Good afternoon, everyone, and sorry for the bit of minutes that we retook. We had a technical issue. We are pleased to welcome all of you in Paris to the Virbac 2021 full year results conference and webcast. Hosting the call today, Manuela Rodriguez, Investor Relations, and Sandrine Brunel, Head of Corporate Communications for Virbac. We'll be joined today by Sébastien Huron, our Chief Executive Officer, and Habib Ramdani, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I will remind you that the slides and additional financial materials presented are available on the investor section of our website, and a replay will be available at the conclusion of the meeting. For those attending virtually, you will be able to pose your question by using the chat section on the top right-hand corner of your screen.
All the questions will be answered during the Q&A session or afterwards if time does not allow to answer them all immediately. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor to Sébastien Huron and Habib Ramdani. The floor is yours. Thank you.
Thank you, Manuela. Good morning, good afternoon to all of you. It is my pleasure to introduce that session. As usual, I will cover the first part, which is sharing with you our 2021 financial statements. I will then hand over to Sébastien, who will cover the strategy execution and share also a bit of perspectives with all of you. Let's start with a quick summary of what we have achieved in 2021. We have had an excellent growth of our top line with an 18.4% organic growth, which has been driven by an excellent performance in all areas in a very dynamic market. We also had some nice contribution of new products, and I will cover that later on. We had a strong EBIT adjusted increase.
We added EUR 43.7 million at constant exchange rates, which led to achieving a 16.3 EBITDA ratio to revenue at real rates or 15.9% at constant exchange rate. This very strong increase has been driven by, first, a strong growth margin contribution of all of our region, as well as a positive product mix. It has been compensated a little bit by a higher level of expenses. You remember that last year we've been heavily impacted by the COVID, which had an impact on our ability to spend. Finally, we also have recorded some one-off positive impacts in 2021 for around EUR 5 million.
A part of it is linked to our transaction with Elanco, and another part is linked to a provision reversal related to some disputes. Finally, on this slide, you see that the Forex impact has been negative on the top line. We lost EUR 9 million, but it has been positive, on the contrary, on the bottom line, plus EUR 2.5 million, which is due to our cost exposure in some currency, especially the dollar. I will cover that very briefly. You see the evolution of our exchange rate. It's a much more balanced picture compared to what we've seen the previous years, especially 2019 and 2020. If we continue to go down the financial statement, you see that the net recurring profit has increased significantly.
We have had EUR 40 million, which is the consequence, obviously, of the strong improvement that we've had on our EBIT adjusted. The net profit, on the contrary, is decreasing, moving from EUR 140.3 million to EUR 115.7 million, but it is essentially linked, as you remember probably, of a base effect. In 2020, we recorded a profit linked with the divestment of Sentinel. From a cash situation to conclude that summary, we have ended the year with still a positive cash situation at around EUR 74 million, which is a EUR 10 million improvement versus the situation at the end of 2020.
In a nutshell, we have generated around EUR 80 million of free cash flow during the period, and we have used a good portion of that to finance our acquisition, notably the buyout of the minority shares of Centrovet in Chile, as you know. We continue to deleverage and to be fully deleveraged now with a net debt on EBITDA ratio, which is negative at -0.36 at the end of December 2021. Very briefly, just to share with you the comparison between what we have achieved and what we have shared as a guidance for 2021, and you will see that we are fully aligned on all indicators, notably top line, EBIT adjusted and net debt. Let's move now to the top line.
To cover it, I will provide some element explanation linked to the geography and then to the product segment. We have broken the EUR 1 billion milestone in terms of top line, as you see here. We have recorded EUR 1,064 million of sales at the end of 2021, which is a 14% increase versus 2020. It's even a 15% increase at constant exchange rate. If we restate for the significant perimeter impact that we had last year with the divestment of Sentinel, you see that on a pro forma basis, we have recorded 18.4% of growth between 2020 and 2021.
This includes also the contribution of some new product, notably the one, acquired from Elanco with the Clomicalm and Itrafungol, as well as Iverhart, which represented around 1.6 points within the 18.4% of growth. Let's look at where this growth is coming from, on a geography basis. As you see here, we have added EUR 166 million of sales at constant rate, excluding the negative impact of the divestment of Sentinel, between 2020 and 2021.
20% of this increase is coming from North America, where we have added, excluding the impact of Sentinel, EUR 35.7 million, which is a consequence of the very good dynamic of all of our product ranges, as well as the contribution of new products, including Clomicalm and Itrafungol, as well as Iverhart in the U.S. Europe has contributed to 40% of that growth, adding EUR 62.5 million between 2020 and 2021. This is a consequence of an excellent dynamic in all of the European countries, which enable us to generate a 16.2% growth in Europe, which is extremely high. Rest of the world is contributing for the remaining 40%, adding EUR 67 million between the two periods.
If we look at in more details the rest of Europe, rest of the world, sorry, contribution, which is the purple and red part on the graph, we see first that Latin America has had an excellent growth as well, 16%, driven by Mexico and Brazil, the top two countries in the region. We can mention as well Chile. You remember that at the end of June, it was negative in terms of growth. We have seen a rebound that Sébastien is going to cover later on. Asia Pacific, respectively 16% and 11% growth, driven by major countries that have had a very dynamic development, including India, which represented around 45% of the growth during the two period.
We have had a very nice rebound after a difficult 2020 in India. But some other countries contributed as well, Australia, New Zealand, China, and other countries. Finally, Africa, Middle East, also a very solid contribution to the growth at 24%. Let's move now to the sales growth by segment, starting with companion animals. No surprise, obviously, all segments have contributed significantly, and you see that the majority of the growth is above 20%. The only red part is parasiticide, which is linked to Sentinel divestment. Excluding Sentinel, it's growing as well. The top growth is coming from specialty segment, which is growing 29%.
