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Stifel Jaws & Paws Conference 2026

May 27, 2026

Summary

The conference highlighted robust growth in animal health, driven by innovation in pet and farm segments, resilient pricing, and strong product launches like Zenrelia and Befrena. Strategic focus remains on operational efficiency, disciplined capital allocation, and a robust pipeline for future growth.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Good morning, John Block at Stifel, Welcome to 2026 Jaws & Paws. We've got a great day. We've got 14 total sessions. Overall, we have a solid two days planned. We've got 22 companies, four physician panels, one animal health industry discussion across the next two days. We'll be busy up here. We're going to kick things off with Elanco Animal Health, with their President and CEO, Jeff Simmons, and CFO, Bob VanHimbergen. Guys, good to have Elanco here again this year. Appreciate it. Appreciate you guys kicking off the conference. Jeff, a really good first quarter, I think some questions followed after a competitor printed their quarter. I figured that's a good place to just start off.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Let's go back in time, walk us through 1Q, the good things, and then maybe what's followed shortly thereafter.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah. I'll have Bob maybe build on the first quarter, but thank you, John and Stifel, and the opportunity here. We need to get this Jaws, Paws and Hooves. We got to get the farm animal in there too.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

We'll figure out a way.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Hey, just at a high level, yeah, a great Q1, a lot of momentum coming out of 2025. We've had three years of growth. The growth and the quality of the growth continues to improve. I've said pretty openly, and I think the organization believes inside Elanco, this is the best quarter since the IPO, since 2018. Just the quality of growth, farm, pet, innovation. Our base business grew. Back to the algorithm in December that we laid out for the next three years. We're more confident than even December on delivering on that algorithm. Bob and I can build on it here going forward. A nice strong 10% quarter of growth, and a beat-raise on all accounts. I think the big one that everyone is watching is the innovation, which we'll unpack. We've got some special innovation in major markets that are growing.

I want to come to your point. I think there's three questions that came out of earnings season in animal health, and we've spent a lot of time since then really trying to, with data and facts, and was on CNBC this morning, et cetera, just really trying to articulate these points. Question one is, just stepping back, is animal health, the market, growing? The answer is yes, it's growing, and it's growing in a durable way. The fundamentals underneath this market are strong. The market grew 7% last year, 10% farm, 5% pet. You're seeing it on the retail side growing, farm animal and pet, and you're seeing it in the international markets, both in farm and pet as well.

I think most importantly is, I think the January, February cool weather that maybe hampered a little bit of growth in Q1, as we've said, we've seen a really strong rebound. I think that's probably what's been over-indexed to say, "Ooh, is there a problem here?" We saw derm grow 10% last year. We saw broad-spectrum para grow 27%, and we see a lot of those trends just continuing. Is the animal health market still growing? The answer is yes, and I think January, February weather, the rebound we've seen in March, April, and even into May, is showing that durability continues. I think the second one that everyone's saying is, "Ooh," there is some consumer worry out there. There's pressure on the consumer.

[But] what we've seen in our market research and seen in our business, especially on the pet side, is the consumer is prioritizing pet care even over priorities like entertainment, eating out for themselves. I want to emphasize, some omni-channel retailers are saying while they've seen some pullback. I think that's a lot on durable goods, hard goods, not as much on pet care itself.

On pet care, derm, para, where we're playing, the spend continues to be resilient. The pet consumer continues to be resilient, and we've seen that. You add on top the globalization of pets, and you add on the increased compliance. Something Elanco has and nobody else does is from the standpoint of the retail business. A third of pet owners that maybe are a little more price sensitive, we've seen really strong growth with that Bayer portfolio.

The third question is pricing, which has been, "Well, boy, is pricing being used? Is pricing going to be used?" Listen, I've been in animal health 37 years. I said last night in a dinner, "Show me anything back from the frontline days in the 1990s to now where price has been used in pet health to capture share." It is not one of the incentives. It doesn't drive consumer behavior in pet, and I don't see that happening. We started this year with record-high pricing as an industry. Those prices have held. We saw strong pet pricing in first half. Bob VanHimbergen can talk. We're guiding the second half for strong pricing.

