Okay, thanks, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Conference. I'm Erin Wright, Lead Healthcare Services Analyst at Morgan Stanley. We're happy to have with us today, Zoetis CEO Kristin Peck, with us, as well, CFO Wetteny Joseph. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it, and with a lot going on at the company as well. And so just first, four important disclosures. Please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you do have questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. So with that, I think we'll just kick it off with Q&A, if that works for you. So, a lot has been accomplished, even this year alone at Zoetis and obviously throughout your entire tenure, kind of, Kristin.
But, you know, for this year, the launch of Librela in the U.S. is underway. You're seeing accelerating growth across your broader, even companion animal portfolio, even for a lot of legacy products, and you're seeing you're divesting your MFA business. So there's been a lot that's accomplished, and I think that is sometimes underappreciated. What does Zoetis look like in 3-5 years or even longer term than that? But you're seeing 9%-11% operational growth this year. That's above your 6%-9%, kind of, long-term guidance. I guess, what keeps the momentum going here?
Sure. I mean, we are really excited to have reported what I think is an outstanding first half of the year. I think what is always sustained Zoetis is outstanding innovation. I mean, I think we have created categories, and then in categories that are there, we constantly bring new innovation and raise the standard of care. I think the second is our ability, with that innovation, to out execute our competitors. And, you know, third, I think, is just really disciplined capital allocation, which we can certainly talk about today. And I think 2024 has been just an outstanding example of that across all three. So from an innovation, you know, really ramping up Apoquel Chewable, Librela, Solensia, the performance that you referenced, obviously, 142% in our pain portfolio, 18% in our derm portfolio.
That launched, you know, 11 years ago. We're still talking about, you know, for the first half, you know, over 20% growth in that derm portfolio. And then if you look at the last quarter and you look at Simparica, Simparica franchise, you know, has got, you know, 20+ as well, about 21 in Trio and 22 overall. So I think really across multiple drivers of the business, we continue to innovate and execute. And then I think the MFA deal really talks about that disciplined capital allocation to looking at parts of our business where we don't think the return on invested capitals is high, exiting those, and then reinvesting that in important growth areas.
Okay, great. And then, and then you recently raised your operational growth guidance by about 50 basis points. That's to that 9%-11% I was referencing before. But can you speak to. And maybe this is a question for you, Wetteny, some of the key components of that 9%-11%, in terms of companion animal versus livestock, as well as some of those nuances in Argentina, for instance, that we should be thinking about, and Librela, especially as we head into the second half here.
Yeah, I'd be happy to. Look, we're very pleased with the phenomenal start to the year, the first half delivering 12% operational growth. And if you dissect that, right, companion animal is growing 16% in the first half, and livestock, 4%. We've said livestock is a 2%-4% grower. This year may be a bit above that, given some of the contribution from Argentina. And while I'm on the subject of Argentina, it's contributed about two points to our growth in the first half. That, as we said all along, we're going to be monitoring the inflation in that market, which is now has been more stabilized at a lower level. And so we would see the back half contribution be maybe half of that, and we'll continue to watch it.
But we factored all those into our second guidance rates in a year. And really pleased with the momentum we're seeing across the business and where that contribution is coming in. But we do expect companion animal to continue to outpace, and we like what we're seeing in terms of continuing to take price, but also seeing really strong volume come through as well across our key products. And as we sit here today, we're already, you know, well into the third quarter, a little bit past the halfway point, and we're continuing to see that strong momentum well into Q3 as well. So we're very pleased with what we're seeing.
Okay, that's good to hear. And then as we think about the mix of your business and the long-term kind of growth aspirations as well as even margin targets too, but should we think about, you know, with the MFA divestiture, that the long-term growth and margin profile should inflect higher for longer in terms of how we think about the mix of this business?
Yeah, look, for a number of reasons. We have multiple sources of growth that are gonna continue to drive the company forward on our execution, to Kristin's point. We're executing across launches, obviously, but also defending and expanding different parts of the business all at the same time. So as we look ahead, certainly we said last year at our Investor Day, we see the business long term growing in the mid to high single digits. We're just about to end the first year of our launch of Librela in the U.S., so we have a long way to go there. And as to Kristin's point, 18% growth on key derm 11 years later, and yet we still see substantially more opportunity to continue to grow that franchise in that market. And then on the parasite side, with triple combinations, Trio is.