We have, within that segment, products such as Suprelorin, anesthetic product ranges, as well as Movoflex, and the contribution also of the new product, Clomicalm and Itrafungol. The pet food then has had a fantastic year with 25% growth. Basically all of the countries where the product is available has had a very high growth during 2021. Antibiotics, dermatology as well, as you can see, a 22% growth. Finally, a nice rebound within our vaccines range. You remember that we suffered last year of a pipeline rupture and we had a sales decrease which we have entirely recovered at the end of 2021.
We are still operating under production constraints within vaccines in terms of capacity, and we are not in a situation to meet entirely the demand. Food-producing animals segment is the same picture, growing everywhere, around a double-digit growth in most of the segments. The leading segment is vaccines, contributing 25% growth. Then we see the nice rebound on the nutritionals driven notably by India. Antibiotics has done well as well, 15% growth. We have the benefit of the product launch of TULISSIN within that segment. Parasiticides as well, at 10% growth, with growth coming from Asia-Pacific and Latin America essentially. Finally, aquaculture slightly less dynamic at 5%. Sébastien is going to cover this activity in more details.
I will move very briefly here. You see that the structure of our portfolio has not fundamentally changed between 2020 and 2021. This is it for our top line. I suggest we move to the profit and loss statement. Before going into the details, I'd like to mention a restatement that we have done on our 2020 financial account in order to account for an IFRIC publication from 2021 related to how we account for the expenses related to the IT investment in cloud or SaaS. Basically, some expenses that had been accounted as an investment in 2020 have been restated to account them as an OpEx, operating expenditure in 2020.
We move around EUR 2 million of intangible assets into expenses, and that's a restatement that you see here. The impact on our net expenses is of about EUR 2 million, and the impact on our net result is non-material at about EUR 1.4 million loss related again to that change in accounting policies. I will explain and comment the difference between our 2020 restated financial accounts and our 2021. You see that the current operating profit before depreciation of assets arising from acquisitions has increased significantly. We have moved from a ratio of 13.6% to 16.3%, so it's close to a 3-point improvement, so very substantial.
This is a consequence of a very strong top-line growth, which have been mitigated by a net expenses increase as well. You see that on the third line, which is explained by the dynamic of our activity, notably within industrial, by the rebound on our costs following a 2020 that has been impacted by the COVID. You will see later on, especially on R&D, for instance, but also commercial expenses, travel as well, we've seen a rebound. But it's a controlled rebound, which enable us, again, to improve substantially our EBIT adjusted ratio to revenue, and to increase it as well in absolute value.
If we continue to go down, profit and loss statement, moving to the non-current income and expenses, you see here the profit from Sentinel divestment last year of about a little bit more than EUR 60 million. We had a EUR 1.2 million of expenses, non-current expenses this year, which is related to an impairment on one of our R&D assets, but it's very non-material. The net financial expenses has decreased, moving from EUR 10.4 million to EUR 8.5 million, which is a consequences of the improvement of our cost of debt in the context of the divestment of Sentinel and the decrease of our debt, obviously.
It's compensated by a negative impact on the foreign exchange rate, especially linked to the CLP evolution, Chilean currency between the two periods. A comment on the income tax expenses. You see that we have moved from EUR 33 million to EUR 43 million, which is an increase in line with the increase of our net results, obviously. From an effective tax rate, we are slightly improving our effective tax rate, moving from around 28% to 27% in 2021. Finally, a very nice increase of our net result from ordinary activities. We have added EUR 40 million, moving to EUR 117.8 million of net results from ordinary activities. Let's see where our EBIT adjusted improvement has come from during the two periods.
We see that, again, we moved from 127 to 173. Europe has contributed significantly. We've added EUR 39 million. Rest of the world as well, EUR 23 million, in line with a very good dynamic on the top line. North America has been stable, which is an excellent performance when we have in mind that we have divested in the U.S. our Sentinel product last year, which contributed significantly to the profitability. In a nutshell, we have offset entirely the impact of this divestment, whereas we thought it would have a more lasting impact previously, but this is the consequence of the very good, excellent dynamic that we had on the rest of our portfolio in the U.S., and we will cover that later on with a little bit more details.
Evolution of cash flow, in line with the evolution of improvement of our PNL, you see that we are adding around EUR 40 million of net cash flow and operating cash flow. Let's see how we've used that, comparing 2020 restated and 2021. There are two elements, three comments there. The first one is that the net free cash flow is more or less stable at around EUR 68 million. It was slightly above EUR 70 million last year. Despite the fact that, and that's my second comment, that we have ramped up, as expected, our CapEx investment moving from EUR 30 million to, slightly below EUR 50 million. We would have been at EUR 49 million, if we don't take into account the accounting restatement that I mentioned on the, cloud and IT investment.
Finally, we have also increased our working capital requirement, which is essentially linked to the increase of our stock in absolute value in 2021. We have done that first to follow in line with our activities, with a strong improvement of our activities and production volume in a very, again, dynamic year. We have also added stock to cover product launches, and you've seen that we had several product launches in 2021. Finally, security stock have been also increased in the context of disruption of supply chain for some of our component and raw materials. We have had a bit of security stock increase in 2021.
As I mentioned in my introduction, we finished the year with a positive net debt situation at EUR 74 million, and you see that the acquisition have accounted for EUR 59 million of spending, and it is essentially linked to the acquisition of the minority share of Centrovet. At constant rate and scope, without taking into account the acquisition, we would have ended the year at around EUR 117.7 million, which is a EUR 54.3 million improvement. Regarding the balance sheet, nothing has substantially changed. I covered the working capital that has increased slightly between the two periods. And I cover the explanation essentially linked to the stock increase.
Financing, we can share with you that we have successfully renegotiated our revolving credit facility. The previous one had a maturity in April 2022, and in October, we signed a new RCF, and you have here the component of that new credit facility. It's a line of EUR 200 million with a bullet repayment in 5 years. We have 2 option, important option. The first one is an extension, a possibility of an extension by 2 years, and the second one is an increase, a possibility to increase the line by EUR 150 million. We have a covenant, which is set at 3.75, which is a net debt on EBITDA ratio at the end of December, at the end of every year.
