Good morning, and welcome to Elanco Animal Health Incorporated's twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders. All participants will be in listen only mode. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Hoover, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elanco Animal Health Incorporated. You may now go ahead, sir.
Good morning, and welcome to the twenty twenty one annual shareholder Elanco Animal Health Incorporated. This is David Hoover and I'm the Chairman of the Board of Directors. It's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual meeting. We have shareholders attending via the web and the dial in number provided. It is now shortly after 8AM Eastern Daylight Time on 05/19/2021, and this meeting will be in order.
With us today are members of Elanco's Board of Directors, as well as the company's auditors, Ernst and Young. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Jeff Simmons, the President and Chief Executive Officer, who will lead the formal portion of today's meeting. Jeff?
Thank you, Dave. Good morning and welcome to Elanco's Third Annual Meeting. First, I'd like to introduce the members of our Board of Directors and Executive Committee. In addition to Dave and myself, Board members include Kapila Kapoor Anand, JP Bilgrave, William Doyle, Scott Ferguson, Art Garcia, Michael Harrington, Paul Herondine, Deborah Kochiver, Lawrence Kurzius, Kirk McDonald and Denise Scott Knight. I also would like to introduce the members of our Executive Committee, Ramiro Cabral, Elanco International Dirk Alla, Elanco Europe Dave Kennard, Human Resources and Corporate Affairs Joyce Lee, U.
S. Pet Health Raquel Harris Mason, Chief Marketing Officer Aaron Schott, Innovation, Regulatory and Business Development Jose Cojea DeSimas, U. S. Farm Animal David Urbanek, Manufacturing and Quality and Todd Young, Chief Financial Officer. We're also joined by Ernst and Young, our independent auditors.
Additionally, the company has appointed Broadridge Financial Services to act as an Inspector of Election. Peter Hagberg from Broadridge is with us today and has taken the Oath of Inspector of Election. Please note this meeting is being recorded and the recording will be available after the meeting. However, no one attending via the webcast or telephone is permitted to use any audio recording device. The Board of Directors fixed 03/15/2021 as the record date for determining shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting.
An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that notice of the meeting on 04/08/2021, access to the proxy statement and the 2020 annual report were given to all shareholders as of the record date and will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The shareholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 472,799,742 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. We're informed by the Inspector of Election that they are represented in person or by proxy shares of common stock representing 418,250,914 votes or approximately 88.5% of the voting power on the record date. Since this represents more than the majority of the voting power of all issued proposals two is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as the company's principal independent auditor advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. It is a non binding vote, although the compensation committee and the Board will certainly take the results of the vote into account when four is the approval of the amended and restated 2018 Elanco Stock Plan, including an amendment to increase the number of shares authorized for issuance there under by 9,000,000.
If any shareholder would like to make a comment regarding any of the proposals, please submit your comment through the web portal. It is now 08:05AM Eastern Time on 05/19/2021, and the polls are now open. Any shareholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change a vote may do so. Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or Internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. While the voting is completed, I'd like to share a few words about Elanco's progress in 2020.
I'll make forward looking statements based on our current expectations. Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of factors, including those outlined in our latest Forms 10 K and 10 Q. As I begin, I will say in Elanco, it is safe to say that unequivocally, our second full year in Elanco as a public company was a year unlike any other. Elanco is now two years into our journey to build an independent, fully dedicated animal health company. 2020 saw Elanco weather two pandemics, the COVID-nineteen crisis and African swine fever across Asia.
Also continue the separation from Lilly and stand up of independent systems that are now complete and complete the acquisition of Bayer Animal Health, bringing together two of the longest standing animal health brands. We acted swiftly and decisively to make tough decisions, but necessary decisions to position the company for the long term. The four most critical include transforming our distribution strategy, acquiring Bayer Animal Health, changing commercial leadership and accelerating our restructuring. We're seeing these decisions pay off, outperforming our expectations every month since closing the Bayer transaction back last August. We continue to deliver on our innovation, portfolio and productivity strategy, the bedrock of our growth plans.
On innovation, the 14 products launched or acquired since 2015 delivered $441,000,000 in 2020 revenue, up 5% year over year excluding divestitures. And our pipeline is on track. Innovation is a key part of our long term growth algorithm, contributing two to three points of growth on average annually. We expect to launch at least 25 new products by 2025, including eight this year. Moving to the second strategic pillar, our portfolio.
The Bayer acquisition created a more durable, diverse portfolio, bringing us nearly even split between pets and farm animal and U. S. Versus international. The combined company is now the pet health omni channel leader, better positioned to access the world's pets where and when pet owners want to shop. And in Farm Animal, we have extensive leading portfolios in aqua, poultry and cattle globally.