That area continues to have significant more room to continue to move off of collars and topicals into that space. So we do. To your point about MFA, it will be accretive to the top line growth rate as well as the margin rate, but it's, you know, roughly $400 million annualized, around 30% EBITDA margins. It's not going to move the needle substantially.
Okay. And then price. We're getting a lot of questions from investors just around price. Some of it was, you know, tied to what was going on in Argentina, too, so it's a little bit of an anomaly here. But can you talk about... It's been a little bit more of a contributor to growth. How much more price can you take into kind of next year? And what do you see as sort of the long-term price realization across your business?
So long term, we continue to see opportunity to take price across the business, particularly around our innovative areas. And if you look at so far this year, and what we expect for the full year actually, is more of a balance around 5% price, which is about two points above what we've done historically. The last couple of years, we've seen more of an elevated price picture with inflation and so on, so 4% and 5%, if you will. But as we look ahead, even if we go back to our normalized sort of 3% price, given all the other areas of growth that I just talked about a moment ago, we continue to see line of sight into what we said last year in terms of the business's ability to grow to grow along those lines.
We're very pleased with that. I think even if in areas like Derm, where I talked about 18% growth in the quarter, for example, we still saw about 11% volume in that. So, we are even at, you know, mid- to high single-digit price in a category like that, you're seeing strong volume growth come through. So we do see an opportunity to continue to drive price, even if it's not at the levels that we are now. Argentina, by the time the year is all said and done, it'll be less than 2%, maybe somewhere around 1% or so contribution on the year. The midpoint of our guidance is at 10%. So we're two points above what we've done over the last 10 years, if you look at annualized growth, and about a point of that is coming from Argentina.
Really strong growth across the rest of the portfolio here.
Okay, and then let's take a step back and talk about just industry fundamentals in companion animal in particular. Based on the data that I track, we're at eleven consecutive quarters of negative same-store visit trends. Which is a long period of time, but you've been fairly resilient through that, and you have an omni-channel approach, for instance, and you also look at different data like therapeutic visits and that kind of stuff. So can you talk about your vision of sort of the end market as you see it from a, you know, pharmaceutical angle?
Sure, I can start. I mean, as we said for a number of years, historically, vet visits grew between 0% and 1%, and historically, we've grown 8% compound annual growth rate, so we're not really correlated with that. It has been negative at the macro level, but I think the point that you just made was really important. It's not negative at the therapeutic visit level. It's actually growing significantly. So periodic visits are up, pain visits are up, and a lot of what you're seeing in the decreases is either a wellness visit or a visit that was really a pickup of a prescription, which is really the online channel, which grew 27% for us.
So I think what we continue to say is, you know, visits is not the way to look at the pharmaceutical and, you know, biologic sector of the business. It isn't. There's been no correlation whatsoever. We've been having we have an outstanding year, and it's down again, 1.7, in our numbers, 1.7% in Q2, but really pay much more attention to revenue and revenue per visit. So revenue for revenue overall was up 4%, revenue per visit was up 6%. And what that says is there's a really strong pet owner. The consumer is doing well. Majority of those consumers are affluent millennials and Gen Z, who see that pet as a member of their family. It might be their own they might not have children, they have more than one pet, and they're spending on that.
And so we see a very healthy market, in our view, for all the different, you know, therapeutics and wellness products that we're selling. And that is not a U.S. comment, that's a global comment. We're really seeing this across Europe. You know, you can look at South America. The pet owner, more and more, sees that animal as an important part of their family, and they're willing to spend on that animal.
Okay. And as you think about, since you mentioned also the 27% growth across the online channel, I guess, can you remind us how big of exposure do you have to that channel today? Where does that go over time in terms of across your portfolio, where that's applicable? But also, you know, the continued kind of growth across that space, but you also get better economics sometimes across that channel as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So look, if you look at alternative channels in 2019, they were about 5% of our companion animal U.S. revenues, right? Today, they're about 15%. And so that's an area that's grown tremendously in that time span, while the companion animal business has grown tremendously, right? So a much bigger pie, bigger percentage. So we are seeing that continue to outpace the overall growth. And this is going back to the point that Kristin was just making around just the channel shifts that we're seeing in some of our categories. Now, the clinic is important to us, and we're innovating in many ways with injectable products that have to go through the clinic, but these alternative channels for the convenience that they bring to the pet owner. And we actually not only...
