Good morning, everyone, and sorry for the wait. Thank you for joining the 2024 H.C. Wainwright 26th Annual Global Investment Conference. Today, we have Joe Papa, President and CEO of Emergent BioSolutions, a company focused on addressing public health threats and bringing life-saving products to market. Joe?
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with everyone today. I'm gonna talk more about Emergent. I will make some forward-looking comments, and I would refer you to our SEC filings. There you go. Thank you. Relative to Emergent, let me talk about who is Emergent. We've been a leader in public health for the past 25 years. Our mission is to protect, enhance, and save lives, and the way we do that is by preparing different products in the public health space. Products that are very difficult to make, and I would submit to you, ones that have a significant barrier to entry.
If you think about the problems that we attempt to solve for the Strategic National Stockpile, U.S. government, and governments all over the world, we have a solution for anthrax, the number one bacterial threat. We have a solution for smallpox, the number one viral threat. We have a solution for the most lethal biologic toxin, botulism. So you can see that we bring forth products that have a very significant barrier to entry for coming into the space, and that's been allowing us to continue to be very successful. There's a significant difficulty factor for all these. For example, the smallpox is a live attenuated vaccine, so it's not likely someone is gonna try to pick up that and make it in their garage. It's something that very difficult to do, but one we've been able to do very, very well.
Probably the other thing that we've been able to do is one of the few areas where there is bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress for continuing to protect the area of public health and the medical countermeasures that we have for biodefense. So we've been known to help and work with the leadership across all congressional and the executive branch of the U.S. government. This is just a quick look at us. As I mentioned, we have a number of products for all the different biologic threats, anthrax, smallpox, Ebola, botulism. We have chemical threats, and that's one part of our business, what we refer to as medical countermeasures. The second part of our business is a commercial business, that's predominantly Narcan, where unfortunately, it's the number one public health threat or problem for the United States.
Unfortunately, today, we sit here, and over a hundred thousand people die from drug overdoses, most of them being opioids and fentanyl, so clearly a significant problem. And we have a product, Narcan, that is the antidote for the overdose for opioids. So it's important that a hundred thousand people losing their lives on Narcan, just do the math on that. Over the course of ten years, if we don't do something like that, it's like the U.S. losing the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, or Jacksonville, Florida, every ten years. It just really impresses upon you the magnitude of the million-plus people. And then the final area on the right-hand side is our bioservices business. That's the area we've chosen to de-emphasize, where we make contract manufacturing products.
We will clearly still focus and support our existing customers, but it's an area of lesser focus for us going forward. It's been a busy twelve months since I certainly took over about six months ago, but busy twelve months for us as a company. First and foremost, one of the things we were able to do is we were to take Narcan, a prescription product, and switch it to over-the-counter. We think that's very important because one of the things, when you have an over-the-counter product, you can make access a lot more available. We believe the more access we have with Narcan, the more lives we can save with Narcan. We're now implementing programs where we can put first aid kits together for Narcan and make it available through a first aid kit.
If you think about the defibrillator on the wall that you may see in a restaurant, we can put the Narcan right next to that. Gives us a chance to be able to go out and make more Narcan available, which in our minds, translates into greater saving of lives. On medical countermeasures business, we've been very busy. We got an incremental $250 million, approximately, of new contract modifications that adds incrementally to our business for medical countermeasures. We're working on a new product for Ebola, a product we refer to as Ebanga. Obviously, once again, an area of significant concern, and we have a new product that we're working on there. And then, just last week, we received an approval for our ACAM product that's for smallpox. We received the incremental approval for Monkeypox.
We think Monkeypox, unfortunately, according to the World Health Organization, is becoming much more of a global health threat. Now that we have approval for our Monkeypox, or for Mpox, we refer to it as, we're now making a donation there, and I'll talk more about that in just a second. Beyond that, we've also worked very diligently to improve our financial position. That came down to a number of different tactics we employed. Number one, improved our operational performance. Through the first half of twenty twenty-four, we improved our EBITDA versus a year ago for first half by over $100 million. It came through a couple of different operating expense reductions. It also came through other focuses on refining our manufacturing footprint and allowing us to reduce the expenses and improve gross margins.
Number two, we made a decision to divest some assets. We have divested our Camden site in Camden, Maryland. We just divested a site in Canton, Massachusetts, that was specifically an unutilized warehouse, and we also sold a product, RSDL. All told, they generated about $110 million, once again, to help us to pay down our incremental debt we have as a company. We also made a decision to settle a lawsuit with Johnson & Johnson. We had our lawsuit or arbitration against them. They had one against us. We made a judgment that, "Let's just get this behind us." We decided to settle that, and we received $50 million from J&J, and that obviously reduced the risk of us having to pay J&J anything.
