Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to be here. Welcome to the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference here in New York City. My name is Bryan Adams, a member of the U.S. Consumer Staples team here at UBS, and we're very excited to have joining us this morning Patrick Lockwood-Taylor, President and CEO of Perrigo, and Eduardo Bezerra, Chief Financial Officer of Perrigo. Guys, thanks for coming. Second year in a row—third year in a row. For those of you not familiar with the story, Perrigo is a global self-care business with its core operations in the U.S. and in Europe, with both branded and store-brand products spanning categories like upper respiratory, pain and sleep aids, women's health, and infant formula.
Just a few weeks ago, the company had its first Investor Day in two years, where it outlined its three-year optimizing acceleration plan, inclusive of 2025. A lot of ground to cover today, but in terms of format, Patrick and Eduardo, I'm gonna start by kicking it to you to walk through some slides for the first few minutes. Again, just had a big presentation a few weeks ago, so they're gonna hit the high points, and then I've got some questions I wanna run through. The last 10-15 minutes or so will be open for audience Q&A, so if you want me to ask a question on your behalf, you can submit questions via the app, and it'll show up here, hopefully on this iPad, and then I can ask them for you. Before we start, quick legal disclaimer.
As a research analyst, I'm required to provide certain disclosures relating to the nature of my own relationship and that of UBS with any company on which I express a view on the call today. These disclosures are available at www.ubs.com/analyst . With that, let's get started. Patrick, Eduardo, thanks again for being here. I think I'm gonna kick it to you for the presentation.
Very good. Yep.
Firstly, thank you, Bryan. Thank you for inviting us to the conference, and, you know, good morning to everyone here. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm not gonna read that out. Anyone wants to take a picture of it, knock yourselves out. A little bit about Perrigo, the business we are, what we compete in. Self-care, many of you understand, $400 billion category globally, loaded mid-single digit growth rates and some very favorable tailwinds. We feel we have a unique position, and a very broad position within self-care. We compete in the most molecules versus any of our competitive set, with at the most price points. We fully coverage each of the three price points. What does that mean? At the end, it just means we have the potential to meet the more needs, more consumers globally.
I'll expand upon that a little bit later. We're a branded top 10 player in Europe with number one or two brands across key subcategories such as blister, insect repellent, emergency contraception, cough, cold, and nicotine reduction. We are the leading player in U.S. store brands with over a 50% share. A big player in the U.S. and a very, very fast-growing player in the international business. I often get asked about what is the composition, what is unique and different and defendable about Perrigo, and I think this chart does a relatively good job of explaining the complementary nature of our business, where each part of the business plays a specific and reinforcing role with each other. The store brand and infant formula businesses generate a significant amount of cash that enables us to focus on our key growth, branded businesses.
The branding and innovation capabilities needed for our, our branded business can equally be applied to our store brand business and drive demand. This allows us to play a very strong strategic role with some of our big global customers. Consumer-led innovation can also be scaled across our brands, our store brands, and our markets. Our Supply Chain, which is a huge-scale operation producing about almost 65 billion consumption units a year, enables us to compete so many molecules across so many price points in all of the markets that we compete in. Okay. This, in essence, is the nature of the Perrigo model, and it's very distinct to any of our competitive sets. The fundamental asset of Perrigo is that we have these 100 molecules, but we also have about another 150 actives that we compete.
Think of it as the core asset base is we just compete in the highest number of molecules, the highest number of actives. That allows us to produce somewhere in the region of about 2,500 different formulations. That is 10x our nearest competitors, just to put that into, into some sort of proportion. This point about competing, at 100% price point coverage, we're able to meet the needs of those people who prefer brands and are willing to pay a super premium. Equally, we're able to meet the needs of those low-income consumers, which is about five or six billion consumers worldwide who want an effective treatment at an affordable price. That allows us to access just the biggest range of consumption versus our competitors.
