Virbac Sa Unsp/Adr

Good afternoon to all and welcome to VIRBAC 2026 Annual Results Webcast. We are pleased to have you here and online, of course. Today's call is hosted by our CEO, Paul Martingale, and Abhi Brahmdani, our CFO and Deputy CEO. Before we begin, I remind you that the slides and additional financial material presented are available online on the investor section of our corporate website. The replay of the meeting will also be available at the conclusion of the meeting. If you have any questions, you can submit them live, of course, for those who are in the room, but you can also submit through the chat feature online in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. We will answer all questions during the Q&A session or follow up afterwards if we run out of time. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor to Paul and Habib.

Thank you, Carol. Good afternoon, everybody. Bonjour. Pleasure to be here with you today for my first Virbac full year results announcement. And perhaps in that spirit, I just share a couple of messages of my first six months in the company. I think three things that really stand out for me. One, just an incredible journey of learning, so spending as much time as I can over the last six months across our affiliates, across the world. As you know, Virbac is an incredibly international organization today, proudly French, but incredibly international. spending as much time as possible really on the field, on the factory floor, out visiting the vets, the customers from across the world and really just trying to listen and learn as much as possible to be able to be here today as well to share some first thoughts on our strategy going forward. Second point for me really that struck me in the last six months is just how incredibly important animals are in our life. And to me it's been really quite striking, incredibly powerful, very moving just to listen and hear those stories every single day, whether it be from pet parents across the world, from farmers, from vets, and even from our own employees who are so, so passionate about this space. I'm absolutely convinced from everything that I see and listen to every day over the last six months that animals have never played such an important part in our life, both as part of our family, but also society, nutrition systems, quality protein sources for the future, and the broader One Health initiatives. The third and final piece of my learning over the last six months has really been truly to discover the fantastic company and, more importantly, the incredible people that we have at Virbac. Many of you know the company probably much better than me still, but this really is an incredible company, a wonderful culture. We have people that I'm proud to work with every day because they are so, so passionate about animal health. And we have this incredible track record now of almost 60 years. And of course, it's an absolute privilege for me to join the team and for us to try to continue that journey, advancing the health of animals with those that care for them. So today, with Habib, I'll just take you through a couple of headlines from 2025 and a first look at a slightly refreshed strategic direction going forward. And then I'll hand over to Habib. the more detailed financial section and we'll of course take your Q&A. Quite a busy chart, but we try to just sum up a little bit everything that's happened across the wonderful world of Virbac in 2025. And it's really been a strong and solid year with significant and important progress. And to highlight that beyond the basic numbers, I think three things to really call out. First of all, this is a company and we will continue that. that is a company based on strong performance culture and very, very strong financial discipline. And you've seen the numbers published today. You've also seen our guidance for 2026, so a strong commitment to continue that sort of strong financial performance. At the same time, and this is what I'm extremely proud to see coming out of 2025, while delivering that performance, a record year of investment across many key areas in in verbac a record year of investment in terms of our r d which of course is the is really the lifeblood of our future in terms of innovation and making a real difference for animal health a record high year in terms of capex investment for the continued modernization agility customer service and quality that we strive for every day and another very very important year in terms of our business development and licensing efforts. We call out specifically in one year now 2025, nine deals that we signed specifically on different technology assets to bring into our R&D pipeline and capabilities. On top of that, during 2025 and at the end of 2025, we executed again on our M&A strategy. You know, this has been important part of the history of Virbac. We'll come back to that again. It will continue to be so. I'll talk specifically about the acquisition we made a little bit later, but we're delighted to be able to close 25 with a successful acquisition. It's, of course, not really impacting the numbers in 25, so that's fully coming in in 2026 and beyond. So a strong year across the business, both delivering performance, but also the transformation for the future. What I do want to call out and give a little bit of context to, because we know that the animal health industry has been rather healthy and positive. So is our strong performance simply us riding a wave? No. The teams across Virbac, driven by that sense of both purpose and performance, we are always looking to outperform the market. That's been our history and that will continue to be our guidance, as you'll see. You see here the red line is the market growth, the blue line is VIRBAC growth quarter on quarter. And you can see that over the last five years, we've got a very, very strong track record of being able to outperform the wider animal health market. And that, again, is strongly linked, of course, first of all to our teams, to our innovation, to our M&A, but also our broad portfolio across species, across animals, and across countries. see as well at the bottom because the market doesn't cover all segments at times, especially on pet food. But just a reminder that it's not a one-off in terms of 2025 growth. Last five-year CAGR over 8%, so really impressive track performance. Now, following those six months and working with the team across Virbac, What we're definitely very excited to share today is a little look at what we would call our refresh strategy. As you've seen and heard, there's lots of things that are working really well across Virbac, so I'm certainly not here to create any sort of revolution. But of course, the world outside changes, the expectations of pet owners, farmers, vets, and our customers continue to change. The competition, of course, is there, and therefore we continue to evolve. And so we've put together a strategy towards 2030, while at the same time, we continue some of those bigger investments