Ladies and gentlemen, the program is about to begin. This time, it is my pleasure to turn the program over to your host, Michael Ryskin.
Great. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. My name is Mike Ryskin. I'm on the Bank of America Life Science Tools, Diagnostics, and Animal Health team. I'm excited to host our next session. We're joined by Elanco Animal Health, and we're pleased to have CFO Todd Young with us. Todd, thanks for being here.
Thanks, Mike. Thanks for all the coverage you provided. Being there, we certainly appreciate it.
Always, always there. So just to kick it off, sort of my standard question, I mean, you had an earnings call, I want to say, maybe 48 hours ago. So still very fresh, but we're still sort of digesting some of the updates from that. So maybe you could spend a couple of minutes just running through key points from your 4Q or from 2024, key points about the guide, just sort of anything that stood out for you that's worth flagging as we kick things off.
Certainly. No, we did. We reported early Tuesday morning, so if you didn't get a chance to listen to the replay or transcript, encourage everyone to do so or check out the slide deck at a minimum. Tiffany and Kat from my IR team do a great job of laying out all the drivers and impacts to make sure we're clear with the results. Overall, a strong finish to 2024, 4% constant currency, ex-Aqua, growth for us in the quarter, sequential improvements, lots of strength across the broad portfolio. U.S. Pet grew in Q4, International Pet, U.S. Farm all continued to do well. International Farm was flat, but that was a lot of. That's the two different elements of things we've exited. Overall, a really strong year on operating cash flow for us.
We put up $541 million of operating cash flow for the year, 120% of adjusted net income, and we're able to reduce our debt from a net leverage standpoint down to 4.3 times by the end of the year. A real credit to the team across the enterprise for focusing on cash and being very disciplined and looking at all the different aspects of working capital and making improvements there, so very pleased with how Q4 played out. The one negative in the quarter was the stronger dollar, and that relative to our November expectations is for $10 million in the top line and a really heavy drop through of $7 million to EBITDA that pushed us lower in the range than we otherwise would have been ex-FX. That headwind continues to 25.
We've been talking about this for a couple of months, but nonetheless, it's here and something that we're subject to, but overall, the things we control, how it's playing out, we're very pleased with the business, how 2024 ended, and the momentum we have going into 2025 now that we have so many of these big products we've been waiting for from a regulatory perspective, getting approval last year and now into the marketplace with both Bovaer and Zenrelia, Credelio Quattro to build on AdTab and Experior and Bovaer.
Right. Maybe on that, President, as you pivot to the 2025 outlook, one thing I really like you guys always put in the slides is sort of like tailwinds and headwinds going into next year. What's driving assumptions? Where do you see upside? Where do you see downside? Could you just run through that really quick as we look forward to the next year and we think about lower end of the guide, higher end of the guide? What are the big swing factors we should think about for either potential upside or downside risk?
Yeah, certainly, if you look at our sales growth, and again, we were 1% in 2023, 3% in 2024, now guiding to 4%-6% for 2025. That growth is being driven by the innovation portfolio. Those big products I just mentioned are getting deeper into the launch curve, like an AdTab and Experior, or just getting started with the Zenrelia and Quattro and Bovaer. So really focused on those big contributors to our growth in 2024, 2025, and in the future years. Certainly, the base is something that we do focus on, and what we're seeing is strengthen our base where we add innovation to it. So in 2024, Rumensin, which is our largest farm animal product, grew 16%. That's a cattle product, dairy product that's been used for over 50 years by farmers, and it grew 16% in 2024.
That was really because of the combined use in feedlots with Experior and dairy farmers getting to the front of the line to get Bovaer by using more Rumensin on dairy. So as we look, we're really looking at how does the innovation strengthen the base portfolios. That's an example on the farm animal side. We see it similarly in the vet clinics. Having more of these new big products to talk about with the veterinarians is great. All of our products are already in the vet clinics around the globe. So it's not like Elanco is new to a vet clinic, but it's great to be able to bring the innovation we've brought to those clinics over the last few years, be it Bexacat for feline diabetes, Zorbium for post-operative pain, Parvovirus for the deadly disease of puppies, Zenrelia and Credelio Quattro.