The relative strengths of this company, as I've, you know, we've unpacked it over the last couple of years, the breadth and scale of our innovation, the scale of our customer relationships. We have enjoyed very strategic relationships with the likes of Costco, obviously Amazon, and of course, Walmart, etc. We have dozens of people who work in our regulatory department because of the number of molecules across multiple geographies. That allows us to interface, understand, and landscape the regulatory environment over the long- term. That is a core asset of ours. As I've touched upon, the scale of our manufacturing. We have anchored the core work of this company under this framework of stabilize, streamline, and strengthen.
We needed to stabilize core aspects of our business, primarily infant formula, U.S. store brand, and we needed to get some high-growth brands in the international business to sustain share growth. We needed to streamline our complexity. We are the product of multiple transactions, okay, and we needed to get to a One Perrigo identity in terms of our operating model, our structure, our tech stacks, etc., etc. The work in stabilizers I was talking about is probably about 80% complete, streamlined probably about 50%-60%. The third aspect is we want to—we have very high-growth brands, particularly in international, but including in the U.S.—is to maintain those growth rates by focusing our A&P and developing our innovation and focusing them against those high-growth, attractive businesses.
I should say on that previous slide, the high-growth brands under the strengthen, that's $100 million-$200 million of incremental growth between now and the end of 2027 on a much more accretive margin structure versus the store brand business. Okay. As we go forward, we accelerate our revenue and the quality of that revenue. Probably the key takeaway from that. Thanks, Eduardo. We think this positions us for attractive TSR. This will be driven by strict, and focused capital allocation across core elements of our portfolio and a sequential series of activities to drive scalable growth and to get Perrigo to predictable results over the next three years.
I think, as it says on here, two and a half to four and a half organic revenue, high single to low double-digit adjusted EPS, CAGR, 40%-50% improvement of free cash flow over sales. That's a core metric for us. 2027 and net leverage to below three in by 2027, and as we'll expand upon the potential to accelerate that. What that, including dividend, that gets us to a mid-teens TSR, which we think is very competitive in the self-care segment over the next three years.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Bryan, and UBS for having us here today. As Patrick mentioned, you know, we expect to deliver very solid top-line and strong bottom-line growth in 2025, along with adjusted gross and operating margin expansion. Right? Organic growth, we're expecting between 2.5% and 4.5%. A lot of that is based on the recovery of our infant formula nutrition business as well as our OTC store brand business, as we're gaining back contracts and winning that position that we're gonna see benefits in 2025. Also, adjusted gross margin is projected to expand to about 40%, driven by our Supply Chain Reinvention.
That we kicked off in 2022, and we expect by 2025 to deliver about $170 million of benefits, as well as the infant formula recovery that also is helping improve our margins in that business. Adjusted operating margins expected to grow another 100 basis points to 15%, also on top of our Project Energize program. Project Energize we launched last year, and we delivered in 2024 almost $140 million of benefits that we have been seeing happening throughout 2024. We expect that to continue with an incremental $30 million-$40 million in 2025. We expect the phasing of earnings and then adjusted EPS in the range of $2.90-$3.10, so significant bottom-line growth between 13% and 21%. In terms of phasing for the year, we expect that to be aligned with our historical trends.
About 40% of earnings take place in the first half of the year and 60% in the second half of the year. Important also to mention that we expect the EPS in the first half to be evenly distributed between Q1 and Q2, mainly given the strong cough and cold season that we're seeing in the first quarter of this year that Patrick is gonna talk a little bit further. Also, we anticipate operating cash flow conversion, so how much of net income is converted to operating cash flow, about 100%. Free cash flow is a percentage of net sales. That's a new metric that we introduced this year that is also gonna be a key metric that will drive our long-term incentives for these actives over the next three years.
We expect to get about 6% and move another half a turn, leverage improvement from four times to three and a half by the end of 2025, on top of the $400 million of that reduction that we did at the end of 2024. If we take a little bit look on the next three years, right, we expect very strong performance, right, as Patrick alluded, as we stabilize our business, streamline our portfolio innovation and our operating model and strengthen our high-growth brands. We expect net sales to grow between 2.5%-4.5%, so a lot on the recovery that's taking place in 2025. We expect a little bit mild top-line growth in 2026 and 2027.