So it's good to get that behind us as we were thinking about the future of our company. We also, by working very diligently on working capital, we reduced our working capital. Working capital is down versus second quarter of 2023 by about $70 million. When you're thinking about what that means for our debt platform, obviously important. And then, just last week, our finance team, led by Rich, which is sitting next to me, our CFO, we refinanced our term loan and gave us an additional five years of freedom to operate, which we think is an important part of once again reducing risk as we think about the go-forward part of our company. Other opportunities I mentioned, let me first start on the right-hand side where debt refinancing, just continuing what I was talking about there.
We have a new credit facility with Oak Hill. This allows us to get the refinancing behind us. Once again, we think this gives us a chance to have freedom to operate, improve our operating performance, and then importantly, from all the tactics I talked about on the previous page, plus this, we have the ability to, this year, 2024, to reduce our total net debt by about $200 million. On the other side of the page, on the left-hand side, I talked about our Monkeypox response. Monkeypox, as I said, unfortunately, is a serious global health threat, as declared by the World Health Organization. It's predominantly in Africa, but we have seen cases show up in Asia, we've seen cases show up in Europe, and we've seen some cases here in the U.S. So we're worried about what that means.
Africa alone has said that they need 10 million doses of the vaccine in order to stop the threat and to ring-fence the problem here. We've done our part in terms of our ACAM product. Number one, we donated 50,000 doses to the World Health Organization. Number two, we've told the World Health Organization that in the event they need more doses, we have additional millions of doses available to us or to them, should they need those, and we'll go through a tender process right now with the World Health Organization for considering what needs to be done here in Africa, and then ultimately, we'll continue to work with countries all around the world that may need a response to the Mpox problem.
If needed, Emergent has millions of doses, and indeed, we also have the capability of producing over 40 million doses a year if it was to turn to that, but we'll be ready. This next slide is really trying to capture what's next, to give you some sense. For the first six months I've been here, we've been working on a concept of stabilize the company, and then once it's stabilized, go to turnaround, which in my mind is all about which assets do we want to invest in to go forward, and then ultimately get to transformation, which we think is long-term, profitable, and sustainable revenue and EBITDA growth. On the first half results, we were very pleased with the results. If you think about what's going on, we've now feel we've hit a point where we've stabilized the company.
We're now looking at investing in those assets for the future. But in 2024, for the first half of the year, revenue's been up 10%, so we're about $555 million this year versus $502 million last year. Yearly EBITDA, about $56.8 million, which is actually up about $100 million versus a year ago. It just gives you some sense of what we're working on. Also, we've made decisions to shut down some sites to streamline our site network. We've decided to sell our Camden facility. We sold it last month. We also decided to sell our Canton warehouse facility. We decided to shut down our Rockville, Maryland, site, and we decided to shut down our Bayview site.
All that's going to help us streamline our site network and improve the long-term EBITDA opportunity, while we still maintain the ability to manufacture our products. It's an important way that we're thinking about the future. All through this, we decided we could do this and keep our focus on the customers, lean manufacturing network, and a more flexible manufacturing network as what we're doing as we go forward. I think the question that you may ask is, "Well, what makes Emergent unique?" And I would submit to you, is this page right here, our medical countermeasures. As I mentioned before, we feel we have an absolute moat around our business because of the high difficulty factor to make a live attenuated virus vaccine like we do with smallpox.
Those are something that just nobody's going to be able to quickly do. There are other competition, to be clear, but it's not something a generic company is going to take on. We have also a market-leading position with Narcan. As I mentioned before, it's the opioid overdose treatment. We have a leading position with the majority share in Narcan, and importantly, we've backed it up with new products. We have Raxibacumab, an anthrax therapeutic product we're developing, a smallpox therapeutic product called Tembexa, and Ebanga for Ebola. All those, while we extended our contract durations through twenty thirty with long-term U.S. government contracts. So we think that's what truly sets us apart as a company going forward in terms of having this long-term, durable business opportunities.
In terms of Narcan, maybe what's unique about it, I think it really comes down to three factors. Factor number one, it's just the brand power of Narcan. It's a well-known brand. It's one that when people talk about treating opiate overdoses, first word association is Narcan. In case of an emergency, you want to have the proven doses of a brand like Narcan as an example, the efficacy of the brand. Number two is our distribution capabilities with our Narcan Direct program. We shipped over 18,000 entities every year. That's an important point of us, how we make Narcan a turnkey program for all the public interest players that need the product. Then number three, it's our manufacturing capabilities. We have significant manufacturing capabilities that allow us to make over 13 million units, twin packs.