Those things that we expanded our U.S. sales force by 25% in 2024 to have more time to go deeper with our products in the vet clinic. The products are here. We're excited for U.S. pets growth in Q4. We expect that to fully continue here in 2025. And again, as we look at the ups and downs in our business, certainly the innovation sales growth and its ability to influence the base is the biggest thing we're focused on. I think we've demonstrated over the last few years our ability to control costs, to take head count out of our business. We've done a number of restructurings. We've reduced our footprints. We've taken out heads. We've gotten more efficient with where we do the work.
And for that reason, right, we've got SG&A in 2025 that's less than it was in 2021, despite the inflationary environment we've all been living through. And that's really that discipline. And so the growth driver for us, like all companies, is going to be the top line. It's going to come from innovation, helping for innovation's sake, but also as innovation helps the base portfolios.
Okay. That's really helpful. I'm going to parse out a lot of that one by one, but maybe I'll start with a high-level question. A lot of focus on innovation in your answer. One of the updates you gave us on the call two days ago was you raised your innovation targets for 2025. You've had those innovation targets out for years and years. I don't remember when you first initiated them. Three years ago?
Tiffany was right when I heard them forward. It's been a while.
It's been a while. So we've been, 2025 has been the target for a while. Now you're raising it to $640-$720 versus prior $600-$700. You also beat your 2024 innovation target for the year. Came in ahead there as well. So can you go into that a little bit, sort of like any specifics on what's driving that strength in 4Q, what's making you more confident in 2025? Is it just kind of broad across the portfolio or sort of what sticks out to you the most? And then we'll go through all those products one by one.
Sure. Yeah, I appreciate the reminder on increasing the targets and over-delivering Q4 on innovation. It certainly is broad-based strength in the portfolio. I would certainly call out Experior. We had thought it would become a blockbuster globally, and it's only sold in two countries, the U.S. and Canada. And then it made blockbuster status more than $100 million in the U.S. alone. We received the heifer clearance in November that expanded the market opportunity for Experior. And because so many feedlots are already on the product, it was able to ramp in heifers even quicker than we were expecting. That was one reason for the Q4B AdTab out of season, frankly. When you think about sort of the parasiticides in Europe, did better to end the year, showing continued strength there. So those are two that I call out of the big blockbuster potential products that were strong.
But we did see strength as we've gotten into more markets in general. We did buy the NutriQuest portfolio a couple of years back for swine. That swine had a better quarter in Q4 than it had in previous quarters, which was nice to see globally. So overall, just that continued strength we saw in Q4 is what caused us to raise the guidance for the full year up to the 640-720.
Okay. You touched on Experior there. You talked about it a little bit before as well. So maybe we'll start there. That's a product that Experior and Bovaer are two products where we've had a lot of debate with investors in terms of what's priced in, what's in the stock. And I mean that from a couple of directions. First, I'll say that certainly we found that there's a lot more investor attention on companion animal products versus livestock products, just because if you think about the blockbusters in the industry over the last decade, most of the innovation comes in companion. But also because these are sort of new markets. This is a little bit of an unproven, like what could the uptake be? You said yourself, it seems like you were surprised to the upside and how quickly you hit blockbuster. So just walk us through that.
What is the opportunity? How is that developing? Any learnings from Experior that you could apply to Bovaer as it ramps?
Yeah, I think it's a very fair question because, as we call out, Experior is the first farm animal blockbuster across the industry in a decade, and so understandable that farm animal hasn't received the attention that Pet Health has over the last few years, but fundamentally, Experior has replaced the old beta agonist, our Optaflexx, Zoetis's Actogain, so this isn't a new market. It's just a product that's been a better mousetrap, frankly, for the feedlot owners, and it doesn't have the competition of having three companies selling similar product into the feedlot, so we've been able to get that ramp of both taking share from those other competitors as well as just growing our overall presence.
Now, one thing to note is the cattle cycle is lower, and so we still aren't at, I think, we probably got to a trough in the cattle cycle and cattle numbers of cattle on feed in 2024, and that should provide a tailwind to Experior as we go. Adding heifers, that's about 40% of feedlot animals. And so that expands the overall market in 2025 that we only had for a short period in 2024. And then the value proposition for farmers is such that we were able to raise price as much on Experior as anything in our portfolio in 2025. And so that all is part of just providing the right solution for the farmer that allows them to be more prosperous is good for us being more prosperous. As we think about Bovaer, it's not going to be dissimilar. It's a little more complicated.