With the exception of our high-growth brands, we expect to accelerate that further, as Patrick mentioned, between $100 million and $200 million, with significant investments that we expect to take place between 2026 and 2027. Also, we expect adjusted gross margin to expand between 200 and 400 basis points. Because of these reinvestments, we expect operating margin to expand about 150-250 basis points, so between 15% in 2025 to about 16.5% in 2027, as we invest to support these high-growth brands. As we continue to deliver our balance sheet, we expect net leverage below three times, as Patrick alluded. As we pay down, we have another Term Loan A that is due in April 2027 that we expect to fully repay and do some debt amortizations.
All these combined should drive, you know, high single to low double-digit EPS growth over the period. We're also, from a cash flow standpoint, we expect to deliver beyond 100% of operating cash flow conversion, and that leads to free cash flow over net sales of about 200 basis points improvement, so between 7.5%-8% versus what we said of 6% in 2025. It's important to highlight that as we look into 2028, we expect further expansion of free cash flow over net sales to be between 10%-12% or between $500 billion and $600 million. As CapEx should normalize, we should get to about $100 million of ongoing CapEx beyond that time. Also, the one-time impacts regarding the different restructuring programs and legacy litigation, they are completed.
Also have this working capital to support the business normalize. We expect operating cash flow in the range of $600 million-$750 million by 2028. That is what drives twice what we have there. Last, as we look into our deleveraging, we have a clear plan to get there. We expect to generate about $1.4 billion of operating cash flow. We have $500 million on capital expenditures, a significant portion of that related to our infant formula business. We are moving into a more optimized network. We are gonna retire one of our old sites, and that is gonna give us a better conversion cost. Also, this should generate $100 million of free cash flow by 2028 with a payback of less than two years. We are gonna continue with our dividend policy.
Expect another $500 million of dividends in that period. Also, the debt reduction that I mentioned, about $500 million between debt amortizations and the Term Loan A, fully paid down. Getting below three times by 2027 with opportunity to accelerate depending on some of the decisions as we are assessing our portfolio to maximize shareholder value. With that, Patrick.
Thank you, Eduardo. We often get questions about our infant formula recovery, understandably. This is progressing well. We continue to advance the store brand, repipelining and consumer share growth. It's going well. You'll see in the spring, resets with our retailers, a number of them have significantly enhanced the store brand formula shelf positioning, and increasing the number of SKUs and the number of facings, all of which positively drive share. We remain on track to reintroduce about another 20% of our SKU assortment. As we were going through the disruption a few years ago, we consolidated SKUs in order to maximize productivity. We can now start to reintroduce those SKUs, and all of which will positively drive the business as well. We have good demand activation in partnership with our retailers, and that is also helping to grow store brand share.
Net, from a store brand recovery, we're actually very happy with it, very happy with it. In terms of the question I always get asked, and I suspect may come up later on, is what's happening with Cough Cold? Cough Cold trend in the U.S., the season did start later than the prior year, which impacted, of course, our fourth quarter 2024 top-line results and margin. In 2025, Cough Cold incidence has actually risen quite significantly. This has been very positive for our business in the U.S. In Europe, however, incidence in the geographies we were playing remain below a year ago, in addition to relatively higher Cough Cold stock in the channel. Taking the combined impact of global Cough Cold, we expect to see a slightly better benefit in our quarter one Americas top line and total company adjusted EPS, primarily driven by these positive trends.
Our first half, second half expected EPS, as Eduardo said, remains 40/60. That is often driven by we repipeline, allergies business and the Cough Cold business, obviously, in the second half of the year. That tends to skew the EPS profile. Okay. It is the same every year. If we go to the next slide, thank you. I mean, really the key takeaways is to try to understand who is Perrigo, what is our expandable, defendable position. We think we're very well positioned in what is a very large, global self-care market that is growing well. We believe, and I hope we've been able to bring those alive a little bit today, unique advantages and unparalleled opportunity.
