We're good? Okay, great. Well, thank you everybody for joining us here at the Leerink Global Healthcare Partner Conference. Very happy to be here today with Zoetis CFO, Wetteny Joseph, and Head of IR, Nick Soonthornchai. Wetteny, just gonna kinda get into it here. Thank you for being with us. Wanted to start on the companion animal side. You know, at this point, how are you thinking about the broader health of the pet consumer in 2026? We've seen some pockets of durable growth, you know, some slowdowns, at a high level. How are you sort of seeing the landscape and thinking about consumer behavior through the co urse of the ye a r?
First of all, thanks for having us here at the conference. Clearly, I think the biggest thing to really pay attention to is that the consumer overall is still spending and prioritizing pet health. If you look at the latest data, even through Q4 of 2025, overall vet clinic revenues were up about 6% in the quarter. However, we are seeing some pressure, though, on some segments of the consumer, particularly millennials and Gen Z, whether it's from, you know, student loans and other factors that are impacting them, that's putting some pressure in terms of volumes. You see it in clinic visits, not only in overall visits, which we saw for a number of years, but we're seeing it in therapeutic visits as well.
We also see a concentration around particularly certain segments of the customer, meaning the vet clinics, particularly those who are corporate-owned that took larger price increases over the years. You see that more pronounced with them. I started with the overall because the overall is still that they're spending. They're spending, though, higher prices and also more emergency care. If you look at emergency hospitals and so on, you're seeing an uptick there, which is an indication of either delaying treatments or what have you, that ultimately, if the pet is sick and has an issue, they're going to address it, which again, is where you start from. Those strong secular trends that have driven the industry in the past are still there.
When we're talking to our customers, we were just at the largest conference in the industry, feels like an eternity ago, but VMX, and you can hear the conversation with our customers recognizing that there is a need to really look at ways to drive a value proposition to pet owners to drive the right level of preventive care, not just with emergency care, and drive continued spend and focus in those areas. We believe, one, we would expect a different tempo around how much price increase there is. In some instances, maybe not taking price at all this year and so forth. Those are the type of things that customers are evaluating or doing to help drive the business forward, and drive it that way.
Gotcha. Makes sense. You know, jumping to parasiticides, Trio's been a great product for you. It's been growing quite well. How should we think about sort of the product's growth from here, especially in the U.S.? On the one hand, you've got a little more competition, but you've also got a fairly sticky user base. You know, you've got, you know, good new puppy starts each year, the ability to take price and, you know, I think the autoship channel has been one that's been beneficial, just driving improved compliance. You know, a lot of different factors sort of at play within Para and Trio, but how do you think about those relationships going forward?
Trio's a phenomenal product for us. When we look at this past year, Trio delivered more than $1 billion in revenues in the U.S. alone. You have to analyze the overall parasiticide space and the triple combination space to really appreciate where things are going and what we're seeing and why we remain very excited about this space. We have a very strong head start with Trio. If you look at the satisfaction levels, so this is behind the revenues, right? Beyond those, look at the satisfaction levels, and pet owners and veterinarians are showing satisfaction levels with safety and efficacy that are in the 90s, mid-90s. You're talking 95%, 96%. That's a very, very strong foundation to grow from.
Now, what's happening with triple combinations is that they occupy today about 50% of the vet clinic patient base are, triple combinations. However, puppies are close to two-thirds. What that tells you is this is where the market's going. From roughly 50%, which is what the overall share is, to two-thirds, which is where the new puppies are getting started on. She was getting about half of those puppies. If it's 67% that are getting puppies that are getting triples, she was getting about 31%, 32%. That shows you, where we stand and where the overall space stands in terms of, in terms of more room to expand. That 50% I described, by the way, was only about, you know, 25% or 30% just a couple of years back.
It's grown rapidly to this point. We think there's still a lot more room to expand into triple combinations. In some instances where competitors have launched products, they're just ramping up and therefore are cannibalizing some of their legacy sort of treatments in the process. Overall, there's significant room here for this market to keep expanding.
How do you sort of think about compliance, given you've got more autoship? Like, where has that been across sort of the totality of dogs that are treated with Trio? What are you seeing on the autoship channel and sort of how can that play out?