It is the creation of a new market dynamic because, as you're aware, Mike, in farm animal, it's all about healthy animals converting high-cost feed. The feed is 80% of the cost of raising an animal across all three species. So you really need a healthy animal that converts that feed efficiently into protein that then can be sold. And so that is the whole thing. In the case of Bovaer, it's an environmental impact. It will reduce the amount of methane coming into the atmosphere. And farmers are huge on the environment. They're stewards of the land. That's what they do. But if they can't make more money, they can't just buy a product because it helps the environment.
And so a lot of time has been spent to develop a platform to both measure the reduced emissions on the farm, create a marketplace where that can be sold, and then to have CPG companies that have consumers that are looking for them to have less environmental impact while still wanting high-quality protein like dairy to have that. And so this really came together in 2024 with the approval of Bovaer, but also the proof of dairy farmers getting paid nearly $10 million for selling carbon credits from using Rumensin. And so as we go into Bovaer, we have to get it on the farm. You've got to get it through feed mills. Every state has a different regulatory body that we have to manage through. So it is a complex ecosystem, but one that we think is just about unlocked. And that's where Bovaer will go in.
The dairy farm will make more money through selling the carbon credits from the reduced methane. We will obviously make money selling the product itself. And the funding is really CPG-driven as you think about the big dairy companies wanting that positive benefit for their consumers. So we're excited for Bovaer. It's much like Experior. It'll take a while to get through the complexity, but it'll be sticky once it's on the farm and going. And so again, the downside of Bovaer, if there is one, is it's a lower gross margin product for us. It's lower than the corporate gross margin average. And so it won't be as profitable until it gets moved to a different manufacturing plant with lower cost of goods sold. But right now, we're really looking forward to impact the dairy farmer and to have a portfolio benefit with Rumensin with those same dairies.
Okay. Two quick follow-up questions I want to hit on that, and then we'll move to companion. One is just something you just touched on right now is Bovaer gross margin. Any thoughts on timing of when you can shift that manufacturing process? And also if you could comment on gross margin and profitability at the EBIT line for both Bovaer and Experior.
Yeah. With Experior, it's a very strong gross margin product from a farm animal side to that. With Bovaer, DSM is in the process of building a plant. We probably will start sourcing product from that plant sometime in 2026, early 2027, depending on their build and regulatory timelines and the like. So it's still a little ways away, but it's not a decade. It's call it 18-24 months.
Okay. Okay. And then the other question I had was just on that carbon credit angle with Bovaer. I mean, a lot of that's been in place for previously, but as we think about the new administration in Washington and sort of their positioning on environmental effects and policies, any chance some of those credits get revoked or removed or any change to how that's approached? What do you think about that?
Certainly something we're paying attention to. There are incentives. I think what we're trying to focus our efforts on is incentives for dairy farmers. I mean, it really is money flowing to the dairy farmer to have a positive impact to meet a need that the customers, the big CPG companies want. But this is an economic benefit for our dairy farmers, and we view that as the positive part, and hopefully that's what carries the day in Washington. Longer term, we are building a market that needs incentives, but certainly a helpful part here as the market gets moving.
Okay. All right. Let's go to companion. Zenrelia, maybe we'll start with that. 2024 was a busy year when it comes to Zenrelia and news. 2025 as well. So obviously, I think it's fair to say that the label is not what you guys were hoping for, but it's sort of where you are now. So putting all that behind you, talk about the feedback you've had from vets in the last couple of months. Talk about. You provided some stats in terms of clinic penetration, reorder rates. Just sort of help us frame where you are with Zenrelia a couple of months post-launch.
The efficacy continues to be what we hear the most about is that positive efficacy. The product really works and works really well. It works on the hardest cases. And so that is the compelling reason vets to use the product. As you noted, the label is the challenge. It continues to be the challenge. We continue to have a lot of KOL vets using it, conversations with other vets to continue that process of them hearing about how they're managing and the results they're seeing. That is a big driver of getting vets to give it a try, to see it in their own hands. That's why we are excited to be in about a third of the vet clinics in the U.S., 8,000. That continues to grow, and we're trying to get deeper with each of those.