The two key facts to remember about Perrigo, when we execute the full Perrigo model, and a good illustration of this is in the U.K., we achieve unrivaled 80% household penetration. 80% of all households in the U.K. have a Perrigo product in. That's extraordinary. Okay? No one else can claim anywhere close to that in the self-care category. In the U.S., almost two-thirds of American households have a Perrigo product in. Okay? Why? Because we compete so broadly in so many molecules, unrivaled, and we compete at all price points. We can meet consumers with what they need at the price that they can afford to pay. When we properly execute that model, we perform extremely well. The second key part, I often get asked about revenue opportunity. We achieve in our best markets 65%-80% household penetration.
Our global household penetration is only 5%. Okay? That starts to bring alive the opportunities we execute our model more completely in the markets we're in and as we start to think about new markets for the long- term. Okay? That's really the essence of who Perrigo is and what our unique competitive advantage is. Thank you.
Awesome. That was awesome. You know, it was a lot of information a couple of weeks ago, so I think that, that. Still very well. I guess just to start. We'll get into some of the nitty-gritty later on, but starting with another high-level one for you, Patrick, I guess coming up on two years that you've been with the company, you just laid out, like, it started with the One Perrigo approach, and now you just laid out your three-year plan. Can you just step back for a moment and kind of reflect on where the company's been, where we're going, and I guess really in the context of for investors out there that who have been following the name, what are kind of the core components that change going forward that kind of builds the brand?
Yeah. As I mentioned, I mean, Perrigo was really a product of multiple transactions to position us quite broadly in self-care. My predecessor did a very good job at cleaning up the portfolio. I think really my job was to operationalize the portfolio, get it performing, find those areas where we can enjoy competitive advantage and get those assets working harder against that. I feel the first sort of couple of years of my role have been a combination of unpacking the company, getting to clarity about what the company can do really well, getting us focused on that, getting some parts of our operation reliable. All of you have looked over the last X number of quarters, and our ability to consistently deliver against those has not been great.
We have to address predictability through more predictable, repeatable operations and those parts of the business that make the biggest difference to our P&L and our balance sheet. That is really what we have been focused on doing. Okay? Getting better at the fundamentals in order to get to more predictable operating standards and more predictable financial outcomes. In terms of the parts of our business, the ones that really matter for cash to reinvest is U.S. store brand business throws off hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow, which enables us to then invest to get the infant formula business to a very attractive 16%-18% three-year objective in terms of free cash flow over sales. Margin accretive and significantly accretive free cash flow. That is going to be done through plant consolidation and some capacity expansion.
and that's a very attractive project and really step changes the attractiveness of that business. Then really focusing in on those high-growth potential brands, which are already growing very rapidly. We just wanna sustain that through innovation, market expansion, and more focused A&P spend. That's really what I've been doing, and that's really what I'm gonna be doing.
Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. I guess as part of that, we've seen recently, we've seen some divestitures. I guess how, you know, as you've been here for a couple of years, how do you feel about the portfolio today? Are there any areas where you might, like, any, any areas where you feel like there's less of maybe a right to win where you might look to maybe under-index or vice versa? Are there areas where you're looking to lean in more just from a portfolio structure standpoint?
Yeah. Yes. The team have done a good job in divesting a couple of businesses that did not really fit with our core competencies, very attractive businesses, but the view was they could probably perform better under someone else more synergistically. We continue to divest brands in Europe. We have divested, I think, about 60. We probably have another 30-45 to go. We would do those over time because obviously that impacts our financials. We get good realizations from those. I think last year was about $30 million profit impact from those divestments. There are some core categories where it is not as they are not as obviously synergistic with the rest of our model, and we are in the process of reviewing strategic optimization of those currently.
Okay. Got it. That's helpful. Then the overall branded business definitely got a bit of a spotlight during the investor day. You know, a lot of these brands are based in Europe, a little less well-known by U.S. investors. Can you provide just some thoughts around the health of the branded portfolio and maybe how you see it evolving over the next three years within the confines of your plan here?
Yeah. I'll give a couple of comments and then hand over to the financial expert. Firstly, 40% of our business is international. Probably 90% of the questions I get are about our U.S. store brand business. Yeah.