Pricing is not being used as a lever, and we haven't seen it be used as a lever. This is a market that responds to value and differentiation, and that's where we're leaning in. I think the biggest change I've seen in the last six months is more spend to get and hold share.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Yeah.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

It is not with pricing. Animal health is growing. The pet consumer is as durable as I've seen. It's on animal health. Three is, pricing continues to remain a constant and strong, and we see pricing being strong throughout the whole year, both in pet and farm for Elanco.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. That's a great place to start. I'll bounce around. Bob, maybe I'll just jump over to you, to Jeff's comments of pricing being strong. Maybe talk about that price in 1Q, where it landed, and then why the conviction you should have an increasing contribution from price throughout the balance of the year.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

That's great. Thanks for the question. Price in the quarter was 2%. That was right in line with our expectations. We've been clear that we expect price to be an accelerator in 2026 versus 2025. Why we have conviction around that, we did take the highest pricing out to the vet clinics. It's been the highest in five years. Number two, I would say, because we have pricing now on our launches from last year's Zenrelia and Credelio Quattro, we continue to price to value, and we're seeing price come through on some of those products. Listen, the industry right now, Jeff talked a bit about this just now. We're not seeing pricing being a lever right now. What we're seeing is increased spend in DTC and really competitors are trying to maintain share.

We've been using some data to really determine how and where and how much we spend on DTC. We've been using data for quite a long time, it's been extremely successful. That's where we're seeing the competitors respond, is really an investment in that area versus price right now.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. Fair enough. I am going to bounce over to U.S. Pet health. That was a focus in the quarter. You guys mentioned improving trends exiting the quarter. March was up 8%, April was even better. I think you earlier alluded to May being pretty solid as well. In that very helpful slide that Elanco had in its earnings deck, you did talk about U.S. Pet health up high single digits to low double digits in the back part of the year. Jeff, just talk about the conviction there and maybe, as best you can, detail the drivers that would accelerate the growth to those levels in the back part.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, I'll let Bob build on this, but I think the big thing here is, again, first is the new products. We continue to see Quattro and Zenrelia and the significance. These are big markets. We've said Zenrelia coming out, saying trailing 12 months, so we've got blockbuster status. The Quattro differentiation continues to really resonate with pet owners and veterinarians. We're going to be lapping really a second half that's much smaller, so that's going to be a key growth driver.

Two is the Befrena launch. We're now with the KOLs. We're launching this product by the end of the second quarter. It'll be a phase step-up monoclonal antibody launch, so Befrena will play. Pricing will also play, and Bob can get into that. Those will be the key drivers. The continued retail business, we continue to see being stronger than last year, more share than last year, and that will be another factor.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

I would maybe add on just our corporate account growth. We saw 12% growth in Q1. That's been an area where we've seen some continued progress here over the last, call it three to four quarters. Just now as we have a broader portfolio, and we're seeing certainly that pull, John, come through.

Yeah, we're very confident in the second half. That is why we provided that clarity, not only from the topics we talked about, but also Elanco Ascend as we've launched that five, six months ago. We're in early days still, but we're going to start seeing some of the operational improvement come through on that phase as well. The other thing I would tell you is, listen, our guide, we've been clear on guide. We're going to be on the right side of it. We're going to give balanced, prudent guidance. Our guidance does not assume a recovery in vet clinic volumes, and that's because of our omni-channel approach.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Doesn't assume recovery in vet visit volumes. Didn't assume Zenrelia label improvement either.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Correct.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. does assume some competitive, I don't want to say headwinds, but I guess just to maybe close the loop there, Bob, what it assumes around competition, has anything deviated from that of late?

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah. Nothing's deviated from our expectations in the last several quarters, but we're conscious of different things that could happen. Listen, that's why we give balanced, prudent guidance, and we think about the puts and takes, and we said we'd be transparent on that, and I think we have, and we'll continue that going forward.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay, fantastic. Zenrelia, maybe let's go over there. Really good quarter. Jeff, you were very bullish, I thought, on the earnings call. You mentioned, again, the trailing 12-month blockbuster status. Let's talk about the initiative here in the U.S. You're running the additional trial. You expect to submit by the end of the year and hear back from the agency mid 2027, but I'll throw it to you.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, I think I'll just start with Zenrelia. We've got over half the clinics in the U.S. on. That's higher than our first phase of Credelio, [I mean,] before we got Quattro. We don't have many products that we can say we've had over 50% of the clinics on. Then just looking at the momentum of the product relative to just its efficacy profile and the number of users that are moving from second-line to first-line treatment. Picking up five share points, the number of clinics that we're adding, the U.S. has a lot of momentum with Zenrelia. I would also say, we'll get into the global side of this, moving to 24/7 manufacturing gives you an idea that we see future year demand happening now.