The other element is we're trying to make sure to get as much education into as many clinics for when the season really begins. December through February has about 25% less prescriptions than July through September. It's off-season for Derm from just the nature of the dogs. And so we're really trying to get as many vets to experience, learn about the product, and get ready for when the season really picks up because we do think that we can be a really good value for the consumer to get an inflamed dog back to a clinical remission state using the product. And that's really what Bobby and his team are focused on is they continue to educate, continue to get vets in front of other vets, understanding that we are having to combat a label, and some vets just aren't going to be interested because of that.
But this could be a great product for us in the U.S., even if we don't have every vet using it. And then we're really excited about the international expansion. Ellen and her regulatory team have done a nice job of bringing it so fast. We actually got approval in Brazil before the U.S. So we're having really nice starts in Brazil, Japan, just got going in Canada in January, and then expecting to add the E.U. and U.K. and Australia later in 2025. And as you know, covering animal health, Michael, the international markets are great, but you need all the markets to get to the size of the U.S.
And so us getting there so quickly with Zenrelia is a really big positive as the Derm market outside of the U.S. is around $800 million, getting to all those markets with an approved product and one that so far has had a less restrictive label than the U.S. But the same great efficacy means we've got a real chance to grow Zenrelia globally really fast just because of the timing of when we're getting to market with the product. So overall, we're still excited about how much Zenrelia is helping itchy dogs and believe efficacy is such a big component of what people need that that's the win with Zenrelia.
Okay. Interesting comment there. I want to follow up on the less restrictive label than the U.S. We've had a lot of discussions about the label. There's some really interesting new data presented at VMX about a month ago in terms of why the label is what it is in the U.S. Just remind us, you have ongoing conversations with the regulators. Obviously, the label is what the label is, but there is always the possibility of amendments or tweaks or changes. How are those conversations going? What are the timelines for that? What are the possible scenarios we could be looking at down the road?
Yeah. So we're pleased with the engagement with the FDA. We have submitted data that has already been produced. It wasn't needed to go run clinical trials to them. So we've started a supplemental label amendment process. We don't expect that to eliminate the black box, but we do think it could be a positive change in some of the wording, which would be positive for the product and something that we hope this process will lead to. We're also beginning the work to be able to do clinical trials to really address the concern the FDA had on their interpretation of the study versus what the other international markets are doing on their interpretation of the study, which is more in line with what we thought the FDA would do. That's a longer time process because of the clinical work.
But given how well this product works, that's a good investment for us, even if it takes a longer time before we get the better label. But that's where it stands. Engagement's good. We'll continue to progress those discussions.
On the back of that longer process where you're redoing the trials, is there a possibility of getting the black box removed again down the road?
We think so. I mean, again, as you can see in the data from our booster study, these products work really well. Vaccinated dogs more than a year of age, that's what the market is to begin with. Our booster data shows there's no impact on the titer levels from the vaccines. And so this is a very safe product. FDA approved it because it's a safe product. We think that booster data shows there's not a concern with vaccines. And so we do think that the ability to remove the box is there. It's just going to take time and good new data in order to get the FDA to come to that conclusion.
Yeah. Yeah. I thought the data you presented, I think it was October or November in the Vancouver conference on the booster was very interesting. And again, the data from VMX to me seemed relatively compelling that it is safer than how the FDA interpreted it. It was just about sort of going through that process. I want to ask you a little bit on, you flagged efficacy a number of times. It's sort of like a leading the positive efficacy is what you're leading with. Can we discuss what the use cases are, how the vets that are prescribing this, where are they going with this? Is this to directly replace Apoquel? Is this places where Apoquel, just for whatever reason, didn't penetrate? Is this for vets that are just not as familiar with it? Sort of like where is your initial beachhead of use cases?
Certainly, the easiest place is where dogs are not getting the relief from Apoquel and Cytopoint. You can see that out there where a lot of off-label use of using Apoquel with Cytopoint, keeping the dogs on Apoquel for the two doses that is required to get efficacy out of Apoquel longer than the 14-day induction period that's on the label. So that's the one spot. Clearly, there's obviously a bell curve for vets. Some are using it for all cases. Others are only using it on those failure cases. Our goal is to get them experience, get them comfortable so that they do use it for all of their cases. But certainly, we view the seasonal dogs where vaccines have been administered already and come in with a flare-up, there's no issues there of using the best product. And so again, we're getting that experience. We're having good conversations.
Clearly, we've got our reps out there spending a lot of time in vet clinics with both Zenrelia and Credelio Quattro and again, just continuing to work at it every day.