The economics are roughly equal, maybe slightly better, going through those channels versus going through a clinic, but we also get better compliance as the pet owners get products on auto ship that go to them. So whether you look at Apoquel or Chewy, for example, these are two big products for us in those alternative channels, and we continue to see them outpace the growth that we're seeing in the clinic.
Okay. Okay, and then, let's shift gears to Librela. So we've seen ramping sales on a sequential basis, which is what you've been telling us about for some time, and the U.S. launch has gone well. There has been noise around adverse events, but I think you've been able to navigate that fairly well. Can you talk a little bit about the narrative coming out of the vet practitioner today in terms of the traction you're seeing for Librela, how you expect that to continue into the second half?
Sure. We're really pleased with what we've been seeing, as I think we mentioned on the Q2 call. It's the fastest clinic penetration of any product we've ever launched. We're at 80%+ penetration in U.S. vet clinics. You know, we're seeing, you know, really strong reorder rates. You know, there obviously was a lot of noise, as you looked at the early part of the year from social media, but similar to what we saw at international, that has really died down, really because the adverse event rate and the adverse events are very consistent globally. This is an incredibly safe and efficacious product.
There's been over 18 million doses given, and I think once the vets got comfortable and the pet owners, you know, we're talking to much more pet owners who are having really positive experiences, it's, you know, it's been really strong, and that's why we mentioned in Q2, you know, the four-week sequential growth we continue to see. We're really excited to get this more into more moderate patients as vets gets more and more comfortable. You know, sometimes as you, like, move into the fall, we're really excited to get, you know, our field force out there with more of our vet clinics, talking more about the moderate use cases. This is an important part, as we mentioned when we launched the product. One thing we learned in international was-...
We were slower to get some of those moderate cases, and I think we're really focused on getting to the $1 billion for Librela and Solensia, and being able to do that faster. We'll be really getting those moderate cases on faster.
Where are you at with moderate utilization, if there's a metric or penetration or?
It's a little too early in the U.S., but in international, what we're at right now is moderate and mild, and about 65% of the cases we have in international, and our goal is to get the U.S. there as fast as possible. Look, you know, when we first launched the product, the majority of the cases were the more severe cases, so we're working really hard to move it more into moderate right now.
Okay. And there have been label changes in other geographies. Has there been a label change in the U.S.? I don't think so as yet, but do you anticipate that? I think you see label changes for nearly all of your products, so that's typical in animal health, but can you speak to kind of the nature of the label changes that you've seen?
Sure. We have had label changes, as we've mentioned, for Librela and pretty much most of the other major markets that we operated in, a little over a year, year and a half after launch. We said we would expect it. We said at Q2 that we began those conversations with the FDA. We expect those label changes to look like the label changes were in all the other markets. Why? Because that's where we've seen the adverse events, and again, we've published what those were. So we would expect our label. We obviously don't have a decision from the FDA yet, but we would expect that label to look like the international label, and we've been selling quite well, as you've seen in our growth rates in international with that label.
We also believe that most of us in the U.S., you know, have heard a lot about the international label, and so I don't think this will be a surprise to any veterinarian or pet owner as we've talked about what those international labels look like, so.
Okay. Okay, great. And so a sequential ramp quarter over quarter for the back half of the year is something that we can continue to assume in the U.S. market and in international as well?
Yeah, we've seen strong growth, yeah.
Yeah, we'll continue to expect sequential growth across. Just a reminder, Q4 is when we'll lap the launch in the U.S., and then across our international markets, we already lapped the last more significant launches, this last quarter, so that's the only thing.
Okay. And in Solensia, we don't talk as much about it, but I see your socks, and they're supportive of it. And, you know, it is a slower ramp, just given the nature of that type of market. But can you give us a little bit of update on the traction you're seeing there and the opportunity as you see that long term?
You can answer it since you have the stocks.
Yeah, look, I think if you look at Solensia so far on a year-to-date basis, I think we're about 70%, 69%-70% growth year on year on the product, so clearly off of a lower base. As we said from the very beginning, developing the market for cats will take some time, but we are seeing that consistent growth across the U.S. and the markets across Europe and international. So we're very pleased with what the product is doing. It's increasing the visits in the clinic. We highlighted that during the earnings, this last earnings. If you look at OA pain visits, particularly with feline visits, are up significantly in the clinic. So we are bringing those pet owners into the clinics and continuing to drive that product.