Finally, we have added a green component on this new revolving credit facility, including the necessity to achieve some objectives on CSR indicators that have been defined, which could have an impact, positive or negative, on the cost of financing. This amount, the EUR 200 million, including the possibility to increase by EUR 150 million, is obviously sufficient to cover our need and also give us some room to go on and continue our programmatic acquisition plan. Financial ratios, I'm not going to cover. You see that all of them are negative. The shareholding structure has remained the same with the Dick family continuing to be a majority shareholder with 49.7% of the shares and 65.9% of the voting rights. With that, I'm going to hand over to Sébastien to cover the remaining of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Habib. Works? Yes. Okay, good. Thank you very much. Let's talk a little bit about the strategic execution and the perspective. First, to put it back in the frame, the context, I like to present this slide. It is to remind everyone what we really try to do long term. Despite we publish annual results, we are really working for the long term.
First is a classic focus on people, but we really try to have the best and most engaged people and the most engaged is very key in Virbac. We have proven that during the COVID situation. People have proven an incredible level of engagement, and that is really important. That's something we monitor, that's something we invest time. We have Great Place to Work results. I will share that later on, but we really try to take care of our people as much as we can.
The second thing is to simplify as much as we can because the company has been growing very fast, and we need to constantly think about simplifying and digitalizing the company. That's something we focus very much on the manufacturing process, for instance, but on different key processes. HR, we have implemented Workday, finance, purchase, and also on in terms of business, where we have a webshop where we try to leverage the online sales also for the pet food, for instance. The third element is we really think and focus on the long term, so to better prepare the company for the future. Here it's all the management of the portfolio, streamlining, rationalization, but also making strategic investment in certain key segment vaccines.
Pet food, for instance, we mentioned that before, and trying to develop big product, large product. This is probably what Virbac is missing the most when we analyze compared to the top four our portfolio. The main element of differentiation is a lack of one, two, three, four very, very large product. All that of course is supposed to help us generate accretive growth in order to reach our new target 20%, which is our 20% EBITDA ratio we would like to target before 2030. We will, on top of the organic growth based on commercial performance, based on innovation, also try to boost the M&A and trying to find some target acquisition. I have shared with you that we put in place a strategy, Virbac 2030.
It seems to be a more spread now, but we did that back in 2020, in the middle of the crisis of the COVID. We really look long term, and we have established a long-term vision and strategy plan, which was based on 10 main axes, and you have the list of the 10 points or axes. The purpose and the culture, which is the level of engagement of our people, which is really something very key. Where do we stand? Last time I shared with you a slide with a proportion of pet food sales within Virbac versus market, biologicals and vaccine sales and pharmaceutical sales versus market benchmark. That's something we try to rebalance as well. Different point you can read on innovation, manufacturing strategy, M&A, and of course, ESG.
This time I thought I will share with you two of them. The purpose, because this year has been a year where we have tried to write down the purpose of the company, and we will work on the manifesto in 2022, which are all the consequences, all the engagement that the company will take based on this purpose. Back in 2018, we designed a new vision. The key element were unique, innovative, and agile. Unique, it's not just words. I mean, unique. We are probably very unique in many aspects, but one of them is a portfolio. You don't have other animal health company of our size. We have pet food, vaccines, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical.
The diversification we have, which make us not be a pharmaceutical company, but make us be a veterinary company, where we try to bring veterinary solution. When a vet need pet food, diagnostic, pharma or vaccine, we bring it to him and not just pharmaceutical and vaccines like most other competitors are doing, for instance. Agile is a concept of adaptation, but with speed, and we want to conserve the speed. Because we are mid-size player, we want to be much more agile and much faster in many aspects than the larger company. We believe we can gain market share and things being agile. Of course, I mentioned before, empowering and engaging our people. That was 2018 vision. You had all the values.
I will not detail them, of course, but you find entrepreneurship, which is something we tend to lack in larger organization. We want to remain small in the mindset, in the spirit, in order to keep the entrepreneurship. We want, of course, innovation, engagement. We are customer-driven forever. We give a lot of attention to our people. Pay attention to people is really, really key. Again, choosing sustainability, I always say the word, which is quite key, choosing, because it means some trade-off to have the sustainability. With this, we have now designed the purpose, attending the health of animals with those who take care of them every day, so that we can all live better together. We will try to decline that into a manifesto in 2022 to list all the engagements that the company will take.
The second element I would like to share with you on the 10 main axes of the Virbac 2030 strategy is the differentiating innovation. We are doing three things, to summarize. We are doing many, many things, but within innovation, three main dimension. First, it's not very new, but it has been accelerating over the last few years. We are trying to make it a more global R&D company developing global products. One of the reason why we don't have very large product historically, it is because the product were quite local or regional. But we have not so many very large product on a global level. Pet food, for instance, for many, many years remain within Europe. Now we have launched it in the U.S. Next year, we will launch it in China. Few years from now, we will launch it in Brazil.
That's an example. Vaccines for companion animal, we are not in the United States. We are not in the U.S. Historically, we have not managed to develop a very global R&D. Over the last four or five years, we are accelerating that. Now the objective is to gain time to market, conceiving the product, conceiving the studies, conceiving all the development plans, bearing in mind all the markets where we will go all over the world. The idea is to help build a larger product, blockbuster or key products. It also allow us to get a better ROI, return on investment by mutualizing the competencies, but also the expense on a global scale. The second thing is to try to bring more innovation by more differentiation. Innovation is something that we define as being visible, value-added, profitable and sustainable.
What I mean by that is for many company, bringing innovation is, bringing a new compound. If the compound is in the same family as the other compound, most of the time it does not bring any value. If you take a ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, marbofloxacin, there is very, very little difference. It could be considered as innovation, but it does not bring a lot of value. We are really focused on trying to bring added value and, things that will really create value for the veterinarians and the pet owner, for instance. That's something we try to do more and more also because it will help us create blockbuster. There are many unmet needs in animal health. We know, all of us know the sea lice, for instance, issue for, salmon, the salmon industry.