And on the other question on Zenrelia, a couple of weeks ago, you had that flag or maybe a week ago you had the flag on. So some of the marketing or promotional activities, just remind us what the impact of that is, what went wrong, how you're addressing it, and just any ramifications of that?
No. I mean, we don't think there's a commercial impact from it. We're addressing the FDA's concerns on certainly the way we describe marketing materials. Again, this is one of those where we had said, "If you have vaccines, check with your vet," right, in using the product. They wanted us to say modified live virus vaccines. Okay. So again, we're doing the follow-up. We don't think it has a commercial impact.
Okay. That's great. That's what happens when you mess with the regulators, I guess. Okay. All right. So that's Zenrelia. Let's maybe move on to Credelio Quattro just in the interest of time. Launched very recently. Obviously, it's a market that's really well established, really well known in companion animal. Initial feedback, initial thoughts, and same thing, just very competitive market. How are you positioned? What's the strategy? Sort of where are you attacking with that?
Yeah. And so we're in all the vet clinics. Elanco is a well-known entity. Now we're bringing a great product, a product that has the broadest coverage as we pick up the tapeworms. We did an IDEXX Dog Park study with them a few years ago that showed tapeworm was at about 5%. Okay. Is 5% a big number? Oh, if it's your dog, it's a big number. And so again, why not have the best coverage when it's available to you? We're also selling the differentiation on speed of tick kill, right? There's a lot of concerns on zoonotic transfer, Lyme disease, other human impacts from ticks. Lotilaner, the active ingredient in ours, kills it twice as fast as what is in NexGard and in Simparica Trio.
So again, if you can cover your tapeworms, if you can kill the ticks faster, this is just a product that's got a lot of differentiated benefits. That's what we're selling on. It also is very palatable. And so that's been a positive from dogs' willingness to eat and take the product easily. So again, we're looking at certainly clinics where they love Interceptor Plus because of the worm coverage. Often, it'd be an Interceptor Plus paired with a Bravecto for flea and tick. All right, well, hey, get your worm coverage, use Credelio Quattro because that's what you're after and an opportunity for us to get into vet clinics where we might not even be in with Credelio. We're in more vet clinics with Interceptor Plus than we are with Credelio because of that worm coverage.
And then clearly, we'll go after the clinics where Credelio and Interceptor Plus are there. And then again, we're talking to every vet clinic with our reps. And so we want to kick out those products that don't have as broad a coverage so that we can give pet owners greater protection. And that's what Quattro does. So again, we've been on the market a month. We're happy with the first month, but there's a lot of months you have to go.
Anything we should keep in mind as we're modeling the rest of the year? I mean, not that we have a specific number, but anything we should keep in mind in terms of inventory stocking, pacing through the year? Whenever you have a new product launch, there can always be some weird dynamics. So we want to make sure we're not caught off guard.
Yeah. And I think because we launched in January, you've got a lot of pull-out to the vet clinics. We launched in March. I would have said, yeah, you got to be careful on the stocking numbers. But right now, we just gave a lot of detail on Tuesday for everyone's modeling efforts, Michael. So hopefully that's understood and everyone's got it built pretty well off what our expectations are right now across our portfolio.
Okay. And given I've always thought of Elanco as having, especially once you combine the Elanco and the Bayer portfolio a couple of years ago, really broad parasiticide coverage, probably the broadest parasiticide just in terms of number of products, not even thinking about total revenues, but the number of products is probably the broadest menu of options for parasiticide. As you weigh in on Credelio Quattro on that, just as you mentioned Interceptor Plus a couple of minutes ago. Concerns on cannibalization, what's built into your expectations on that? And sort of what are you seeing so far?
Yeah. We've had $300 million of revenue last year in that parasiticides. Those products have been in decline because we didn't have the combo product. So again, we've assumed continued declines for Trifexis and Advantage Multi Interceptor Plus. We grew Credelio in 2024. So it's continued because of that strong efficacy on tick kill and it's great product for cats to have growth. And then outside the U.S., Credelio Plus being our all-in-one that's growing. But we do expect that other products to continue to decline. They're getting to be smaller. And so the rate slows down. And then we get into getting into this really fast-growing all-in-one market in the U.S. with Credelio Quattro. And that's certainly something the team is really excited about. And so far, great feedback. You were at VMX.