Certainly when we think about expansion of the market, it's not just in what I just covered, which is number of animals, number of dogs, etc . It's also in terms of the compliance, right? You see it very clearly when you look at Trio. About almost 50% of Trio sales are in alternative channels. If you look at those that go through retail and on autoship, where the overall compliance rates for parasiticides in the U.S. stand at about six months, when they're on autoship, they go up to 11. Clearly there's a substantial opportunity here in terms of compliance and where growth will come in into the space, not just in terms of number of animals, but the level. And that's very sticky, as you said.
You don't see switching in this space, anyway, particularly if there's not any significant differentiation in products that are coming out.
I guess switching to derm, did want to touch again on the slowdown in visits and was just curious if we think about, you know, the owner burden associated with atopic derm. These are dogs that are going to get worse if they skip, you know, if it's a Cytopoint visit or what have you. Like, is there any possibility that we start to see, if you want to call it a boomerang dynamic or something else, where these untreated dogs get so bad that they have to come back to the clinic? Like how does the elasticity, any elasticity of sort of derm demand play out over the longer term?
Look, I think, you know, we all sort of lived through the period of COVID when we saw a lot more folks treating for itch because it was very visible and they saw it because they were home. I think that dynamic is still there. When you think about itch, and to the extent that, you know, treatments are getting skipped or extended... come back. If you look at the data, as we went through 2025, for example, even the therapeutic visits that we talked about seeing some headwinds, they got progressively better through the end of the year, right? We're not quite at the point of seeing growth in derm visits through the fourth quarter of 2025. However, the worst of it was in Q2.
It got better in Q3. By the time we got to Q4, it was barely negative. It was basically flat in terms of the derm visits in the clinics. There is some lag effect in terms of patient starts and so forth, but the direction of travel is, I would say, favorable in terms of what we're seeing and perhaps from some of what you're describing already or other factors that are coming in. This is clearly an area, we posted $1.7 billion in Key Derm revenue last year. Despite that, you still have substantial more room to grow.
Just under 50% of itchy dogs are getting some treatment from a veterinarian today, and about 2/3 of those are on our products, with the other 1/3 getting, you know, steroids or what have you. You're still talking about less than 50% of itchy dogs that are seeing a vet on a regular basis getting treatment. Therefore, there is substantial more room to grow. I think if you look past, you know, prior to 2025 for a second, you look at what happened in 2024, our Key Derm products grew by about 16%, 17% actually in 2024. The volume growth within that was double digits, right? Clearly this is a market that and it's both number of patients as well as compliance that's driving that.
Apoquel is more than 40% of Apoquel is coming through alternative channels in the U.S.. It's a healthy proportion that's coming through alternative channels, and you see the effects of autoship and so forth. There's still substantial room for compliance growth as well as number of patients growth.
Actually wanted to revisit the commentary that Derm visits are getting a little better sequentially through, you know, second quarter through the fourth quarter. You know, when we think about your ability to drive visit growth, whether it's increasing awareness, getting new dogs in the visit, like what has your strategy been to sort of get more dogs into the clinic, and did you do anything differently in the back half of last year?
Look, the playbook is similar in terms of awareness and all the work that we do, and a lot of this conversation so far has been U.S.-focused and centric, but we are running a global business. If you look at the growth that we've enjoyed over the last number of years, in companion animal more broadly, but specifically also within Key Derm , you would've seen that companion animal growth outside the U.S. has grown about the same rate as companion animal growth in the U.S., right? Now having said that, international segment companion animal proportion is just over 50%, call it 54-ish, 55% of our revenues outside the U.S., whereas companion animal is about 80% of the U.S., right? There's still a lot of room to grow internationally from a companion animal perspective.
I saw this because we have in the past done a lot of awareness-type campaigns, particularly when there wasn't another product in the market. While in some markets in Europe, for example, you can't do branded DTC, we're doing a lot of DTC just on unbranded basis and bringing and driving more pet owners to veterinarians asking for our products. We continue to do DTC in the U.S. and elsewhere to do that as well. All those are going to continue to accrue to driving more patient starts. At the end of the day, someone has to show up to a clinic and see a veterinarian to start a treatment regime before they could use other channels as well.
Gotcha. I guess, you know, speaking about the oral JAK space specifically here, again, you've got the longest tenured market on the product in Apoquel. How are you thinking about whether it's new patient starts or patient switching, thinking through you've got a label that's quite efficacious, you've got a good track record, that's been in the public eye for a long time? Like how are you thinking about the opportunity in Apoquel, both in the U.S. and ex-U.S. at this point?