Okay? 40% of our business is branded. Almost half a billion dollars of our business in the U.S. is branded. Our growth is disproportionately branded and will be even more disproportionately branded going forward. Store brand is for cash. Brand is for quality of accelerated revenue. Okay? The earnings from that branded growth is just disproportionate, obviously, to our overall mix at the moment, hence why we want to achieve it. The brands that we have in the U.S., obviously Opill, Med erma, by far and away number one in scar care, growing at about 35%. Prevacid, which is a heartburn medication, growing well. Nasonex. We have quite a suite of good, well-performing brands in the U.S. building share. I think Nasonex was growing at something like three times the category when we looked at it a few months ago.
My button. Thank you. Please. The season's coming. It looks hopefully encouraging. In the international business, Compeed by far and away the number one blister care, but also for spots and for cold sores. That business grew about 30% last year. We are the number three player in cough cold in the international business, again, something that folks don't understand, and that business is growing extremely, extremely quickly as well. The international business, again, maybe we don't talk about it enough, has been enjoying high single-digit revenue growth and very high double-digit OI growth for a number of years. Okay? Which has allowed us to really manage some of these short-term issues we had in the U.S. store brand business and the infant formula business. We are a big branded company that's growing brands really well, including in America.
We shine a spotlight on it because it's not really understood about us. Again, the role is we're covering more molecules, more price points, and more consumer needs than our competition. That's the bit to take away from it.
Yeah. I think Patrick said it very well. It's, when you look into Compeed, last year it grew 30%, Mederma 34%. We have also some cough and cold brands in Europe like Bronchostop. It grew high single-digit in the markets that are explaining. Opill is getting 50% repeat, and more and more consumption taking place. We're seeing that part of the portfolio taking more and more importance over time. As Patrick mentioned, 40% is branded today, 60% store brand of our overall, you know, revenue. We expect that to accelerate because of higher growth rates in the branded side and because the margin component of some of these high-growth brands is much higher. We expect to see further margin expansion because of that.
Okay. Awesome. Kind of dovetailing with that and maybe getting a bit more into the numbers, thinking through the top-line targets you outlined both in terms of 2025 and looking out to 2027, if we think about the 2.5%-4.5% organic, what are kind of like the key tailwinds or headwinds that you have visibility to at this point? Kind of like the puts and takes within that range both for 2025 and to 2027. Just like from a flex standpoint, as we think about longer- term, is that more reliant on, "Hey, we're leaning into this high-growth or high-grow brand strategy"? Some of that will depend on how that performs or just anything you'd call out in terms of where you'll land within the range. I know, Eduardo, you already called out some phasing components, but.
Yeah.
Just anything to kind of lay out from that standpoint.
Yeah. So, on that algorithm, 2.5%-4.5%, there's a highly weighting 25 because of the recovery of both OTC store brand share as well as infant formula, also store brand share that we're recovering. That's a significant component there. As we're looking more into the 25-27 range, we expect more mild growth on store brand, so 0%-2%, mainly because volumes we expect 3%-4%, and some price reinvestments. Right? On that 3%-4%, that's gonna be on top of some innovation that will continue to focus not only on the branded side, but that's the beauty of what the uniqueness of what Patrick mentioned about the Perrigo model. Any innovation that you develop for the branded side, you can bring to the store brand side, and that helps us drive the volume.
The price component is mainly tied to the competitiveness that you see there. On infant nutrition, beyond the recovery of store brand over the next two years, we're still watching closely how the contract business is gonna recover, right, given competition and other aspects there. We expect a little bit more mild growth. Long-term, on the infant nutrition business, because newborn rates have been negative, you don't expect a significant market growth there. We should expect to see growth in line with the market there, but on a much more profitable basis, right, with much higher margins, better mix, and also generating much more cash flow. The third component is the brands, right? We're gonna invest significantly more in A&P, and also we're investing more in R&D in terms of focused R&D.
That is gonna drive further growth in our branded portfolio, fueled by new innovation, expanding that innovation across our portfolio of brands in the countries that we are in, but also support with higher advertising promotion versus what we did in the past. That is why our gross margin expands to 100-400 basis points, but operating margin 150-250 because about 150 basis points we are gonna reinvest in our A&P to really support the growth of these margins. In the outer year in 2024, we should see our high-growth brands growing more in the top of that range of 2.5%-4.5%, because of the further expansion we expect.