The combination of Elanco and Bayer increased our international pet business by one third and strengthened our footprint in the important Chinese market. And in productivity, the third pillar of our strategy, we continued our margin expansion efforts, capturing 115,000,000 in cost savings and avoidance in our manufacturing operations in 2020, combining two former divisions uncoupled from human pharma will drive our margin expansion journey, unlocking approximately 1,000 points of adjusted EBITDA margin between 2019 and 2024. We ended 2020 with strong momentum, driven by the right strategy and disciplined execution. We're now at an inflection point for growth, which we believe is the most significant value proposition in the Animal Health industry, even more material and more durable than when we rang the bell back in September of twenty eighteen. As we move forward, our value proposition will be further bolstered by four key external forces driving our business: convenient access to animal care, sustainability and livestock's role in climate change, the importance of innovation and corporations role in strengthening communities internally and externally.
I'll touch on two of these now, but you can reference these in greater detail in our 2020 annual report. The first force is more convenient access to animal care. As we all know, COVID has forever changed our relationships with our pets, particularly their role as emotional companions. This increased togetherness is translated into increased expectation of care for their pet, driving growth in everything from clinic visits for both clinic wellness and sick visits to spending to auto shipments. One third of pet owners shifted to online purchasing during COVID and expect to continue this practice, creating the fastest growing segment in animal health.
And more than half of the world's 500,000,000 pets don't have vet care today. Our vision to be the bridge, the conduit from the online or retail purchaser to the veterinarian, Elanco is well positioned to create convenient access to animal care to the vet clinic from curbside to the couch and from Chicago to China. The second four, sustainability and livestock's role in climate change. If we're to achieve the UN sustainable development goals like zero hunger and temperature neutrality, we must do more with less. At Elanco, our goal is to be our customers' leading partner on the path to net zero emissions.
Healthy animals are a critical part of the solution to improve sustainability, in addition to the important role protein plays in human nutrition and health. Livestock upcycle the food byproducts, grass and forages that humans cannot use on the land that has limited alternative use, creating 2.5 times more nutrient rich protein and meat milk they consume. Through our healthy purpose pledges, we at Elanco are committed to remove 21,000,000 tons of emissions from our customers' farms and improve the efficiency and sustainability of every farmer we work with. Elanco's products, partnerships, robust industry data and expertise are the four key ingredients that help position us as our customers' lead partner on the path to net zero. What we do at Elanco has never been more relevant.
We're well positioned to capitalize on the IPP strategy and these four external forces accelerating sustainable long term value for our customers, shareholders and employees, while turning these trends into a force for good for society as a whole. I'd like to thank the pet owners, farmers and veterinarians we serve. Farmers and veterinarians, as you all know, were truly the front lines of the COVID pandemic, and we are humbled by their ability to innovate and transform through this time of help to help keep animals healthy. Thank you to all of our shareholders for your continued support for our company and for our purpose and most importantly to the Elanco team, our executive team and the board for their dedication and focus delivering through this challenging year to continue building Elanco into a purpose driven, independent, global animal health leader poised for the next era of growth. It's now 08:12AM Eastern Daylight Time on 05/19/2021.
Observing that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I declare the polls for the Elanco's twenty twenty one Annual Shareholder Meeting closed. I will now turn the meeting to Janae Majors, Senior Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary to report the preliminary results of the voting.
We have been informed by the Inspector of Election that the preliminary vote report shows that the nominees for election to the Board have been duly elected. The appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as our Principal Independent Auditor for 2021 has been ratified the compensation of the named executive officers has been approved by advisory vote and the amended and restated 2018 Elanco stock plan has been approved including an amendment to increase the number of shares authorized for issuance they are under by 9,000,000. We will be reporting the final vote results and a Form eight ks to be filed within four business days.
Thank you, Janai. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Elanco Animal Health Incorporated is now adjourned. We'll now hold a question and answer session led by Jeff Simmons.
We have one question on the line. It's regarding Elanco's plan for return to work, return to office and vaccine requirements.
Yes. Thank you for the question. Yes, we will and we have a team that we have tasked to focus on how Elanco will return to work. This is made up of key employee groups led by our Head of HR, Dave Kennard. And we are we've made no final decisions, but we are planning to number one, keep the priority of our employees' safety at the forefront of this decision, monitoring the changes.
And again looking at this globally, every country is different and has different aspects of this. So we'll look at that as well. And then of course we will keep employees' safety converging together as our top priorities as we do that. We'll inform employees as we move forward. We will give them plenty of time to adapt their personal schedules and their families as we make those changes.
And again, that'll be different by country as we go forward. More than that. Again, we'd like to thank all of the Elanco shareholders and management employees for participating in today's annual meeting. Have a great day.