in R&D, CapEx, and other M&A, which will, of course, take us even further beyond 2030. But to give a slightly more short, medium-term horizon for you and for our teams, we want to be laser-focused on delivering through 2030. We call it Growing Together because it's very much the spirit of Virbac, growing together with our partners, with the vets, with the customers, but also ourselves across our teams within Virbac and also growing all of us as leaders. And it's really focused on four pillars. And, of course, we'll have time for Q&A so we can go deeper on this. But just to give a couple of headlines, first of all, while we do have a very broad portfolio, which brings many advantages within it, I'm really excited to see that we have some absolutely fantastic science, some real jewels in our portfolio, and some positions of real strength which have perhaps not always been fully exposed and fully understood. So we've put together a portfolio a portfolio view and we've come out with a group of products and platforms that we call now our supercharged platforms. These particular products and platforms will contribute a significant amount of our growth over the next five years to 2030. These are also products and platforms where we believe we have real superior product differentiation, science, and also we have in general margins that are ahead of the company average, so we can also continue that positive cycle of being able to reinvest in our business. Pillar number two is really focused around innovation, so no big surprise there. Again, the lifeblood of what we do. The one thing that I would stress and that we will talk about more, I'm sure, is innovation. While R&D, our internal R&D, of course, is important and, as you saw, continues to be strongly funded, we believe strongly that our role as well is to be a fantastic partner. There's so much happening in the world of science, across biotechs, startups, universities, small, small companies, local, regional players, and we want to be the company that those types of people that are working on incredible breakthrough science for animal health will come to and want to work with. And we believe we can be that, because on one hand, we have a global footprint. We're present everywhere. At the same time, we're still small enough and with a culture of intimacy and care. And if you come to us to work on your on your product or platform that you've been working on sometimes for many, many years, you know you get people that will really care to take this forward hand-in-hand with you in the future. At the same time, Virbac has been strongly focused. Of course, we were created by a vet for vets, and while vets will continue to play an absolutely fundamental role, of course, across animal health, we know that the world changes. We know that in many countries, in many therapeutic areas, Much of the repurchase happens now online and therefore for us to evolve from being almost vet exclusive to being really vet endorsed. So we definitely want the vets to be promoting and speaking positively about our products and about our company because they trust us, because we have quality innovations and great quality products. It should be vet endorsed, not necessarily just vet exclusive. The third pillar all around just executing of excellence, a real focus from all of us in the organization, of course, supported by the ongoing transformation that we have in our digital data and AI that allows us with the very complex industry across the thousands of vet clinics and hundreds and thousands of products to be even more precise, targeted, and free up time for better work on those innovations. And the fourth pillar, which again, has been part of our Virbac model in terms of ensuring sustainable, profitable growth. But if we want to continue to do all the great things we're doing in terms of innovation in R&D, CapEx and M&A, then of course, we need to make sure that we can sustainably fund that. And so we kick off our fund the growth program, really focused around productivity improvements, our industrial footprint, as we've been built from so many acquisitions. of course, purchasing, but also smart simplification and some newer areas like revenue growth management, where the more we find ourselves dealing with bigger customers, chains, online platforms, the ability to smartly manage pricing, discounts across those different channels becomes ever more important. So that's our framework for our growing together strategy to 2030. I just, and I won't present everything, but just to call out a couple of the examples because I guess the growth platforms and the growth drivers is something that you'll be very interested in. Perhaps just to give you a little bit of a flavor in that area, to pick out one example, the space of reproduction. If you look today, less than 1% of all neutering of animals is done in a non-surgical way. Surgery's been done for decades. At the same time, there's more and more science that demonstrates that has Of course, it's a perfectly acceptable option, but it does have other consequences. It has behavior change. As more and more younger generation, Gen Z and beyond now, start to be pet parents, they perhaps have different attitudes towards neutering and surgical castration. And we are one of the few companies that offers a non-surgical alternative to that. But again, less than 1% of those procedures today are happening in a non-surgical way. So amazing opportunity for us to continue our work, to educate, to bring the science, to explain, to help change those behaviors, both of the vet and the pet owners. So just one example of where we believe that it's not just about the existing market growth, but there's a big opportunity still to really drive penetration. of our products and what we do and the platforms that we're sharing here. Each one of those has that type of opportunity for us still to go much, much further. Again, we've talked a little bit already or highlighted that for us R&D is absolutely at the heart of what we do. Important perhaps just to share a few numbers and give you a flavor of our focus in terms of R&D. but we do have a considerable organization. You saw the investment in Euros that we talked about earlier, almost 800 people across R&D, regulatory affairs, some of the connected areas there. So this is a significant organization across six R&D centers worldwide. And you can see here a few highlights. We have an extensive pipeline, so around 200 projects in total. Of those, we have 40 what we call priority projects. These are the ones that get absolute priority on our resources, our funding. Of course, very important to note that the peak sales potential as normal of that type of pipeline is not risk-adjusted. It's, of course, absolutely part of what we do when you're talking about breakthrough science, but some of that will not come through. But I think it's important to give you a flavor that we're not working on just small things. There's a considerable pipeline, and you get a little bit of a