We expect, seeing some of the early data, this is going to be a pretty robust derm season given weather trends and things that we've seen. that kind of leans in. Relative to the label, as we've said, we had a multi-prong approach. First was the PCR data we submitted. We got the change, the fatally induced taken off. Second is we had the booster study that we ran and published more for public awareness of how the product performs. That's turned out really well for us relative to the use of that data. we submitted that data to the FDA upon response from them with hopes of potentially a change.

[And then,] lastly, I think importantly is, given their response, we've made a decision to go ahead and run a trial to actually work, and we've got concurrence on that trial to actually would remove the box. That study is started. We expect to have that study completed and data submitted by the end of the year. That would put us into 2027 for a decision.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

[I think] relative to how the product is performing globally, and in the U.S., and 24/7 manufacturing, we see this as a nice opportunity later, but is not needed now.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, John Block, the way I think about the timeline too, right, is you figure a mid-2027 approval and a clean label at that time just provides some nice year-over-year growth in 2027 versus 2026.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Even [in 2028] potentially, considering you might have the six-month contribution.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Exactly. In the meantime, we're at 24/7 manufacturing, so we're in a good spot.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. Jeff, to push you a little bit, you mentioned a clean label. I was thinking when we thought you were going to hear last go around maybe three outcomes, status quo, clean label, or middle ground. Is this more with the additional data that you're going to submit more of a binary event where either it's a clean label or status quo? Just your thoughts there.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, I think like pharmaceutical standards, we got concurrence on a protocol that will create an endpoint. The endpoint will create a change, and that's where we are, and that's what we believe will be the outcome. Again, there's always nuances when you're running studies like this, but yes, that is our belief.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

And-

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Again, I would just say the expectations of where we were even at our investor day to now, the Zenrelia success, we're in 44 countries. The international momentum, that high teens, 30% share in Europe, even with a third competitor. The head-to-head study, we're the only one share in a head-to-head study, that is playing out in the field. The efficacy of Zenrelia, this is a special product that is taking unusually amount of share. I point to Brazil that just came through the Southern Hemisphere derm season, and we've just taken over the majority of share over Apoquel, within a year. That I think demonstrates what kind of product we've got here.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

You stole a little bit of my thunder because I was going to go down that road.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

I'm sorry.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

I'll follow up. I actually think there was a precursor that a lot of people missed for Zoetis in 1Q, and it came out in the fourth quarter when you guys really started talking about your share for Zenrelia internationally. The share was too high for just to be new adopters. In other words, you had to be winning switchers to get to that share level, right? Because the market's just not growing that quick. just talk about, is it the head-to-head data that's sort of catapulting those shares OUS, and are you seeing anything from Merck's NUMELVI as they've now been over there for a couple quarters?

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, I think, look, if there's one category where there's obvious pet owner and vet, obvious quick observation of differentiation of product, it's derm. It's an itching dog. It's the number one reason they go to the clinic, but it's also probably the number one way to observe products. You look at some of these labels, as I've said, some of these labels say, "Hey, only 65% of dogs respond." That puts you already in the fray. I do think starting out where we did with Zenrelia put us in some of the worst cases, which then I think gave us a higher bar, and that actually gave us a chance to show what kind of efficacy we have. Look, time will tell with other entries into the marketplace.

The early, I think it's a little early with a new entrant, but what we have seen is the data's playing out. We have taken more share earlier. The European team knows how to execute well. You've seen it with Adtab, now you're seeing it with Zenrelia, and they're getting ready to launch Quattro. I think we've got a good product. derm grew 10%, so we're not only taking share, but we're rising with the tide that's rising as well from a market standpoint.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay, fair enough. let's use that sort of as a good segue to Befrena. Anything to share from, I'll call it the early experience launch and Well, let's start there.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah. You share a little bit. You've dug in on this product a little bit extra.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, listen, obviously extremely excited for Befrena. We had several hundred vets, probably 300 vets in our office here a couple weeks ago, and the buzz was around Befrena and Zenrelia. I think there's certainly a need, and listen, we've surveyed outside of that, surveyed 400 vets on Befrena, showed them a label, and over 83% of them expect to bring Befrena into their clinic. I think there's a want and a need for a differentiated product, and I think the impact that Zenrelia's having is certainly going to be pulling in, certainly in Befrena, into their clinics. Now, Befrena, the launch, we just issued a press release, last week, and if you haven't seen it, I'd urge you to take a look at it.