I mean, look, if you look at it on a trailing 12-month basis, it's already north of $100 million, so that's technically a blockbuster already. We won't claim that, although others may claim blockbuster earlier, but we'll, we'll do it once we have a full year, at a whole $100 million.
Okay. And it's not just about... And I'll get to kind of derm and parasiticides as well, but like, it's not just about like Librela and, like, Solensia and Cytopoint, there are other monoclonal antibodies in your pipeline that you're focused on. What have you learned since launching those products in terms of the vet reception of this type of therapy and the compliance from the pet owner? That was always sort of a question area as we kind of enter this sort of newer space in animal health, and how do you think about the growth prospects across that pipeline and mAbs?
What we've learned, if you remember back when we got the first conditional license, I want to say it was in 2016 or 2017, most people thought this would be a specialist product, if that's what it is in the human health side. I think what we've demonstrated, the vets are a lot more comfortable with these technologies than people would have expected, and the pet owners are comfortable getting their injections from their vets. So I think that's been great. I think what we are seeing is, you know, it's hard for cats to get in, so we kind of knew that one. We are trying to get through that. I think this is where long-acting is really going to make a big difference. Even in the dog space, you know, it's a lot to bring your dog in every month.
So we really believe that as we look at the long-acting portfolio, which we've talked about, launching in both derm and pain over the next one to two years, we think these long-actings are going to address some of the challenges we have seen, which is just the monthly visit to the vet clinic, especially for cats, but also for dogs. Just it's a pain, also the monthly injection fees. If we can get more long-acting, we think we can significantly increase compliance. But we've really seen a, you know, a willingness at both the vet and the pet owner and a comfort, with not just the technology, but, you know, for the pet owners to having the vets be able to do that. So we've really invested heavily in our pipeline in monoclonal antibodies for many other indications.
As you've seen from our capital expenditures this past year at $700-$750, investing aggressively in our manufacturing capacity, where I think we have a unique competitive advantage. These products have to be made in animal-only monoclonal antibody facilities. They cannot be made in human health facilities, and you must do your pivotal trials at the scale you must launch in. So it really is an advantage to people who can build the scale early and which we have already products, that we can leverage those facilities and continue to grow those to be able to win in monoclonal antibodies, which we think are a really safe and efficacious way of addressing many different disease areas.
Okay, great. Switching to derm... Let's talk about, I guess, Apoquel. Can you speak to your ability to kind of maintain the momentum there that you've been seeing? But also the competitive landscape, what we've seen from Elanco's product or what we know in terms of a black box warning. How does that change your go-to-market strategy at all with Apoquel, or your strategy around Cytopoint, or your strategy with distributors with this product or the chewable? I guess, can you talk a little bit about that, or if it changes at all?
We're really optimistic. For starters, we've been expecting competition for I don't know how many years we've been coming to your conference, and we've said, "It's coming, it's coming." I think really it's coming this time. We've been really well prepared for a long time. I think our strategy was to get Apoquel Chew out ahead of competition, which we've done. We did put that, to your point, into distribution. The answer is, while they're gonna be launching a film-coated, we're already gonna have a nice beef-flavored chew, which will help in compliance, for many people. It's gonna be hard to switch somebody from a beef-flavored chew to going backwards to a film-coated tablet. You know, as I mentioned, we're great at innovation, which is the chew, but we're really great at execution as well.
We're very confident in our ability not just to defend this market, but to grow it. We think there's two big opportunities to continue to grow it. I mean, we're 11 years out, and we're printing an 18% growth last quarter across our derm franchise. I, which is really underscoring why we think there's such growth. The first is around compliance. So compliance could be from Cytopoint or Cytopoint, you know, a long-acting derm product. It comes from chew, getting people more comfortable with a beef-flavored chew to remember to give that product. It comes from autoship. But we also think there's a significant opportunity to continue to grow the market overall. We think there's still 11 million dogs who should be using our products that are not. 3 million of those are using steroids today.
That is a far inferior product to what we've got. We think those are, you know, strong candidates to be moved over to an Apoquel. And then there's about eight million dogs who have atopic dermatitis, who are not, you know, getting a product at the, vet. They may be, you know, using shampoos or diets or whatever, but we think that's also a big opportunity for us. So we think, you know, A, we've demonstrated we can compete very effectively with competition. We think we have innovation to help us do that. We also think we can increase compliance, and we also think we can continue to drive this market and continue to grow it.
Do you think you can continue to take price with Apoquel into next year?