Okay. Got it.
Okay.
That's really helpful. And then infant formula, it's what a difference a year makes. I feel like last year, last year at this time, whether it was in the meetings upstairs or down here, that's all we were talking about. Sounds like some good progress that you're seeing more recently here. I specifically wanted to touch on the investment recently announced, a $240 million investment in the business. Maybe just take us through the details, why now, what you're thinking about in terms of expected returns, just anything you think would be important to call out there.
Yeah. I'll take the first part and then, Eduardo, take the tricky part. Infant formula business, we had to do significant remediation to address the regulatory changes last year. That was a heavy lift. It was an intense effort. Credit to the team. We have outstanding quality-assured, reliable manufacturing. We're achieving environmental quality thresholds of a new historical level for us, which is outstanding. We're getting production throughput, packaging attainment, of historical highs. These are extremely well-disciplined, well-run plants with GMPs that drive quality production, quality-assured production. I couldn't be happier with where we ended up, speed and effectiveness of it, but it was disruptive. Still in recovery, but it is a very attractive business. It's highly reliable. It's highly predictable. It is significantly margin accretive.
The opportunity for that business now is to absolutely step change its free cash flow. Okay? To do that, we have to consolidate the plants. Okay? We have three plants, one of which is 50-60 years old, and the capital requirements to maintain it are grossly inefficient. Okay? We need to move that capacity. We have significant cost-saving opportunity in doing that because it's an old plant and the efficiency of that plant is about a $2 per pound efficiency pickup moving that manufacturing. We're also able to insource canning. We rely upon a third-party provider, which also has proven quite disruptive for us. We're able to move that in-house. Step change in free cash flow oversells, think 16-18 from low double-digit, low single figure today. Yes, it's a 240.
There's aspects of that, our capacity, obviously, the labor impact, but a step change in the financial performance of it.
Yeah. And just to complement what Patrick said, it's making sure that we have, be 100% self-reliant on our R&D capabilities, our infant formula, our quality aspects, as well as packaging. Right? Packaging today, we were relying on third parties without a great success on that. By having that, we're gonna be 100% self-sufficient on all the different aspects, have full capacity to meet the current demand and also some increase in demand of the future. The plant was built in 2010, so it's one of the newest facilities in the industry, right? The cost to maintain that is gonna be much lower going forward as well. That's why I can tell we're looking to 18 different scenarios from not doing anything to doing a different shift, etc. This was the best return that we did.
We had several discussions with the board, and we got really confident about pushing forward.
I mean, the free cash flow release is so significant, we pay the project back in two years.
Yeah.
I mean, that's extraordinary. Absolutely right thing to do for the business and for shareholders.
Great. Few minutes left here. I already have one on the iPad. I'm gonna hit a quick cough, cold, and flu first. Again, reminder, if anyone has any questions, just pop them in the app, and they seem to be showing up here. Yeah, quickly on cough, cold, and flu, you mentioned kind of the change to the phasing for the first half of the year. I guess kind of a two-parter. Just first of all, from a pure, like, how-it-works standpoint, would you expect any re like, are there restocking orders that are happening that have led to that in the, forget about allergy, in the cough business that have kind of led to that change in phasing?
Because, like, in your head, it's like, okay, you know, there was obviously a lot of inventory that would be worked through. Then sitting here in February, March, are retailers still loading up in the U.S. on cough season stuff? I guess there's that piece of it. Just in terms of the EPS phasing for folks, is this, should we purely think about this as like a timing mechanic or what?
Yeah. On the first piece, I think the graph that Patrick showed is, as compared to last year, you know, it was a late season.
Yeah.
Right? And the cough and cold positioning of inventory starts at the end of Q3, right? We had a strong Q3 because everybody was expecting, you're looking to international data, Australia, and other, you know, AI information on what to come. Again, you cannot predict the weather, right? If it were, we would be doing something else. Q4 was very late. If you compare to the 2019-2020 season, it was exactly the same curve. The peak achieved between Christmas and New Year. Also in 2019-2020, there was a second peak. The uniqueness of what happened this time, the peak was much higher than before. We're seeing, you know, retailers restocking because there was a much higher purchase or consumption than what was originally expected. That's what is helping to make up this piece, right?