There's pictures of a dog pre-Befrena and then post-Befrena with just three weeks, and it's life-changing is what you can see. I think there's some great commentary in there, but it's another special product we have and just builds out our overall portfolio, which again, helps us with clinic penetration and corporate accounts.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

That's helpful. Maybe for both of you guys, is there an analog to think about of second player to market with a clean label, some level of differentiation when we think about duration, and we'll have to find out about price. Where we can sort of maybe benchmark to. We know the Cytopoint numbers. We know it for the U.S., we know it globally. Again, an analog on where we might land with share after 12 to 24 months.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

There's been data out there showing second to market can be 30, 40%. I want to be careful here because I think the derm market is growing. I think the good news is, I think with more efficacy and more options, look for the derm market globally to grow.

Second is I do think, yeah, there's analogs, but there's also the JAK, you know, mAb category that I think is playing out as well. There's also a lot more being scripted online, which I think is going to drive better compliance, which is going to grow the market. We really like where the derm market is headed, and I think that's important. To Bob's point, look, the label has six to eight weeks. The incumbent has four to eight, so it's like, hey, we see a little bit of a longer efficacy line there.

[But] the other one, what the buzz was that day is, hey, we had to have 300 dogs, which was a significantly higher hurdle. That's why we had to wait a year for Befrena because they raised the bar. we actually had a higher bar going in with dogs, and I think that's made people lean in. the KOL support is matching the same support we saw with Zenrelia.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay, very helpful. Maybe last one on Befrena. Monoclonals, it can be tricky from a manufacturing standpoint. How do you feel now, Jeff, and how do we think about where you might be maybe exiting 2026 from a capacity standpoint?

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah. we're right in line with our launch expectations. The product's been in KOLs here for a little bit now, and we have orders in hand and expect to certainly start shipping here this quarter. Production continues to ramp. There hasn't been any hiccups on that standpoint, but we'll continue to launch and ramp here throughout the rest of the year. it's going to be, I'd say, a modest impact to 2026, but certainly exiting 2026 with some strong growth, and 2027 will be a nice strong year-over-year impact versus 2026.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay, very helpful. Sometimes I have my head down, guys. If you have any questions, please throw up your hand or just shout out and I'll get to you. I'm going to continue to work my way through innovation. I'll go to Credelio Quattro. Zoetis talked about on their call their share for Trio being down year over year, but actually alluded to it stabilizing Q over Q. You guys mentioned share up three points since 4Q 2025. How do we reconcile those comments if we can, or should we start thinking about NexGard Plus, and maybe they've been a little bit more vulnerable as of late?

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, there's multiple players. I do think that. I do think that look at the data that I think at 40% of the clinics, and then I think the most material piece of data we shared is inside those clinics, we have 53% share. That again, there's multiple products. The two other big incumbents, what that is saying is typically when you go into a clinic, there's going to be maybe we'll carry two, not three. I think what Quattro has done is placed itself into one of those two, and now it's taking and moving to first line.

With Quattro, with the four points of differentiation, we're hearing a lot about fast tick kill and that data and tick bites up more than we've seen in Q1 with CDC. Two, I think the palatability. John, I think that, yes, I think it's both of the incumbent products. I also say, hey, we grew 27% last year. I still see, I think the January, February was slow, but I think you're going to see a really robust, broad spectrum in endecto market growth.

Bobby in the Investor Day said, "Hey, we need more clinics." We've picked up a bunch now that we're 40%. We got to grow share within those clinics and become first line, and we're doing that with the 53%. Puppy starts now for three quarters in a row. That is we're getting the new puppies faster than anybody else, and now we're globalizing. We're in Australia. We launched last Wednesday in Japan. Look for us to globalize with Quattro in a pretty robust way.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

[So] just to maybe put a bow on that, market still has robust growth. The 40% of practices can go higher. The 53% share within practices can go higher.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yes.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

You have the CQ International, which is just arguably the first thing.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah. That's right. In a billion and a half dollar market.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

I just got to put a pin in Befrena, Quattro, Zenrelia. When you look at the aggregate of our pet products, I want everyone to know this, we're at parity to premium on pricing.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Yep. That's right.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