There are also many unmet needs on which we want to make some bets in order to try to find a blockbuster product that will rebalance the portfolio and help us grow in a very sustainable but also very accretive way. The third element is probably the newest things, the most different we have done this year, which is to increase the pipeline. To increase the pipeline, you cannot do it very quickly because it is not just adding resources or financial resources. You need people, and you need competent and trained people. You need animal facility. It is not just the question of adding more money, it is also adding more staff, more facilities, more labs. You are sometimes quite limited in your capacity to increase your pipeline or your speed of R&D.
We have decided to out-contract and outsource much more than what we did in the past. Another reason why we have decided to increase our R&D spending by one point of revenue, from 7.5 to 8.5, this year in 2022, in order to really speed up the pipeline, but also, make the bandwidth much larger. With that, we try to enlarge our capacity of bringing innovation to the market. We have managed to move from, 60/40 in terms of fixed versus variable costs in R&D to 50/50. It makes it much more productive. To make it simple, with 20% more R&D spending, we can accelerate by 50% the number of project and product, because the variable part is what really counts.
With 20% increase in R&D total budget, we can really accelerate by 50% our project number of project. That's really what we try to do in the 2030 vision, and it will take a few years before we see the results in term of productivity, but it should help us create value and bring more value to the market. With that in mind, just to share with you that for the last 3 or 4 years, we have beaten the market constantly year after year. In blue, you have the Virbac line, in green, you have the market line. This is without pet food. Here you have only pharmaceutical products. If you add pet food, the gap is even wider.
That means that's why in 2021 we had a highest level growth, and we have probably grown double speed of the market. We estimate the market growth around 8%-9% in 2021, and at constant exchange rate and scope, we have grown 18%, so twice the speed of the market. That was a global market, but you also have on the cattle side, for instance, that we have a very good performance, as you see, gaining market share on this market as well. 2021 has been really an exceptional year for us with a very strong performance in terms of growth. Gaining market share again for three consecutive years, beating the market in all regions. That's also very important.
We have grown with a significant gap without pet food, 5.3 points above the market, at the end of September. EBITDA and the cash, Habib commented. In terms of overachievement in terms of the COVID crisis, we have taken the opportunity of the Great Place to Work survey, opinion survey, to ask some questions to our people, and they were extremely satisfied by the way the company has managed our crisis. We had more than 90% of the people very satisfied with the way we managed that. We had a rapid adaptation of our people everywhere across the world in terms of operational excellence and business excellence.
We had a rich year in terms of acquisitions. We have some acquisitions we paid like iVet, which is a company that is helping us in speeding up the entry in the U.S. market. We have also acquired the rights to an innovative parasitic compound from Elanco that we are developing. We have acquired the worldwide rights to Clomicalm and Itrafungol. This is a very good product, very with good level of margin, and that are helping us quite significantly in terms of growth and performance. We are trying to improve our return on capital employed. We have divested Magny also, which was an industrial site producing antibiotics and products like that. We have divested it. The Virbac 2030, I commented it before. We are working and focusing very much on ESG roadmap.
We made many improvements last year, and we have even a more important focus in 2022, where we will redesign a new roadmap for the next 3-5 years, and then I'll let you take care of the other points. Great Place to Work was a really good achievement, based on the comments from the people from Great Place to Work. They told us that they have never seen such an increase between two surveys, a two-year difference, to grow by 8 or 9 points of improvement. It was an outstanding progress. In terms of geographies and product range, it was an exceptional year as well. We had growing double-digit in most of the countries, India, Brazil, but also France, Mexico, U.K., Italy, Spain.
Many European countries have been also very performing very much. In terms of product ranges, the booster commercial programs keep delivering after three or four years, still a very high level of growth. Pet food is 27%, VeggieDent is 30, Suprelorin is close to 20% growth. You see a very sustained growth over years. We had many new product launches last year, Clomicalm, Itrafungol, Tulissin, iVet pet food, and Stelfonta. I made a focus on five geographies. One is the U.S. because the growth was quite good at constant rate and once we have divested Sentinel, we grew 41.2%.
This was based mostly on our existing product like dentals, but also on the addition of some new product like Clomicalm, Itrafungol, Cyclavance, a new product we launched in our dermatology portfolio, and then parasiticides, SENERGY, and Stelfonta. This has been the real dynamic of 2021. In 2022, you see we have also many launches which are planned. TULISSIN has already been launched. It is a generic of Draxxin. Draxxin is a product from the '80s, and it's an antibiotic. It's a huge market in the U.S. It's close to EUR 180 million. We launched TULISSIN. The pet food with HPM has also been launched in February, and we have many other product will come, as you can see on the slide.
We expect the U.S. to keep growing this year in a good way. Chile, we had a very difficult year. You remember with the COVID, the closure of the restaurants, the salmon industry has been hit very hard. We had anticipated last year that there will be a rebound in the second half, and we see that we have closed the year slightly above, very slightly above at 1.2%. The situation is more or less normalizing. That was before Russia and Ukraine. We'll see what will happen in terms of export of salmon and consumption of salmon. At the moment, it is more or less normalizing.
What is very important is that we had many risks at Centrovet, and you know we have pushed back the acquisition from 2017 to 2020. Before realizing the acquisition, we have managed to remove many of these risks. The first one was a renewal and extension of significant third-party agreements. We have managed to extend them. We pushed back the risk and have renewed the agreements. We have renewed also the registration dossier of some parasiticide products with the ICMA. That was very good news, and that was done before we acquired the 49% of additional shares of Centrovet that you see here. There is only one risk remaining, which is the filing of the updated registration dossier of the existing vaccine. That will be done in April.
We are going to submit this new dossier to get a definitive registration of these vaccines. So far, these vaccines were registered like temporary for one year, and every year it was a renewal of the vaccines because salmon, many years ago, I guess, were considered as a minor species. For other animals, the vaccine are registered for five years or more. For salmon, it was only one year renewed. Now the Ministry of Chile has changed the regulation, and they want to give permanent registration also for the vaccine Chile. Of course, the requirements are more important. We need to comply with this new regulation, and we will submit the dossier in April. That's the last risk we need to overcome in the coming months.