You saw the dominant presence we had getting best in show and really having the excitement you can feel from our team there. We're at Western Vet in Las Vegas this coming week. I expect a similar excitement just given all the innovation we're bringing right now relative to the competition.
Okay, and then at VMX, you talked about you gave us some additional thoughts on pricing for both Zenrelia and Quattro. Launch pricing, a little bit more on longer-term pricing, what that is relative to Apoquel, relative to Simparica Trio, maybe NexGard Plus.
Yeah. In the U.S., Zenrelia is at a discount. As we said, it was about 20% at launch. They took some price. So it's a little bigger than that right now. For Credelio Quattro, we've priced it on a list price in line with Simparica Trio. We've got some introductory offers for the vets. But if you go out shopping right now, you'll see you've got Credelio and Quattro for about $31 a month, really economical price point to protect your dog against fleas, ticks, and worms, and the like. In the retail channel, right, we went to an everyday low price last year. So we're not taking price on our retail products. We think it's really set up well. We are a little cautious. Everyone's on the Walmart numbers. The consumer, we're at a spot there where that also can be impacted by foot traffic.
But at the end of the day, right, you're going to buy your collar. The question is, when do you buy your Seresto collar? You're going to buy one for the season. And so again, all things that we're looking at, but overall, we'll always be looking at our pricing strategies across our portfolio. We call it out expected 2% price in 2025 for the complete portfolio. As some we take more and Experior, some of the vet products, some we're taking nothing, as noted in U.S. retail.
Okay. Great. Really briefly, I want to touch on Parvo, monoclonal antibody. You flagged this past call again, 48 hours ago, that maybe initial uptick wasn't quite as strong as you'd have liked. Can you dive into that a little bit more? Because that was really something we were very excited about over the course of 2024. What's changed there?
Again, I think we continue to need more vet education and data, I think, is one thing. It works really well. It's just a lot of clinics just don't see Parvo cases. They're not set up for to even take a Parvo case because they don't have isolation areas. And so they just say no. Others are really strong adopters because they see a lot of cases and are buying it. So I think our initial expectation was it's going to be really broad-based for all vet clinics. I think the size of that market's a little smaller from that aspect. We're still trying to figure out how do you unlock the shelter business. There is money in shelters, but it's a little different dynamic. And so that's a place where, unfortunately, they see more Parvo cases.
But again, the treatment, if you don't use our monoclonal, is isolation, three or four days, lots of IVs, lots of impact on the vet clinics. So we're really trying to educate the vets on how this saves them time and money from a resource utilization standpoint. But it's also just continued education. So yeah, the ramp hasn't been as quick as we had originally thought. But it still just works so well from an efficacious standpoint that we're continuing to believe it'll keep growing. And we didn't know we got conditional approval in Canada. So the first international market, which is a positive. And we'll continue to put time and energy behind saving puppies' lives with our Parvo monoclonal therapy.
Okay. I'm just following up on that. So is this more of a timing ramp perspective? Do you think you can overcome these issues, or is this change your thinking about long-term opportunity five, 10 years out?
Yeah. No, we still think long-term it'll be big. It's a function of, again, vet education, different timing. In order to be a blockbuster, we've always said it'll have to get to international markets. So that's still a longer term. So again, it's part of our innovation portfolio. It provided a lot of growth for us in 2024. We expect it to provide growth in 2025. But we did want to call out that it isn't performing at the same level we thought it might be just for transparency with investors.
Okay. Okay. Fair enough. We got about five minutes left. Still have a lot of questions. So I'm going to go real rapid fire. One is future pipeline. I mean, especially you called out IL-31. You talked about later this year approval, launch essentially early 2026. Just sort of what's the confidence there given there's still a number of months to go and you've seen other regulatory timings move around a lot?
Yeah. Again, we gave you our best estimate based on all the facts in front of us and what we know. Could it be earlier? Could it be later? I mean, that's the nature of the regulatory bodies and some of that uncertainty. USDA doesn't have the same ADUFA timelines as FDA. Often that could mean there are faster approval, but it doesn't have to be. So again, we're excited for IL-31. We're making our CapEx is elevated at 25 as we do expand production for monoclonals, expanding production for vaccines in Fort Dodge, Iowa, expanding production for the Credelio franchise in France. So again, all those things that are in play here as we go forward.
