Zoetis Inc. (NYSE:ZTS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Elliot Wilbur: Thanks. Good morning. Wanted to go back to some of your early commentary around growth expectations for the key derm franchise? And just specifically thinking about the key levers in 2023, Kristin, I wonder if you can maybe just talk about, especially given the high level of penetration of Apoquel in the U.S. What the key levers there are going for or whether it would be price, new market entry, geographic expansion or just outperformance by Cytopoint relative to Apoquel? And then for Wetteny, just €“ I don’t know if you said this in your prepared commentary or not, I didn’t catch it if you did. But within gross margin guidance, could you just talk maybe about the inflationary headwinds that are sort of embedded in your guidance for this year? Thanks.

Kristin Peck: Sure. I would say a few things on derm, both domestically as well as globally. We will be looking to expand and I think as Wetteny said in his prepared remarks, reaching peak sales in some of these markets takes a little bit longer outside of the U.S. So, we are continuing to see very strong growth in dermatology, both in Apoquel and Cytopoint as well as life cycle innovation remains really important for us here. The movement to Apoquel Chewable €“ it’s been growing much faster than we expected and the conversion there remains very, very strong. So, I think it’s both, you are going to see growth in volume, certainly potentially a little more globally. But beyond Apoquel, I mean I think Cytopoint, that’s really love it and so do customers.

It’s 100% compliance. So, I think if you look at the overall franchise, Apoquel, Cytopoint, Apoquel Chewable, we will probably see greater growth outside the U.S. So, we are both looking at volume. We have taken price consistently here. And certainly, 2023 will be no different here. So, I think you will see growth from both price and from volume, you will see chewable really building on it. I think you will see a real uptick in Cytopoint. Again, we are back to absolute full supply. We, as you know, last year, did need to make some trade-off decisions there, because that the same impacts as our other mAbs and in some of our vaccines with regard to some of the COVID vaccine supply challenges we had. But we are back full speed. So, we are also really investing in other big growth drivers here will be direct-to-consumer advertising in international.

So, we are going to do unbranded DTC as we have started last year. And we are really €“ even in the U.S., you still have 6 million itchy dogs that are currently undiagnosed and not treated. So, we really continue to see growth here, as we said, double digit, as Wetteny mentioned earlier, but I will let Wetteny take the second question, obviously, on inflation in 2023 and etcetera.

Wetteny Joseph: Yes. So, look, I think across the macro elements, we have been appropriately prudent in how we have laid out this guidance in the range that we have given today. But specifically on gross margins, if you look at inflation, as we are preparing to come into the year, we are certainly accounting for significant inflationary pressure on some of our input costs, energy, Europe, etcetera. But as we have entered the year, I think they are a little bit better than what we anticipated coming into the year, but still significant inflation that’s baked into what we have here, which obviously are more than offset by our mix and our price, which is why you see some modest gross margin improvement year-on-year as we go through the year. But we have factored in a fairly significant inflationary pressure in the gross margin figures that we gave.

Operator: And our last question comes from Balaji Prasad from Barclays.

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