India has been a top performer last year, so that's why we want to focus one minute on it. It has led the growth at EUR 60 million, 20% constant rate. That has been many years we have not seen India performing so well. We have explained that by the disruption of COVID. As we are the leading player in India, many smaller companies are trying to copy our products and it was not very helpful in the past. But when COVID came, many small companies disappeared or had many distribution issues, logistic issues. We had finally the place to grow our operations very well, and the performance was really strong. We see that demand remains very stable, very strong, but we see the smaller players coming back.
Between the base effect of last year and the coming back of some player, we need to see how this will evolve this year. We are confident because we have a rich pipeline, and our team are really engaged and still keep performing quite well. One area of attention will be the profitability ratio, because in terms of profitability, India, it's a very important country for us, but we have products which normally have structurally a lower level of margin. We need to make sure that with inflation and the structure of the portfolio, we will not be too much affected by inflation. France has been also a top-performing country last year, also with EUR 60 million growth. We are very successful in pet food with a close to 18% market share.
We are growing in all product category, and especially in the key products, the large product. We have managed to put some very significant price increases. That was very helpful, and with many new product launches. You have a vaccine, the ringworm vaccine, but also a very interesting product. I was mentioning innovation. Daxocox is a very good example. It's a new compound, but this one really add value because it's a once a week anti-inflammatory treatment instead of a once a day. For the one who treat their dogs or cats with a pill, you know that to give a tablet to a dog is not very easy, and so if you have to do it once a week instead of once a day, it's a huge advantage.
In terms of perspective, we expect the market trends to remain positive, but we expect some slowing down versus last year. We will launch wet pet food, humid pet food, and free antibiotics. We expect a good performance of France again this year with an expectation also of a slow recovery, but a recovery of our vaccine business. As you know, we had backorders last year, and we expect to slowly catch them back over time. China is the second-largest market in the world. It's a huge market, above USD 7 billion. It's growing 20% per year, so it's a very significant growth. Online are playing a key role in China, and we are over-investing in China now, very significantly. First of all, we have started a few years ago with a pipeline.
We have two new parasiticide registrations that were recently obtained, Effipro Duo and Milpro, which are one external and one internal parasiticide. We have two new product that will be launched. We have a third one coming, we hope, by year-end. We have some vaccines registration in the current process to be registered in the coming months or years. We have a very rich pipeline coming to market. To support that, we have decided this year to strongly invest in the commercial forces, and we are adding at the moment close to 30 people this year and probably 20 people more next year. We'll be adding 50 people in terms of commercial organization in China over the next two years. The idea is to take this pipeline and push it very strongly in the market.
We expect a very strong growth in China over the next coming 3-4 years, and also with a pet food entry in 2023 and 2024. Of course, we also look at possible M&A exploration in order to further boost this overall growth. China should be poised to a significant growth in the coming 3-4 years. With that, you have the updated table about the innovation varies from one year to another one. Sometimes some delays in R&D programs, so you can have some move from one year to the other one, but you see that overall, the portfolio is quite balanced. Last year, we didn't communicate any value on 2024 for the food-producing animal. We were on a very early phase of some potential blockbuster product.
Some of them will be more delayed, like 2025. So I put a footnote, which is quite important for 2025. It's very difficult to evaluate that, in the sense that if the product comes, it could be huge product, but if it don't come, it could be zero. And in 2025, there are many of them which are still very uncertain. It's a very early stage with a lot of uncertainty for 2025. But for the rest, you see that it is quite stable and quite positive year after year, with some shift from one year to another one. In terms of the exposure to Ukraine and Russia, we just wanted to share with you that we do not have direct exposure. We have no affiliate in these two countries, no subsidiary.
We have a limited exposure directly through distribution, but this represent less than 0.5% of our total revenues, so it is not material at group level. We, of course, set up an internal team. Many of our people are trying to get involved. The country at the periphery, like in Poland, they are doing many things as they can in order to support the Ukrainian people, trying to be helping them in many ways. Again, it is a very dramatic situation where everything we can do, we try to do. We make some donation, and we make many action like that, either locally or regionally, with our different teams all over Europe, Eastern Europe part of Virbac.
What we have done also is starting to monitor the situation of the indirect impact. If we don't have a direct impact, we expect to have some indirect consequences, like for instance, the gas supply eventually, but we see the cost of energy going through the roof. We of course have in pet food, for instance, the cereal cost is increasing very much, and that is used to feed the animals. With influenza in chicken, for instance, you have also many chicken being killed. To find chicken today to make pet food is, for instance, quite difficult. The cost of some ingredient and materials are going up, and that is putting inflation pressure on our cost structure. That's the main element we monitor. We have the...
some supply element that we try to monitor to avoid any backorder or any issue in production, but also the pressure on price and cost of certain component. So far, we are managing it quite well, but this remain an area of attention that we need to monitor every day. With all that, at this stage, and considering the overall situation, we have kept our guidance, which is between 5%-8% at constant rate and scope. That is assuming a normalized market growth around 5%. What we have said is we expect to beat the market. Assuming the market will grow around 5%, historically was growing 4%-5%, except over the last two years, we expect to grow above market rate, so 5%-8%.
Of course, there is not any major geopolitical event that has been included in that. Depending on how the war will extend and what will happen, we don't know whether there could be some supply disruption or other issues. So far, this is what we think is the most realistic guidance we can give. In EBITDA, we are around 15% at constant rate. It is more or less a consolidation. We say that we will try to maintain the 15%-16% EBITDA ratio. The 16% EBITDA ratio, 16.3, add a 0.5 point of exception event. In fact, it's 15.8 on a recurrent basis. We have decided to invest 1 point of R&D more.
The 1 point of R&D means that, you know, at an operational level, before R&D, we are trying to maintain the level of EBITDA we had last year, despite inflation and despite the OpEx growth, because of course, with the COVID situation easing, we will see more traveling, more people. We start to have physical meetings, so there will be a bit of rebound in the OpEx, of course. In terms of net debt evolution, we expect to manage to decrease again this by EUR 60 million, without dividend and at constant rate and scope. I leave it with the agenda of the meetings. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Sébastien. We are moving to the question. We will first begin with the ones for the people being present in Paris and then go with the chat. The first one is always the most complicated.