Yeah, look, price is a component that we've done across our portfolio consistently, right? We've taken two to three points every year. The last couple of years have been a little bit higher. Even this year, if you look at our key derm performance, I mentioned earlier, volume is outpacing price, even as we're taking, you know, high single-digit price here in this category. So we'll continue to look at, evaluate each product, each market in terms of what the value pricing is for those products and continue to drive it, but we see opportunity to continue to take price.
Was there any sort of meaningful stocking component in the second or in the first half that... or anything to think about in terms of the second half in, from an Apoquel perspective?
The short answer is no. I mean, there's a little bit of stocking on Chewy that we've talked about on the call, but-
Yep.
You know, fairly immaterial.
A lot of it does go through the online channel. You said our autoship is important. How do you think about that in comparison to what, you know, potentially your competitor could do there in terms of potential limitations with the safety, safety warning? Maybe we just need to see the label to understand the competitive dynamics of that. How much of, for instance, Apoquel goes through Autoship?
I think it's about 1/3 of it in the U.S. currently goes through.
Retail.
The retail. I don't know how many of that is actually Autoship, but it's about 1/3 goes to the retail channel there. We have very strong relationships. Again, a lot of those, if you look, Chewy will give you the numbers. Autoship is huge for these types of products, so you know, we think that's a pretty sticky customer who's pretty happy and doesn't really have a great reason to change, so.
About half of Apoquel is considered chronic, and half of that would be, like, seasonal chronic. Is that the right way to characterize it?
I think it's 60% of doses-
Yeah.
are chronic.
Yeah, about 30% of the patients, but 60% of the doses are in the chronic.
Okay. And any other competitors in the wings that you're aware of in Derm, that we should be thinking about? I know Merck had one in the pipeline or, or others, so that...
Look, as Kristin said, we've been expecting competition for a long time. We see tremendous opportunity, regardless of competition, to keep growing and expanding in this market, which is where we're focused. We don't have as much, you know, in this space, as you know, as there is in human health, so we can't say exactly when someone else will come, but we're not waiting for that. We're pushing, and you see the expansion already in the business in the-
Sorry, I have to ask, and then on Simparica Trio, I want to switch gears to parasiticides. It's been a tremendous launch for you in terms of the success that you've seen and even the more recent kind of ramp that you've seen in terms of traction there. Can you talk a little bit about where your overall share is now? I guess, how much has converted over to the combination? How much is there to more to go? I think people are less concerned about kind of competition. It's already a competitive market to begin with, and yeah, can you give us an update of where share stands, I guess?
Yeah, I think we start overall parasiticides, which is the biggest market in animal health. It's also the most competitive. We still see tremendous opportunity in the market to see that shift from topicals and collars over to orals and then to triple combinations. And triple combinations, we believe, are still and orals are still about a quarter of the volume going through, so huge opportunity remaining. It's still a relatively new standard of care when you look at triple combinations. So even with competition, we expect this end of the market to outpace the overall market growth, which we are a leader in and first to market. I think by the time you get second, third competitors coming into a space like this, they won't, you know, we don't expect them to make a meaningful impact.
Of course, there'll be more, DTC, more awareness for pet owners on this, standard of care to, to go to the clinic seeking these, prescription products, which as you see in our performance here, I mean, we, we haven't quoted an overall market share number, but what we have said is our share in puppies is actually something that we're very excited about, because once you get a puppy on the product, you don't tend to switch, right? And given the safety and efficacy and the high satisfaction levels that we see, so that's a, that's a clear indicator for us, because that's higher than our overall share. We believe that's also an indicator for us as we look in the future.
But again, these are areas that we're gonna continue to put investments behind, Trio and our other brands, which we talked about on second quarter earnings, while we expect, we give the guidance for the full year and substantial leverage from top to bottom, right? The bottom line is expected to be about 450 basis points above the top line. We are putting investments in the back half, including behind Trio and Librela, et cetera, as well.
I mean, it to me came from probably the number five player in parasiticides to where you are pretty quickly, and that's one of the largest categories, or the largest category, kind of, in companion animal. But you also have, like, Librela, where you're basically creating that market. You created atopic dermatitis kind of market in terms of being kind of the first player there. Now, where do we stand in terms of now being able to truly kind of bundle around the entire portfolio, leverage the broader innovative offerings, and kind of delve into, you know, more direct relationships with corporate accounts and more formidable relationships just across the board in terms of your customer base?