Yeah. We look across the Key Derm franchise. We have three products across two key brands with Apoquel and then Cytopoint. We see substantial opportunities I talked about already in terms of expanding the market. On the film-coated side, yes, Apoquel's been around for more than a decade. Very, very high satisfaction levels both for efficacy and safety. We have managed as a company to really strike that balance between those two, safety and efficacy, in a way that, you know, perhaps is why we've seen the longevity of the success of this product, and now we have the chewable version as well. Clearly it's a balance we've been able to achieve, which accrues to the success of the product. We continue to see some conversion from Apoquel to Apoquel chewable, which remains very much differentiated.
I would say even on a pure film-coated Apoquel basis, pound for pound, we believe we have a product that's differentiated against others, whether it's looking at safety on the one hand or efficacy on the other, which is something we'll continue to leverage and drive our business here.
Gotcha. I guess just thinking through the derm landscape here, could you just remind us how you're thinking about promotional activity across the space through 2026 and into subsequent years, given your position?
Sure. Look, I think, derm isn't quite as seasonal as parasiticides. You get into paras season as we're getting into now, you tend to see a lot more promotional activity that's just commonplace. Whereas in derm, there are some seasonal, you know, derm patients, but a lot of it's chronic. If you look at the dose, dosing, it's about 60% of those are chronic conditions. It doesn't lend itself to that on its own. I would say, generally speaking, we do look to leverage some level of promotional activity across our products, particularly given our strength is our portfolio and products that are very important to vet clinics and their practices.
We where we can in markets like the U.S., you can't do that everywhere, we do bring those together to bring a value proposition to our customers that connects those in terms of where the pricing ends up, depending on which products they buy, etc . In that way, the derm products are being sort of presented alongside other areas including paras, et c, in driving our business voice.
Gotcha. I guess jumping from one derm product with a, you know, long, good track record here to the other, Cytopoint, how are you thinking about the growth trajectory of this business through 2026 and subsequent years? This may be an unfair question, but, you know, if the incremental dog comes into a clinic looking for atopic dermatitis treatment, like, do you have a preference that it goes to Cytopoint or Apoquel? How are you kind of thinking about that?
Look, Cytopoint is a terrific product, and again, it's been around for about a decade, and satisfaction levels are very high there. What we have are products that give a clinician, a vet, and then pet owners, a choice in terms of what's the best product to use under each circumstance. It certainly is the reason why we started to combine and talk about Dermatology in combination versus individual products, because you still see a strong preference on the part of veterinarians and pet owners for an injectable form that, you know, you have higher compliance with, etc . The same headwinds we've talked about with respect to Dermatology visits have impacted here. Overall, there's definitely a preference on the part of pet owners and veterinarians for the injectable form here too.
Gotcha. How are you thinking about, you know, so competing IL-31 mAb coming out, and then you've got long-acting Cytopoint coming out this year. Just given the phasing of that, how are you thinking about the interplay of what that market will look like in a year from now?
Sure. It's certainly a part of our factor. We've been investing in this, and we're excited about the prospects of having an approval late in 2026 here for Cytopoint long-acting. Again, given the foundation we sit on in terms of a decade of experience and satisfaction with customers, we always have been and will be disciplined in terms of how we push the market as an IL-31 competitor launches. Then, of course, we'll look forward to the long-acting component to come into pla y as well.
Sounds good. Just jumping to OA pain here. How are you thinking about Librela at this point? It seems like on a sequential basis, trends are starting to firm up a little bit. Can you just talk about where your strategy sits at this point to help, you know, firm up sort of that franchise?
Sure. We have a multi-pronged strategy we continue to execute on, getting more and more confidence in terms of how that's working, given what we're seeing, which we've described on the last couple calls in terms of seeing stabilizing effects. They come by way of sort of the sequential rolling four-week, five-week trends we're seeing in terms of sales, as well as we gauge veterinarians on a regular basis around where their satisfaction levels are and tend to prescribe and all those things. We've seen those elevate from their previous lows to a point where we see the combination of those signaling the stabilization of this product.
Of course, we continue to execute on that multi-pronged strategy, whether it's educating pet owners, by the way, in terms of the long-term effects of OA, that it's a painful product that is progressive, and if you don't treat it has other implications, including the animal's not moving as much, they're going to have other issues. It may lead to cardiovascular issues, etc . Educating pet owners is important. Continuing to share data with veterinarians around the product. And remind you, the satisfaction levels of pet owners who are using the product are very, very high. We're talking about more than 75% are either very or extremely satisfied with the product. Those give us really strong foundation.