The first question or the first answer is the most complicated?
Both. Let's see the question.
Good afternoon. Christophe Ganay from Oddo BHF. A few questions. First, on the attention point you mentioned, I mean, inflation. Can you figure out some quantum around the cost of energy, for example, the price increase you are expecting for 2022? Should we expect two price increases, a second one in the second half of the year? What should we expect on wages as well? Can you put on the table some figures for the impact of inflation? That's the first question, yeah.
I'll start to respond and Habib will complete. I think we'll do a good job at Q2, yeah. The first thing is when I say that we are very agile, it's true. I expect the teams all over the world, because of course, it's different situation country by country. Our teams are briefed, they know that, and I expect them to be very agile and very reactive on this point, and they will try to cover the inflation cost as much as possible everywhere it is possible. We are tracing that quite precisely. That's one comment. The second comment is inflation is not a picture. It's a trend, and it's a movie at the moment, and we don't know exactly how it will unfold. For 2022, most of our pharmaceutical and vaccine costs are already negotiated.
The terms have been negotiated for most of the volume of the purchase of 2022, so we know more or less where we should land. It is not the case for pet food, for instance. You cannot stock components for pet food. Pet food, the price will maybe keep increasing or may decrease over the second part of the year, and that we don't know. That's why I say it's not a picture, but more a tendency we have to see. The third element I'd like to share is that we have anticipated this inflation. We knew it will come, and we have anticipated in 2021 with significant price increases. I mentioned that before.
The only aspect is that part of this price increases have been already factored in in 2021 when the inflation is really hitting now. There may be a slight timing effect between the two years. I let you answer on the energy maybe cost.
Yes. On the energy is a bit of the same situation. Part of the contract have already been negotiated end of last year, so it's included in a way, in the guidance that we have shared. Just to give an order of magnitude on the cost of energy for Carros, for instance, which is our industrial site and headquarters, representing around 50% of the production that we have worldwide in-house, is around EUR 2 million, just to give an order of magnitude, including the increase that we've seen at the end of last year.
It's not that we are not necessarily in an industry where the cost of energy is representing a very significant part of the value added of our product, but obviously it has an impact on us as it has for all companies.
Yes, more or less over the last two years?
Yes. Yes, you're right.
There we go.
Thank you for that. A second question regarding China, is it possible to have figures about the current contribution in sales, in EBIT? And where should we land in two years given the pipeline of launches you have?
Yeah. No, we don't give sales precisely by country. We expect that we will double the sales of China over the next few years. At the moment, we are more in a phase of investment, so we are not so much worried about the profitability ratio of China. We are much more in the mindset to improve top line and margin and put the OpEx or the expenses we need. The bottom line is not so much our preoccupation at the moment, sorry. We want to grow as fast as we can, and we believe that once we will have grown enough, then we can optimize the expenses and the different ratio. The first stage for the next three to four years is to really grow the top line and the product.
We want to launch Magny new product and add Magny sales force. What I can tell you also is in the top 15, but not top 2. Top 15 at the moment, so it's a very small affiliate for us. It can be also partly explained because we are not in the food producing animal in China. The companion animal market, which is dog and cat, is probably 15% of the market. We are not playing very much in the 85% so far. That we plan to do with a partner, but not directly immediately.
Okay, understood. The third question is on your EBIT guidance actually, notably regarding the FX impact. If we take the current parity, should we have a positive effect as we had last year? Or what's your best guess around the FX impact on EBIT for 2022, please?
Yeah, it's quite complicated. It's very volatile in terms of evolution. What we can say is that with what we are seeing as of today, we expect to have a positive impact on the top line. We have many currencies that are appreciating versus the euro in the countries where we operate, so we should have a positive impact. It's been several years that we have not seen that, but should be positive. If the order of magnitude of the positive impact is significant, and it could be with the current exchange rate again, then it could also have a positive impact on the EBITDA in absolute value. Then on the ratio is really too early to tell. We'll provide probably more insight early April as we communicate the Q1 . We'll have a little bit more visibility and four months of history.
Thank you, Alain.
Thank you. This is Orlando from BNP Paribas. Congratulations for your performance, your results.
Thank you.
Regarding, I wanted to come back to the recent acquisition you made recently. Can we have an idea or an amount, a range of what the amount you invest for iVet, your acquisition iVet? The second question will be if you have a strategy in terms of M&A for the upcoming months and/or upcoming years. Is there any region you will be focused on, maybe? Thank you.
Just to make sure we understand, your question is related to the Chilean.
iVet. Sorry.
The U.S.
Yes.
Okay. I don't think we have disclosed the figures, but it's.
The acquisition-
It is.
We have disclosed what we paid, but
Yeah.
Not obviously information related to the P&L of iVet. This has not been disclosed.
We paid EUR 7 million, $4.5 million.
4.5?
Sorry. We paid for iVet $4.5 million.
Okay.
There is earn-out, possibility of earn-out up to $2.5 million. That is a very low multiple versus what normally market pay, we'll say. That was on iVet. Again, we try to do acquisition to create value. We don't want to just pay full value, transfer the value, and then try to make synergies, which sometimes is a word that explain how you get rid of people. This is not really what we try to do. I'm not saying we will never be obliged to do, but that's not what we focus. We try to bring company that we can either perform better than they are doing or leverage something else.
iVet was, for instance, something that will help us a lot in terms of logistics, market access, and accessing veterinarian directly with our distribution, and even pet owner directly with pet food. We had our pet food range that was coming and is launched now in February. That is going to really, really help us very much in the market access. The way the deal was structured is quite beneficial from this perspective. In terms of targets in M&A, U.S., Europe, that are the top markets we are looking at always because we are very well equipped, again, commercially to create value. If we bring an asset within the organization, we can create more value with it. But we are not closed to opening new countries or new geographies by acquisition.