That's really important. That we are pricing to value. We got value, we got differentiation, and we're doing that. some people out saying, "Well, there's some discounting." That is not the case, and you'll see that even as we go the rest of this year.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

It's helpful. I want to talk about the next wave of innovation, and then certainly Bob going a little bit into the P&L. On that next wave, look, the air pocket, and I'm saying this to be clear, tripped up one of your primary competitors. I still think there's a lot of incrementals with what you have in your portfolio today. We just alluded to CQ International, Zenrelia traction, maybe the improved Zenrelia label. Befrena is almost all incremental in 2027. It does seem like 2028 could be in need of incremental dollars. Let's go back to your Investor Day. You talked about five to six potential blockbuster approvals through 2031. How about a little bit more about the cadence of these products, and could we actually see one of these surface in 2028?

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, I'll go jump over to the farm animal and retail as well.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

I think first of all, these are major markets, and Elanco is very under-indexed on share. We were not in derm 18 months ago, and this is a $2 billion market that's growing double digit. Para's, this broad spectrum in endecto market, is the fastest growing, and now watch it globalize. That's going to surpass $2 billion, and we're very under-indexed there, and you're seeing these shares. I think you can model those two alone and say derm and para, the growth overall. I think that's important.

Then watch for this life cycle management. Elanco is dropping in a vaccine approval every six months to a year, and that $10 billion bio market continues to grow naturally, and we continue to have innovation. I jump over and say Experior continues to have a lot of growth. The portfolio effect of farm animal, throw in our NutriQuest acquisition, now AHV, you're going to see really nice.

In the U.S., I highlighted on TV this morning, the protein demand is going to grow. The market is going to grow 5%. First time in 30 years, farm animal outgrew pet health 2x, 10% versus 5. I think we're going to see as leaders in farm animal, we're going to see natural organic growth. On pet retail, we're number one there. Pet retail has, I think, surprised a lot of people with double-digit growth. I think those are all the things. Bob can get to it, too. Innovation continues to be our priority. We've got the most stable R&D team in animal health, and we're very focused. We got 15 candidates in our pipeline. We haven't had any fallout since our Investor Day.

Look, we say that word, I think you've taken that from me, that air pocket thing. We will not have air pockets. We want a consistent flow of high impact innovation, and we've said five to six in the next five years. You should start to expect some of that in that window as well.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. Very helpful. I will follow up on livestock, and then I will get to gross margins. You alluded to livestock maybe up 5% from a market perspective. You guys have had some really impactful products, but Experior is coming back down to earth, and Bovaer might be taking a little bit longer to take flight. When we think about that market growth, can Elanco be a net share gainer within that rate of growth for livestock?

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yes. Absolutely. The industry's great, and you think about our success. You think about just Q1, we grew 13% and 15% in the U.S., and obviously Experior was a major product in that category. We're on 55% of the cattle within the U.S. right now. That's after, think about last year, Experior grew 80% in 2025. We still see opportunity for Experior to continue to grow above the market, really on a couple levers. One, it's going to be continued, I'd say adoption. We've hit the larger farms, and now we're moving on to the, I'd say that next tier of farms, and so I think it'll take a little longer to get there. We've added some resources to get there as well.

Add in geographical expansion, so that's going to be the opportunity to get on more farms. I'd say price is going to be the second lever, and then the third's going to be just days on use. We're still in the early stages of what days on use are. It's about 42 days, and we believe we can get up to about 56 days, right? There's really three levers that's going to show growth. Listen, we're coming down to a more normalized off an 80% last year, but certainly Experior is going to be one of those products that's going to grow above the market.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. Bovaer still believe in it, just might take a little bit longer to get there.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Bovaer is, I think, a great classic example of the combination of CPG value, productivity, sustainability. How do you package a portfolio over time? How do you put life cycle management behind it? We're doing that. We did it with Experior. Bovaer look at something very similar, and boy, the dairy market's probably one that's a little underestimated right now. It is growing. It's probably winning the protein boom, especially in Europe and U.S., and the AHV acquisition will more than double our share voice on farm and dairy. We're leaning in, as we said, ruminants and poultry, we see as our two big bets on the farm animal side where we can win.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. We've got maybe about four minutes left. Let's dig a little bit into the P&L. Bob, if I look at the 1Q26 gross margin and the 2Q26 guidance for GM, it implies a solid year-over-year lift into the back part of the year. Call it, H2 2026 lift for gross margins. Talk to, please, the drivers of that. I think you've alluded to it a bit. Maybe as importantly or more importantly, does that momentum or run rate continue as we think about into 2027?