So it just really speaks to our capabilities on why Narcan is unique and why we can continue to grow it. As we think about the future of Narcan, though, we think there's even more opportunity. And why do we think that? A number of large pharma companies have had to settle with states and cities around the country because of the opioid epidemic, and all told, it's going to be about $54 billion that goes to the states and local municipalities. With those payments, those payments are earmarked directly to go towards opioid overdose education and opioid overdose treatment, of which obviously Narcan is a leading product.
So we do think that not only is the, it's a real issue today in terms of the overdoses, but importantly, there's some significant amount of capital coming to this area to try to reduce this, death rate of a hundred thousand plus a year. We think that's an important part of our future, and I think certainly we've tried to play our role in this, Emergent by getting our product and working with the FDA to get our product available over-the-counter. So I think that's, how we're trying to help solve this problem from a public health point of view. On the MCM product also, we think, you know, that what are the key issues? I said, as I said before, number one, it's one of the few bipartisan items that Congress always agrees on.
We need to continue to work on this area because we live in an increasingly dangerous world, and biodefense threats are real. We need to make sure we're continuing to support it. Number two, we think there are international government opportunities. While we have the product's capability and we make it available to the U.S. government, there clearly is opportunity for our smallpox or for our anthrax to sell it to other governments around the world and make sure that we also protect them and their citizens. So we, I think there's an international product opportunity. And then finally, the other thing I talked about on the previous slide, we think there's a lot of new product opportunities like Ebanga, Tembexa, Raxibacumab, all being areas that we can focus on for the future, and of course, the Mpox outbreak that I talked about.
So a lot of opportunities here for us to grow for the future as we think about where we can go with our MCM business. I mentioned the bioservices business. I'm going to be really quick on that. It's an area that is part of our company. We take on some very difficult areas for contract manufacturing, but we'll take care of our existing customers, but it will be a de-emphasized as a focus for us in the future. In terms of where we're going next, in terms of what we're thinking about, I mentioned Narcan. It's once again, we are the leader. We're looking at market expansion.
We're going to try to continue to improve access, try to make it available to all the college dormitories, try to make it available to college students, to high school students even, making sure that we make our product available, because the more Narcan is available, the more we believe we can save lives. It's a very simple equation: make it more available, save more lives, and that's our focus on what we're looking at for our Narcan business going forward. Where would this go to?
The main reason I wanted to put this slide here is really as I think about growth catalysts and growth drivers for the future. I really wanted to highlight. These are the products I talked about before, but the only other thing I wanted to highlight here is what we clearly think beyond the existing business that we have today, beyond what we do to fulfill our opportunities with the U.S. government. We are taking a look at extending the geographic footprint of these products by bringing out these products to other governments around the world, and especially for some of the newer products, we think that that's important. It's an important way that we can help try to make the world a safer world from a biodefense point of view. So look to us to have more comments there on the international side.
Obviously, the monkeypox is a perfect example of things that we're talking on right now as we look to the future. I did a little bit on the financials as I've gone through it, so I'll be quick, but you can see from this slide, you can see 2024 first half revenue up by about 10%, $555 million versus $502 million, EBITDA $56.8 million this year versus a loss in 2023. So a $100 million improvement, and I think if you have one takeaway from this slide, I hope you take away that we have momentum. We have momentum as we think about what's going to happen to the second half of the year and going into 2025, 2026 and beyond.
So, we're excited about what this means to us in terms of what we can do, especially in our medical countermeasures business. And this is our. We do it by segment reporting. This is all available in our financials, the quarterly numbers that we put forth. I won't go through each individual one, but we report it by each of our three segments, commercial, MCM, and our bioservices group. Maybe if I just skip ahead to this. This is actually a result of our guidance.
We've been able to beat and raise our guidance in the first quarter, second quarter, and we reported the second quarter. In terms of right now, we're looking at as of August 6, 2024, range of $1.05-$1.125 for revenue guidance and EBITDA from $140-$180, or I mean, midpoint at $160. And I remind you, in 2023, unfortunately, our EBITDA was negative. So you can see a very nice turnaround that's happening with the business. If I go to the last slide here, you know, what are we all about? I think first and foremost, you take away, we've got a very unique business, has a moat around it based on the difficulty factors of the products we have.
Number two, we've made great progress in our debt reduction, and by extending the debt we have from a what was going to expire in 2025 is now moved out to 2029, so we have freedom to operate. I think the year-to-date performance clearly sets a mindset for what we're trying to do for the future. Narcan is going to continue to grow as we think about the future and as well as the MCM projects we have with the U.S. government. So all told, we think we've got an opportunity here to literally turn around this business and make it a very successful business for the future. That concludes my comments. We're a leading global health company, and we're excited about what we can do for the future.