That's also another way where we don't have overlaps, and we may grow and keep adding on the top line. For innovation and manufacturing, for instance, it's good to open new geographies because you can leverage your R&D program and your manufacturing production. That is also part of the deal to search for acquisition in new geography to have more presence.
Thank you.
Small to midsize acquisition. We are not looking for a big, large transformation organization.
Thank you. We have the question from the chat. The question one is, if you could explain if you expect any margin improvement before 2025.
Yes. What we have stated was that 2022 will be a sort of stabilization phase for us, which you've seen, as Sébastien mentioned, that we will sort of stabilize our EBIT adjusted next year if we restate for the additional R&D investment and also if you restate for the one-off that we had this year in 2021. We continue to have as an objective to move to 20% EBIT adjusted in the horizon 2025-2030, which means obviously that we have to improve our EBIT adjusted as we move forward.
Can you express your priorities in terms of M&A products versus geography? What type of multiple are you ready to pay?
Again, it's more a question of opportunity, because we can say we like that, but we see that it does not happen like that. If I was looking for priority, I would say vaccines at good multiples in geography like U.S. and Europe. That will be my dream or my wish, but it doesn't work like that. Of course, we'll try to find a target that makes sense for us, as expressed before. Product is perfect because product we can digest, integrate very quickly, very easily. Product acquisition will be perfect. Historically, the product acquisition was fallout from big and large merger acquisitions. Elanco buying Bayer or BI buying. That was making some overlaps, and then it was an opportunity for midsize player to buy this product.
This does not seem to be the case anymore. There are not so many mergers to be expected. We have to see. Maybe it will come. In the meantime, it's more searching for pipeline, biotech company or start-up. The issue is a balance between risk and valuation. We try to find and collaborate, but it's too early to say. We search very actively, but we don't know what we will find yet.
I have four questions. I have asked the two first. The third one is very long, so be prepared. It regards R&D. Roughly, assuming peak sales over three years, it looks like the pipeline could add something like EUR 150 million or EUR 200 million revenues by 2025 on your slide. Is it reasonable? If so, how should we think about portfolio turnover, products in decline and discontinuation in the base business? How do you expect mix shifts to impact profitability over time?
I'll try to start. You'll complete, David, if I miss a few points. I don't know if we communicate too much on that, but maybe we could find the data also. We have a vitality index around 12%, and by that I mean products that are less than three years old in the turnover. We have quite sustained contribution of new products. New product can come from innovation, they can come from distribution, and they are of all nature, so pet food, pet care, pharmaceutical, vaccines.
Geo extension as well.
Geographic extension as well. When we call this innovation level, yes, of course, it's realistic. Otherwise, we would not put it. Of course, there is always a certain level of risk. The problem is, we have a concept that we don't put on the chart product which have a probability of risk higher than 50%. If it's very early stage and very risky, we normally don't put it at least for the next three years, because for the next three years we are close to the process of submission of the dossier and registration, so we have more visibility.
Said in other words, the figures you see for 2022 and 2023 are very well mastered. The figure you see for 2024 is a bit more uncertain, and 2025 is very uncertain. We try to be as realistic and as cautious as we can. Yes, it's realistic. The third question was what?
Maybe while just to add, the figures that we have is peak sales. There is another dimension, which is how long does it take to get to the peak sales? Obviously, for some products it could take longer than for other. A product like Suprelorin, we still not have reached the peak sales, and it's been on the market for several years. That's also a dimension to keep in mind.
Yes. That's an issue, in fact, for pet food and Suprelorin and very innovative product, because if it takes 10 years, we only have 3 years. We try to give you the figures after 3 or 4 years, but it's not really peak sales, so it's a bit complicated.
Did you ask me for the last part of the sentence?
No, it's the product mix, I think. Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
The last part of the question was, how do you expect mix-
Shifts to impact probability over time.
Yeah, that is a good question, and that is probably not very, very favorable with what we know today in terms of current portfolio. What I mean by that is pet food is growing very quickly and pet food you have two way to look at it in term of return on capital employed is very, very good. In term of product margin is not so far is at the level of the average margin of the group, but the group margin is lower than what we would like it to be. We will try to push to increase it, and if, for instance, inflation is sticking up in pharma and bio, it's easier to compensate than it is in pet food. The product mix should not be so favorable, but what may compensate is innovation.
Because if we bring very good new vaccines, or if we have one or two blockbuster product in the portfolio in one of the innovative segments, it can change that as well. The structural product mix of the current portfolio may be unfavorable, but everything we do in R&D innovation will compensate that if we are successful.
Okay. Thank you, Sébastien. I have a question: hospital visit volumes in North America for dogs and cats are down low single digits year-over-year. Are you assuming a recovery to positive visit growth in your guidance?
No, we are. Well, the guidance is not based on the U.S. number of visits only. Of course, we are a global player on every market, and the dynamics are not always synchronized because of COVID. The fact is, with the base effect, and we have the same story in India, we will see a different difficult base of comparison for Magny things. I'm not surprised at all that the number of visits is decreasing. I mean, it has been increasing so much last year that at one stage, compared to last year, it should normalize. We expect. What we expect in the guidance is a more normalized market.
If the market is growing around 5% overall, and that could be a mix of volumes and price, and new innovation, price increase and number of visits, if it grows 5% we should be okay with the guidance. If the market is decreasing very much or increasing more, we will collect the guidance over time. At this stage, this is what we know and we see.
We have a question on the trend. Most of the way through Q1 is over. What are you seeing in terms of growth versus guidance?
What we can say is that we are on par, on line. We continue to believe that the guidance
Too early.
that we have shared for the entire year, 5%-8% is a good one, and it's too early to tell on the Q1 .
Yeah. It's way too early because there is a base effect, as we said. Inflation is ticking up now, so most of the impact will come from now on the second part of the year. When you have a bit of inflation, you may give price increase a bit higher. Of course, distributors may stock a little bit more and this will normalize over the years.
It also depends on trend because we discussed that last year. When the market is going up, the distributors tend to buy more stocks because their forward forecasts are increasing and they don't want to be in backorder. When the market start to slow down, they will tend to reduce their stocks, so buy less from you. There is a bit of lag between what you see and what happened in the market. We need to be careful because of that. It's too early to say more than that.