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, great. It's a great question. Yeah. I think about the first quarter, margins were right in line with our expectations. We did reiterate 40 basis points of gross margin improvement in 2026 versus 2025. A couple of levers, John. One, we are flushing through some higher-cost inventory. You saw some of that come in Q4, some in Q1 as expected. There's going to be some of that in Q2. All right. That's going to be flushed through. We're going to start seeing gross margin improvement in the second half. We've got some of the other contributors are going to be the basket of innovation continue to grow. The margins on that basket are higher than the corporate average. As that momentum continues, we'll see that natural pull-through.

We'll see some fixed cost leverage as well, and so we've got some great operational performance in the four walls. We're seeing the normal continuous improvement benefit, but we're also leveraging the existing cost base. We'll get some absorption there. [And then ] the last thing, still early days, but so think about the second half of 2026 and even beyond, and more importantly beyond, Elanco Ascend. Elanco Ascend is going to provide $200 million-$250 million of net EBIT improvement through 2030. That's net of inflation, net of investment. 75% of that value is going to come through the gross margin line, 25% through OpEx.

Now think about 2026, we're a little bit more weighted towards the G&A save because of the restructuring charge we took in December, and the team's done a great job of executing that. Overall, it's going to be 75/25 gross margin to G&A, and we'll see that over the next couple of years.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. That sort of answers the question on gross margin trajectory into 2027. Can you get OpEx leverage as well when we think going forward? Do we have to take into consideration, look, as you mentioned earlier, the response from competitors has not been to cut price, but it's been maybe to spend a little bit more behind their products such as DTC. Just curious if we move down to the OpEx leverage, if you see that surfacing as well.

Bob VanHimbergen
EVP and CFO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, we do, John. Listen, we're going to give balanced guidance, but our balanced guide assumes we're going to have some of the levers we talked about as well as Elanco Ascend. That Elanco Ascend save is going to fund the need for DTC, and I'd say more importantly, fund continued R&D investment and continuing that basket of that next wave and next wave. We see nice improvement there as we continue to move those products through the pipeline. Absolutely, our algorithm's going to be to deliver what we did in Investor Day, but also continue to think through the investments needed to fund the business near term as well as long term.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. I'll end with one last question. Jeff, it's funny, in the past years, I'd have you up here, and it was like capital allocation, pay down debt, pay down debt, pay down debt. It's still largely that. You're doing a great job in delevering, but you do have more flexibility, right? You've executed some tuck-ins. Maybe just talk about your appetite for ongoing tuck-ins. What's the optimal leverage for the company? Is it two and a half? How you sort of balance that going forward now that you are in a better position there.

Jeff Simmons
President and CEO, Elanco Animal Health

Yeah, I think still the top priority is that two and a half. We've said that's where we're headed to, and we're well on track, a little bit ahead maybe at this point in time. I think as you start to look, we're going to look at shareholder value. What is the optimal thing? I think without question, we're committed to that algorithm. I think John, I am there. We want to be a consistent deliverer on the right side of expectations.

We got a three-year algorithm out there right now that we're very committed to. A mid-single digit. We're ahead right now on that on the revenue side. A high single-digit EBITDA. We can do that confidently. We got a lot of levers. Ascend gives us some extra levers. Lower double digit on the EPS side and creating $1 billion of cash. Yeah, look for us to do some tuck-ins, starting probably with Elanco. If there's molecules that we think that we can continue to grow her capacity and bring more molecules in that are differentiated. secondly is looking at things like AHV that make sense.

[But] they will have to be accretive to our algorithm. They will have to be strategic, and they won't be that sizable. They won't take us off our debt track. again, I just emphasize our priorities still remain growth, innovation, cash. We're a very disciplined company. We're not going to get ahead of ourselves. We're keeping our feet on the ground. We definitely know it's a dynamic marketplace. I really want to emphasize this market's growing. Prices are strong. The pet owner for animal health products is strong and durable, and we're set up really well here for not just 2026, but the next three years.

John Block
Managing Director, Stifel

Fantastic. Guys, we got to conclude there.