Okay. So on that topic, I want to talk about you talked about expanding capacity. You've got new products ramping. I want to shift the margins. When you think about what the portfolio looked like a year or two ago versus what the portfolio looks like today versus what it should look like a year or two years from now, that innovation contribution is obviously significantly bigger. A lot of these newer products, Credelio Quattro, IL-31, Zenrelia, we expect them to be meaningfully accretive to margins, but it takes time to ramp that. So how do you think about the contribution to margin from that revenue mix? And sort of what's the breakpoint on a new product where it goes from being on day one, probably margin dilutive, but when does it become break-even? When does it start getting really accretive?
Yeah. I think obviously size helps. I mean, Experior breaking the $100 million mark, it continues to be a really nice flow-through product, very synergistic with the total portfolio and our feedlot team and a very good gross margin. Bovaer, as we talked, it's going to be lower gross margin for a few years. That's all right. There's a lot of work to yet do there. The pet health products, right? The declines we've seen in U.S. Pet Health the last few years have been a drag on markets. That is the highest gross margin parts of the portfolio. And unfortunately, those have been in a sales decline because of just the competition. We think that rights itself when we started growing. You saw good performance in Q4 when you get U.S. Pet Health growing. So again, all of those things in play.
The biggest negative to gross margin for '25 is us buying our UK CMO, and that we called out in November, $25-$35 million margin headwind that keeps us from growing even faster than sales. That's a one-time impact in the sense of its growth. It'll be a continuation of the base, but we won't have a drag like we have this year of a new headwind. So again, we do expect to increase profitability and the like going forward. We're looking out. Tariffs are a big uncertainty for everyone, and something that, given regulatory timelines to move production, you don't move production of our products. It will be where we are today for a few years, so it's not as if there's an immediate, "Oh, we'll just shift production to a different geographic location." It's just not the way it works on the regulatory side.
But independent of that, innovation is a higher gross margin on average. It's going to grow faster than the base. That's going to be positive for our gross margin. We're continuing to be very efficient on our base spend to free up money to really invest behind these high-growth opportunities in pet health.
I mean, you mentioned U.K. CMO being a headwind. I think FX is also a headwind. You've got the obvious adverse spin. Any way you could sort of strip those out and kind of give us what underlying margins would have been excluding some of these headwinds? I think you'd have seen some much better margins this year.
Yeah. I mean, they would have been better margins. I mean, they are what we have them. They're in our base. We're having to fight this. So again, we've given out our views for 2025 with what we have today. But certainly, those are our factors. Now, we also don't have our plants slowed down in 2025 like we had in 2024. So that's a benefit to margin, right? So we always have a big portfolio with our global products. I think if I point to one of the things that excites us most about 2024, our nine biggest foreign affiliates, eight of those nine grew. China was the only place that didn't grow, right? If you look at our five big product families, they all grew. That broad-based geographic diversity of animal health played really well for us in 2024. We expect the same thing in 2025.
Okay. We're one minute over time, but I got to squeeze in one more.
This is your show.
I want to ask you about balance sheet leverage. Obviously, it's been an issue. I think that's, I mean, a big part of why the Aqua divestment took place. Give us an update on sort of your ability to manage that and how you see yourself positioned as you exit the year.
Yeah. We exited 2024 really well. We were 4.3 times net leverage. The FX rates, I think, took $76 million, $71 million off our US dollar cash in Q4. So that, again, gets to the impact of the stronger dollar. We're guided to low fours, mid-fours net leverage in 2025. The $45 million FX headwind we called out here for 2025 is about 0.3 turns on leverage. And so, unfortunately, that's just the reality of having dollar-denominated debt. But feel very good about our relative position, interest expenses down in 2025 versus 2024 as a result of paying off a lot of debt last year on the Aqua deal. We're going to pay down more debt in 2025. As we, the other big thing to call out, the Aqua deal is about $150 million in cash taxes we have to pay in 2025.
So that'll be something that is free cash in 2026 that'll go to debt pay down and continue on this journey. We certainly know, and we've heard from our investors, they want us to get to a two-handle on leverage. We fully expect we'll be able to do that over time. But we got to get from four down to three before we get to two.
Yep. Yep. Fair point. Okay. Todd, thanks so much. This was great. Covered a lot of ground. Really appreciate it, and thanks again for your participation.
Thank you.
Ciao. All right. Thanks, everyone.