We have a question on R&D. What is the percentage of research and development that is directly expensed in the P&L? Because if we restate your EBIT margin guidance by 1-point increase in R&D spending, the margin is improving versus 2021. Thus, inflation should be more than compensated by price increase and operating leverage.
On the first part of the question, which is how much of R&D is?
Do we expense?
The vast majority, more than 95% of our R&D is fully expensed, accounted as OpEx.
If we restate your EBIT margin guidance by 1 point increase in R&D spending, the margin is improving versus 2021.
No. 2021 is 16.3%, as we've seen. 2022 is around 15%, so if we increase by 1 point, we would be at 16%. We have stated that in 2021 we had around half a point of one-off exceptional profits. The 16.3% is 15.8%. Like current, you're right. Basically, if we restate R&D, we are slightly increasing or we are flat as you stated between 2021 and 2022.
Flat because we have the full year effect of the new product, which is probably around about 0.2% as well.
You're right.
All we are flat.
More or less flat, yes.
In terms of operational performance.
Any other question, in the room, the meeting room? Yes.
Yes. One, maybe one or two questions. By geographies, we have understood that China should drive clearly growth for 2022, but where should we see the highest rates of growth by geographies again?
The other question I had was the contribution of Clomicalm and Itrafungol, sorry, in terms of margin. Just catch you if I'm right, it was positively contributive to EBIT improvement. Can you provide more granularity on that, please? Yes. China, what I say is that we should expect strong over the next 3-4 years. This year we are adding 30 reps. As of yesterday, we have signed 8 or 9 of them. By the time you get the 30 reps on board, you train them, you get up to speed, you don't have an immediate effect. You just need to factor that in. I'm not sure about 2022. I don't want...
I don't want to say I don't care, but almost what I want is that 3-4 years from now, we may have doubled the sales or try to double the sales in China. That's what we try to do. China should be very strong in performing over the next 3-4 years in a relative percentage of growth versus other countries. In 2022, we'll see. You see the COVID, they are confining in Shanghai, where there is a lot of disruption with COVID, where vaccine doesn't seems to work so well. There is always short-term, little bit of an uncertainty and we have to see.
The main area of contribution, this is something I always mention to the people in these meetings, is look at Europe, because Europe remains 40% of the company. When Europe does 3% growth like it was historically the case, the company was doing 4%-5% growth. When Europe is doing 8 or 9, the company easily do 10 or 11. When Europe does 15, the company does 18. It is very important to look at Europe, I think, because it remains a very significant part of the company and that could explain a part of the leverage. Then of course, the key country of Virbac are India, Australia, Chile, U.S. You have to also look at these four countries.
They are the main contributors in terms of mass of sales and mass of EBIT. You need to look and track this as well. Any other last question. Yes, Clomicalm and Itrafungol, we have disclosed that the contribution of Clomicalm and Itrafungol and Iverhart was 1.6% of top line. On the top line. 1.6%. What we say-
Fourteen.
Huh?
EUR 14 million.
EUR 14 million in total. Yeah. Iverhart was six months, and Clomicalm and Itrafungol was nine months last year. That was a very significant contribution and EUR 14 million for the group. The level of margin of Clomicalm and Itrafungol is above average margin of the group. That's all what we say. We don't give more, but it's accretive contribution because the margin of the product is above the average of Virbac. Which is not the case for Iverhart because of the infrastructure, obviously. You had a last question. Yes. This is a question from James. He's asking if you could clarify your prior answer on margins. When you mention flat, is that on the 15.8% with the adjustment, or is it on the 16.3% that is reported?
Let me do it again. 2021, we have a ratio of 16.3%. That's what we've seen for 2021. We mentioned that we have half a point of exceptional profit. This is the EUR 5 million that you see on the introduction slide. If you restate for that exceptional profit, we are at 15.8% for 2021. We said that for 2022, we expect to be at around 15%, moving from 15.8% to 15%. One of the reason why we have that decrease is because of the other investment or increased investment in R&D. We decided to have 1 point more of investment in R&D.
If you restate for R&D, the 15% to be comparable to the 15% in 2022, if you want it to be comparable to 2021 without the R&D effect, it would be more 16%. Sébastien added that we also have a slight positive impact next year for Clomicalm, Itrafungol, and Iverhart because as he mentioned, those products only came during the year in March and in June for Iverhart. We'll have a full year impact. As especially Clomicalm and Itrafungol are relative, the two, three months will add a bit of a point. We are more or less stable if you restate for R&D, for the full year effect of Clomicalm and Itrafungol, and if you restate for the exceptional element of 2021.
To make sure to be clear, we have 16.3% in 2021, and we expect to be around 15% in 2022. We are not at the same level at all. We are at the same level if we look at what Habib explained, restating for Magny one-off exceptional things to compare apples to apples in terms of commercial or operational performance. It's more to say in terms of operational recurrent performance will be flat in terms of profitability based on what-
Seems to be clear. James will tell us on the chat. I have one question from Louise. You mentioned production issues still in Carros. What is the situation overall there?
Yeah. No, I mentioned that we had production issues in Carros, if you remember in 2020. We have entirely corrected those issues last year. We have resumed the production, but we are now facing a production capacity. We are not able to meet entirely the demand, and we are working on that with additional investment that will come in 2023. So what we have realized in 2022 is, we have offset entirely the loss that we had in 2020 because of the issues. We have offset that entirely by adding EUR 50 million more sales. But we continue to be not able to meet entirely the demand.
Which has increased a lot with the COVID, you know, with the adoption and vaccination of puppies and kitten.
Thank you very much. I guess it was the last question, and the time is running. We are about to achieve the last minute of the meeting. It is almost 4 o'clock in France. Thank you very much, Sébastien. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Habib.
Thank you very much.
Manuela, my partner, thank you as well. Thank you to Xavier and Florian for the technical support and all the organization. See you soon.
Thank you. Thank you.