That's before we get into the long-acting OA products that are launching, in different markets. We think about the OA pain opportunity still as a very substantial opportunity. Just to share a few figures, and again, we're running a global business, but sometimes it's helpful to just look at what the U.S. data looks like. We would estimate somewhere between 25 million and 27 million dogs with OA pain in the U.S.. That population are the ones that see a vet on a regular basis. It'd be a bigger number if you look at all dogs. Just think about, you know, roughly, dogs, you know, roughly 75% or 80% of dogs will see a vet on a regular basis. Think about it that way.
$25 million- $27 million with OA pain in the U.S., with only about $9 million getting treatments and $8 million are getting NSAIDs and $1 million getting Librela. If you think about that context, it's a huge opportunity here. When we think about the long-acting products, which, we don't have an approval in the U.S. yet, but we do have in Canada and Europe, as those continue to get approvals, and we would expect an approval in the U.S., in the 2027 timeframe, that will continue to add more options and flexibility for a veterinarian and a pet owner to treat OA pain and continue to expand that market.
To look, actually looking ahead to Lenivia and Portela, like you talked a little bit with Librela about increasing you know, vet owner education, coming to the table with more data. How are you taking what you've learned from the Librela and I suppose Solensia launches and sort of applying that to these future launches here?
As we've been sharing, one of the key learnings for us is you know, though we've had tremendous success with products launching directly into general practitioner veterinarians, it really is helpful to first work with specialists with these products as general practitioners will look to them as questions arise and so forth. That's one of the big learnings for us. Though, as we launch long-acting products and many other products we have in our pipeline, particularly as we get into treating more sick animals versus preventative, et c, this is an important component for us.
The launch will be more, you know, measured initially, working with specialists and select GPs to gather some of the data from those and really start the phase IV studies and all those things early on, through some of the data that we'll gather through those, before launching more broadly across a broader GP population. That's one of the key items in addition to the education and everything else that we've been talking about doing with Librela, doing the same thing with other products.
Gotcha. Just taking a step back and looking at sort of your other companion animal health products, whether it's vaccines, anti-nausea meds, things of that sort you know, what are really the main drivers we should think about for that other companion animal health bucket? Is it visits? Is it the broader health of the consumer, puppies, older dogs? What should we be thinking about there?
Look, I think the broader health of consumer is always a factor no matter which way a customer or a pet owner chooses to get their products fulfilled. Of course, it all starts with a veterinarian in terms of diagnosing, creating a treatment, sort of plan and all those type of things. Those are really important aspects. When you start to get into different channels, though, some products lend themselves to those versus others that don't. The convenience factor and the opportunity to expand the market through better compliance that comes with some of the alternative channels would lend themselves to injectables, for example. When you think about that category of that basket of products you're talking about, vaccines are going to have to be done in a clinic because it's an in-injectable product.
You have a mix in products like Rimadyl, between an injection versus a tablet, what have you. Those can go either direction, and they have different, slightly different uses too. An injection is likely to be in a surgical setting, so a surgical visit will be important there, versus others that might be post-surgery type treatment for pain and what have you. Broad pain, not OA pain specifically. Those may initially will start with a prescription obviously, and a clinic visit, but then they could be fulfilled elsewhere. As a mix, but overall though, the health of the consumer and all the other aspects we started the conversation with are factors to think about in that.
Gotcha. What do the gross margin contributions sort of look like from these drugs versus your more innovative ones?
Look, we don't tend to break out specifically by different products. Clearly, we look to drive value in across all the products that we bring to customers, and that drives how we price them and ultimately what happens with respect to margins. We continue to see that we endeavor to be the first to solve major problems for our customers and bring products to market that can stand the test of time, right? We talk about Dermatology, for example, and how we have struck that balance and have a substantial sort of risk-benefit equation in a product that has very high satisfaction and balances both safety and efficacy, right?
We aim for that, and that is the number one driver ultimately in terms of what value we bring and therefore what margins we have.
Gotcha. This is a bigger term macro question. Obviously oil prices have gone up quite a bit over the past week, and I'm sure we're all still figuring out what this means. Just at a high level, like how are you thinking about the impacts of that at all across your companion animal or your livestock businesses?
Sure. Just like other factors, as a major global company with a global supply chain and moving products around everywhere around the world, this is one that we're certainly monitoring and continue to do different scenario planning around it. At the levels we're talking about right now, of course, they would have some impact, but it's nothing significant.
