: Yes. I think on the strength side, our global poultry and aqua franchises continue to do well. China, as we’ve said, is meeting our expectation, but more of a U-shaped recovery, not a V. So, we’re keeping our eyes on consumer confidence on the pet side. And swine prices still remain just a little below breakeven. We’re seeing mid-single-digit growth in China tracking to our expectations. I think there’s a little bit of a slower pet market in Japan and Australia. I mean, those would be a little bit of a few pockets of softness. But again, I’ve traveled to Asia, Latin America this year or this past quarter, and I would say, again, the resiliency of the pet market continues to hold. The strength of global poultry and aqua continue to hold very well. So, our portfolio is faring very well, which has driven the 4% growth in Farm Animal International.