Okay, I think we've demonstrated that time and time again, and we have very strong relationships with our corporate partners. If you look at whether that's, you know, from the largest corporates to some of the up-and-coming corporates right now, and I think the innovation is what helps us lead that. I think being able to partner with them, being able to give them confidence, we're gonna help them grow their their own practices and their own businesses by bringing innovative products that help them provide the best care and, you know, please their customers. I think our portfolio and monoclonal antibodies is incredibly important, and that's important because that business is gonna stay in those clinics and are gonna help those clinics grow.
That is, you know, often a monthly or hopefully someday, at every three months, product that a pet owner is coming into. So we're helping those businesses grow, and I think that's helping us really cement our partnerships with our corporates and with the independents as well, making sure the vet remains the center of innovation and the go-to person for every pet owner.
And how do we think about, you know, then what's next in parasiticides as well, in terms of, you mentioned, like, come in every three months? In terms of an injectable, where does that stand in terms of your pipeline? When do we expect a longer-term injectable product in flea, tick, and heartworm combination?
Sure. We have, as many of you know, and you know, we have, injectable today on ProHeart 6 and ProHeart 12. For heartworm, we are obviously investing in our pipeline in a combination product as well. We haven't been public about when that will launch.
Okay.
Good afternoon.
Other innovation. So speaking about CKD, that was another area that you pointed out at your Investor Day. Can you speak to the timing and magnitude of the opportunity there? I think you previously mentioned a billion-dollar plus minus kind of category. What's the timeline on that initiative, and how do you see that rolling out or playing out across the globe?
Sure. I mean, as I think about our innovation, pipeline, you know, we're extremely excited about this. As you look at maybe the last 11 years since we launched Apoquel, we launched sort of, you know, Apoquel in a derm portfolio. We've launched, you know, new innovations in our parasiticides, and we've launched pain over the last three years. I think there's three huge new categories that, you know, we'll be creating, and I don't think that's over the next 11. I think that's over the next five to six years, and that's really around renal CKD, oncology, and cardiovascular. We think these are three really big disease areas in animal health where there really are no products today. Most of these are, you know, managing, you know, symptoms, palliative care, et cetera, or they're using off-label products from human health.
We think these are big disease categories. And again, one thing that I think Zoetis has done a phenomenal job of is create new categories, be able to build those markets. But we also are really excited about what we see as sort of, you know, the more near-term, sort of the long actings in both our derm portfolio and our pain portfolio. We believe those will launch in the next, you know, one to two years. But I would also argue there's still lifecycle innovations, like an Apoquel Chew, that's continuing to extend and grow brands and build compliance and drive growth, as well as new indications for our current products. So as I think about our innovation portfolio and why we're so optimistic about the future, is we'll continue to deliver singles and doubles on, you know, lifecycle enhancements, and new indications.
We'll create new, you know, billion-dollar markets. I think we've demonstrated we can do this, and we've given you line of sight to what we think those next big markets that we'll create are over the next... We said a year ago, five-to-seven years, so I'd say, you know, then over the next five to six.
Can you give us, since we haven't really talked about it too much, the production animal market, just where it stands today, key species, groups, and areas of focus, you know, kind of post MFA divestiture and also innovation on that front, too?
Sure. Look, livestock generally goes 2%-4%. We think it will continue to be that. Our goal is to be at the higher end of that range as best we can, and I think innovation is how we get there. Our decision on the MFA divestiture was to really double down on the areas where we think innovation is gonna be most relevant. In livestock, we pay most attention to is prediction, that's genetics, so being able to better predict which animals will be most productive and be healthiest. So that's our genetics business. I think, prevention, which is our vaccines business, and then in treatment, it's really around immunomodulation. So rather than having to use antibiotics, finding ways to keep that animal healthier, longer. Obviously, the biggest species in livestock is cattle.
We'll continue to invest in that. That's both beef and dairy, but we see significant opportunities to continue to look at vaccines across swine as well as in poultry, where we have our vector vaccines portfolio and continuing to grow that out. So we continue to believe there's, you know, really good opportunities across livestock and are excited to invest there.
Your long-term goal from a margin standpoint, you know, was just for margin leverage, is kind of how or margin improvement year over year. I guess can you talk about, you know, you've seen tremendous growth in some of these faster-growing, higher-margin categories like companion animal, but then the flow-through, maybe people have been looking for a little bit more. Like, how do we think about kind of 2025 and beyond, and the levers there from a margin perspective?