Yeah, should probably touch on livestock here because end markets have been quite strong. How are you thinking about sort of the supply-demand dynamics here over the next couple of years? Should we expect similar levels of growth? Any upside, downside? How are you, how are you thinking about that?
The way we laid out our guidance that we issued mid-February is exactly that, which is to expect the recent trends we've seen in livestock that's delivered somewhere around 6% and 7% growth. We expect to see mid-single digit growth in 2026 from livestock. The trends that are driving those of course are animal protein consumption have been on the rise. Certainly, if you think long-term with population growth, emerging markets, emerging middle class, et c, those are all factors, and urbanization, that have been pushing more protein consumption, animal protein consumption and will continue to do that. There are some additional ones though that have entered into the m ix.
We believe we're seeing some tailwinds from GLP-1s, et c, in the U.S., that are also helping to drive more animal protein consumption. We have always said diversification across Zoetis is an important asset. That continues to play out. You saw livestock grow faster than companion animal in 2025. If you follow our guidance with mid-single-digit growth for livestock, that would imply that it's growing faster than companion animal in 2026 as well. Now long term, we continue to see dynamics for companion animal growing faster than livestock. As we are right now, this is what we're seeing, and we see those trends continuing to sustain there. Certainly if you look at our diversification here, we have virtually every species, right?
From fish, certainly beef and, both on the dairy and beef consumption side. Swine, poultry and fish are the fastest-growing animal proteins out there, and we're participating in both, with our fish business, market-leading.
Gotcha. Jumping quickly to the pipeline here as we're getting close on time. Get a number of things in the works as you highlighted at your innovation day last December. When we look out over the next couple of years, which ones are sort of generating the most internal excitement?
Look, I had this question recently. I didn't pick a favorite. I will say though, if you look at the pipeline, there's a lot to be excited about and by size at least, and quite frankly, if you talk to veterinarians and you ask them clinically, "What is the biggest challenge you have?" I'd be very surprised if renal and chronic kidney disease is not the very first thing they say in terms of clinical challenges. When you can make that sort of an impact and have this size of a market opportunity, we're saying that the TAM here is between $3 billion and $4 billion. Sitting here as a CFO, you have to be excited about both sides, right?
The impact we can make and as our purpose for being and the opportunity to drive value there is certainly significant. We have a number of assets we're pursuing on that one, both from a therapeutic perspective as well as diagnostics that we believe will go towards expanding that market over time. We can go at it with respect to treating some of the symptoms that are appearing, particularly as they get into more severe end of the spectrum. When it starts to show up in the current diagnostics that exist today, it's kidney function. When kidney function starts to break down, it's very advanced.
We have products, or assets in our pipeline to treat at that stage, as well as products that can help slow the progression of the disease before it shows up in the current test, which is why we're seeing new tests that will signal and show when you start to have a breakdown at the cellular level before it starts to show up in kidney function will be very, very impactful here. We have assets that will tackle that end of the spectrum as well.
Okay. Got you. Got about a minute left. Wanted to touch quickly on capital deployment. Bought quite a few shares in 2025. You just bought Neogen's part of their genomics business. How do you think about going forward, sort of the use of capital from here and are there any areas, whether it's diagnostics or elsewhere that are particular targets for you at this point?
Sure. Look, looking at 2025, $4 billion of capital return to investors, with just over $800 million of that being dividends, $3.2 billion in buybacks, that's a record number. It doesn't change our prioritization, though. It always has been to invest in the business first, and we're doing that, you know, in our R&D pipeline. We just talked about the health of the pipeline a moment ago, and we're doing that with respect to the capacity and supply chain and everything else that we're doing to continue to drive supply and other spectrum. Those are just a couple of examples. There are lots of places we invest in the business, certainly to drive that. M&A is the second priority for us.
Where we see something that makes sense from a strategic perspective, we pull the trigger. This deal with Neogen, we're already the leading genomics company, particularly when you look at livestock and we're participating in genomics on the companion animal side too. It certainly is a very complementary sort of offering for us in terms of geographic spread, where we can apply our methods and so forth, where we have a strength and drive growth in that business. We're excited about that, and we'll continue to look for those. We generate cash that we return back to shareholders as we won't sit on the cash. We certainly, first and foremost, invested in the business.
Okay, great. Well, that takes us to time. Thank you, Wetteny. Thanks for everyone for being here. We appreciate it.
Thank you.