Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (NYSE:ELAN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So I think that’s probably the mix element and that expectation of what those sales in the first half contribute being the biggest item on the cadence. And then on the second half, Again, it’s just — it was a really tough compare in the — or an easy compare for the second half versus the first half for us, and that again gives us confidence in the EBITDA split between the two halves of the year.

Operator: Our question comes from Chris Schott from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Chris Schott: Just two questions for me. Maybe first on price. It seems like some of your peers are seeing a larger contribution from price this year. So can you just elaborate on I think it was kind of a 2%-plus contribution and just some of the dynamics you’re seeing across the portfolio? And then my second was on interest expense. I guess with interest kind of expense ramping in the second half, and I think some of your interest rate swaps rolling off — can you help us just understand what a reasonable run rate for interest expense would look like if we’re just kind of looking out to 2024, assuming rates stay where they are today, I guess, can we just kind of take that second half kind of run rate on interest expense and annualize that as a reasonable target? Or could it step up further from there?

Jeff Simmons: Yes, I’ll take the first one on price. We saw, Chris, price increased throughout the year with 3% in Q4, 2% for the full year. we are saying more than 2%. I will put some kind of support points behind that. One, we will have some lapping of price increases taken last year, and we’ll have that effect in the first half of this year. We see some good leading indicators as we start the year as well. We’ve also taken most of the significant price increases here at the end of last year, beginning of this year. So the price increases are in place and we’re doing the things necessary to sustain and build price, which is adding innovation, targeting customers better, building out value beyond product and both on the farm animal and on the pet side.

I mean adding nutritional health products, sustainability is going to help our bundle and our portfolio on the farm animal side, bringing more innovation in pet do the same. So — and we’ve added some price experts and capabilities coming in. So again, we’re going to hold here saying more than 2% price, but we will say that pricing will be a key growth driver for us in ’23 and beyond.

Todd Young: And Chris, on your question on interest, on our Q3 call in November, we provided the debt stacks as well as the facts regarding our interest rate swap portfolio. And as you rightly pointed out, we do have another $1 billion of swaps rolling off at the start of Q4. That would give us roughly we’re at about $1.8 billion of floating rate debt today, that would get you up to $2.8 billion so as we get into higher interest rate environments with the Fed, these are all at SOFR plus 185. So for the back half of the year, we’re expecting to be in about the 7% range on our debt — so that’s the big driver. I want to make that clear back in Q3 on the impact of floating rate debt and the amount of leverage we have. As we look to 2024, I’d focus you on the cash project slide, those dropping off dramatically as we finish up the integration of the Bar systems and our systems will allow for more cash — free cash to pay down debt.