Yeah, look, I think I've often said the business inherently has the ability to continue to expand margins, and we see that and we commit to that by saying we'll grow the bottom line faster than the top line, right? I think a year like this, where our guidance range shows 450 basis points spread to the bottom line above the top line, shows just how much of that we're doing, and we're making investments in the business at the same time, so there'll be years when it won't be as wide, there'll be years it could be wider, but I think the difference is we're not afraid of making investments in the business where we see that driving a really strong attractive return and sustaining strong top line growth for us, and that'll be the difference.
But the ability is there. Between mix, with companion animal continuing to grow faster than livestock will drive that. Within companion animal, we see mix shift as well. As we scale our mAbs, that will drive greater margins within that. And you've seen so far this year, leveraging SG&A too, right? We've said it. We said it during Investor Day. We said we've made investments already in our field force. We can launch and drive these products. We're executing across all these three fronts and still leveraging the existing investments we made, so you've seen that pull through. We think there's more opportunity to do more of that as well as we work down the bottom of the P&L.
And, we haven't talked too much about diagnostics recently. Just can you give us an update on the diagnostics strategy, where it stands today?
We're quite excited about diagnostics. You know, we announced our new hematology platform will be launching, that's our OptiCell line, our VetScan OptiCell. We're, you know, we've we really... When we entered the space, you know, we really believed that disrupting diagnostics was gonna be our focus. We launched the Imagyst platform, which we've already got six indications on that. That's our AI diagnostics. In pet care, we're really excited to add hematology and ultimately to add a new chemistry, a really new platform, which really disrupts the technologies of today. But we're also really excited to think more around companion diagnostics, the portfolio we just talked about.
So we really think that, having both a diagnostics for renal CKD or cardiology or oncology, around when you're launching products, I mean, some of these diagnostics aren't worth much today, because even if you know it, you can't do much about it. But we really believe that if we can launch companion diagnostics and new analytes that help us better diagnose and better determine the animals that are going to be most likely to benefit from the products we're launching in the future, we see this as a big opportunity to really help, you know, see the synergies across our portfolio. So the new platforms are super exciting to us, but we're also really looking at new analytes and new testing to, you know, be a companion diagnostic for our future portfolio.
And you recently went direct with that portfolio across your diagnostics business. Can you talk a little bit about that strategy in terms of leveraging sort of this hybrid approach of distribution and your own direct efforts as well, and where that stands? And are there any changes that we should anticipate in terms of the strategy on that front?
No, I think what we realized is we do the best job, better than anybody else, on direct demand generation. And we really saw there's an opportunity, especially with the innovation, that we knew we were coming with hematology, et cetera, to be able to drive conversion to our, you know, machines and drive usage and consumable usage. And, you know, I think distribution's been great at taking orders, but they're not great at converting people from one technology to another. And given that's our aspiration, we want to have more control over that relationship, and be able to, you know, influence, especially around consumable usage, and help them understand how it fits in the rest of our portfolio. We do have a dedicated diagnostics field force, and it's separate than our, pharmaceutical and biologics field force, but it works very closely together on account-by-account strategy.
But any changes across the broader portfolio in terms of leveraging distribution, and what is your mix of direct versus indirect?
Um, in the-
If you do-
We do direct demand generation, across all of our business. We do leverage distribution for, you know, distribution, but not for direct demand generation.
Okay. And then lastly, as we think about the next couple of quarters here, I guess any nuances from a modeling perspective that we should be aware of quarter to quarter? I know we'll be lapping some of the product launches, like in the fourth quarter, but anything else to think about as we head into the second half?
Sure. I mentioned the lapping of the Librela launch in the U.S. in the fourth quarter. We've already lapped some of the other markets for Librela. But I mentioned on the earnings call that as you look at the back half of the year, we are increasing those investments behind the key product categories and product brands that will impact what you see top to bottom line. So while I'm very excited about what we're seeing so far in the quarter, as I mentioned earlier, seeing that momentum continuing into Q3, I would expect the bottom line performance to be closer to what the top line is, plus or minus a couple points, and not see that leverage. But for the year, we have the leverage in our guidance range, we're committed to at 450 basis points.
Then when we get to Q4, I think the bottom line gets a little bit easier on the comps, is what, how I would describe it.
Okay. Great. Thanks so much. We're excited for what's to come, and appreciate the time today. Thanks.