We have seen that, and that is what we are seeing, a strong Q1 there. Always the question there, Bryan, is what happens with allergy, right? As I was mentioning anecdotally, you know, in certain states, you can see already, you know, cars really yellow. It is an early sign there. We need to see what is going to happen in the northern part of the U.S. to see if allergy is going to pick up as strong or not. Patrick?
Yeah, the second part of your question was on EPS. Nicely done. No change to guidance.
Good stuff. Here, let me ask this quickly so I don't miss it. Out of curiosity, what proportion of your volume versus sales goes to those 5-6 billion low-income consumers referenced in the presentation?
Yeah. We only compete, thank you for the question. Let me clarify. We compete in two regions, North America, and our international business is essentially Europe. That is it. We do not compete extensively in Asia or Latin America. That is all future growth opportunity. In the U.S., I would imagine about 65% of the volume is what we would characterize as lower-income consumers. Interestingly, the other part of that volume tends to be with higher educated, higher-income consumers who understand that store brand is bioequivalent. Okay? It is very interesting as you look at the profile of consumption, lower income and higher educated.
Okay. Awesome. Maybe just on free cash flow, Eduardo, we kind of spoke to it already.
Yeah.
The three-year plan, including around a 200 basis point increase in free cash flow over net sales, just the building blocks of the expected free cash flow improvement, you touched on it a bit, but maybe just kind of picking them apart one by one.
Yeah. It all starts with the improvement on our net income.
Yeah.
Right? So that's gonna be critical. That's one element, together with, you know, lack of one-time events. We're gonna really complete some of the restructuring programs like Supply Chain Reinvention, Project Energize that consumed a lot of cash in 2024. There's still a portion built into 2025 and 2026, and then it starts to get done. That's an important component. Second is, as we continue to drive working capital improvement, mainly inventories, right? We see there is a big opportunity to improve our inventory management, mainly in the international region where we have the branded business. On the store brand, it's always a challenge because you carry a lot of inventory and raw material for your customers. There is a big opportunity there to unlock cash flow in the international business that we're really focused on. The third component is some legacy litigation.
Last year, we did a big settlement on securities, and we have some tailwind that we expect to finalize this year. The last piece is the capital investment, right? This year, we're gonna invest $150 million, from which about half of that is in the infant formula business, $30 million related to the expansion that we're doing in Wisconsin that came with the acquisition of that facility, and about $40 million is part of that $240 million. In 2025 and 2026, you have about $100 million incremental because of infant nutrition. When you get into 2028, we expect to get into a much more steady position in terms of maintenance capital. We're gonna be done with a lot of these legacy issues and restructuring programs. Our working capital is gonna be in a much better position.
Because of the leveraging as well, we expect to see a much higher cash flow generation out of that. All these four combined components together give a good sense of moving from that 5%-6% to between 10%-12%, doubling our free cash flow generation by 2028.
Awesome. It would not be a presentation today without hitting on the T word. In terms of just tariffs, you obviously have a global business, and a lot of molecules, as you spoke to, a lot of SKUs. What do investors need to know? How do you assess the risk at this point? Obviously, things are very dynamic, but just give you a chance to touch on that.
As I mentioned to a couple of investors this morning, give us an hour and it may change. We are very well insulated. Based upon the facts that we know today, it's less than 1% of our COGS impact. Two, of what we sell in the U.S., 90% is produced in the U.S. Three, we do have some APIs that come from China and India, as do all of our competitors. Okay? But these are small percentages of our finished product cost. Okay? Four, some of our competitors produce in foreign countries, therefore landing finished product, which is a much higher tariff absolute than just on the API. At the moment, we have a task force against it. It's fast evolving. It's dynamic. We characterize it as very, very low risk and very low risk versus our competitive set.
Good stuff. I think at that point, we are right on time, maybe 15 seconds over. But Patrick, Eduardo, thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
It's great to have you here again.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, everyone, for showing up. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Bryan.
Thank you.
Thanks, Bryan.