flavor here as well of the priority focus areas in terms of some of the species and segments that we look at. And just to bring that to life, at least in 2025, proud to share a number of the innovations that we've brought to life in 2025. So we're not a company that's doing just one or two things per year, given our strong geographical footprint and the fact that we're operating in both companion and farm and across many species. You can see in 2025, it's been another busy year and very positively busy year in terms of innovation and really meaningful launches. Vicali, for those here in France or with more connection to France, you know, was an award-winning innovation, award-winning from the vet, which is the most important. Vicali is the first ever medicated pet food in the world, around 15 years of work behind that one. We've proven benefits that the medicated pet food is actually giving a better result than just giving the medicine and a separate pet food. So really making the life of the pet and the pet owner simpler and with better results, exactly the type of innovation that we strive for. Again, I won't present all of them. You've taken a look and happy to take questions on any of this later. I do want to take a moment because it was only in December, so still relatively fresh that we announced the acquisition of Tyranorm. The reason we call it out specifically, it's not new that we do M&A. We've been doing it, as you know, across our history. But for me coming in, this was one that I was particularly excited about, and I would say almost a sort of perfect model of what we would look at when we think about M&A in VRBAC. Why do I say that? First of all, it always starts with the unmet need. So for any pet parents of cats out there, then I'm sure you will know and understand that trying to give a cat with a chronic condition a daily medicine and especially a daily pill is particularly painful and not at all the type of moment of connection that you want to have with your animal every single day. What we loved about Tyra Anonymous is it's a fantastic alternative to that current treatment. It's a much, much preferred format, fantastic flavor. We've had incredible videos of pet parents sharing how what was once a painful moment of trying to force a pill into the mouth of the cat is now actually a moment of embracing the cat because the cat's literally jumping on their lap, wanting to take their medicine because it's been so well prepared. Fantastic fit with our existing portfolio in Virbac and our priority countries, so especially Europe and USA. And we know that the cat population is growing today faster than the dog population. We see more and more this trend with younger people in a city living. And therefore, as the cat population increases and the life expectancy is also increasing, then these types of chronic conditions become up to 10 years of a cat's life requiring this type of treatment, and we have a fantastic solution from them in that space. We, of course, also believe that compared to the previous developer and owner, the Virbac strength and power in market in terms of our sales force, our reach, our relationship with the vets and customers will also be significantly stronger than the company that developed it, and therefore we'll be able to many, many more animals and pet parents. Really, we think a fantastic acquisition that will be both growth and margin accretive from 2026 and beyond. And again, a good template of what we'll look to continue to do in the future. Before we jump into the more detailed financial pieces, of course, always important, and this is really at the heart of Virbac, our employees. This is not just a chart and words on a page. This is really something that I've again seen from day one. There is that deep-rooted passion for what we do, both for the animals, but for the broader society. And we have a very, very clear roadmap that's been laid out, that's been just approved as well by our board. A strong, ambitious roadmap across these four pillars. And we'll continue to bring more news and more updates on that, but very, very proud of what the team is doing there. We've made, we saw some updates very recently, significant improvements on our carbon footprint. That's another reason as well for our CapEx investments. Of course, both the quantity of supply, the capacity, the agility, but also doing it every time in a cleaner way. And I'm also very proud having joined to see the the incredible work we do to every time reduce any need or to the very, very minimum animal testing in what we do. To wrap up from me and to sort of bring that into a very simple synthesis, on one hand, of course, the world changes and I'm new and we'll try to evolve and continue that Virbac magic. But a lot of the same discipline that you've been used to will continue. And I think just important to sum up and give you a bit of a picture that growing together strategy is really framed around these four pieces. Our number one target, it always starts for us with the desire, the expectation, the challenge to our teams to be able to consistently outperform the market. Number two, we continue to believe that an important part of our model is that programmatic or bolt-on M&A, so the example of Tyranorm, not necessarily big transformational M&A that would distract the teams and be too internally focused, but things that we believe that when you bring them into the VRBAC with our strength, we can make them bigger and stronger relatively quickly. We remain committed to the 20% EBIT margin that we've communicated in 2030. So that's an integral part of our 2030 strategy. And we continue to have a laser focus on cash. We remain extremely low debt. And that's, of course, what allows us to continue that investment in R&D, CapEx and M&A. So some change. and plenty of things that continue in the same vein. And with that, I have the pleasure to hand over to Habib to take you through the numbers in a bit more detail.

Thank you, Paul. And good morning, good afternoon to those of you that are with us in the room, and good evening to some others. It's my pleasure to take you through our 2025 financial results, at least the key elements. And let's We start with some of the key takeaways of what we have achieved in 2025. Paul mentioned it, a very solid year in terms of top line growth with an organic growth of 7.9%, constant rate, constant scope. It's been down through a significant 5% volume growth and 3% price. We have had a 16% margin, which is a 16.3 EBIT adjusted margin at constant rate and scope, perfectly in line with what we have guided for the year, around 16%. We have suffered, and we'll come to that, from some strong FX impacts. Also some temporary industrial challenges, I will come back to that in the later slides. But all of that has been partially offset by some strong discipline in the management of our costs, which enable us to have that stable EBIT adjusted in 2025, which shows the resilience of the group. The net result at growth by 3.2% versus 2024. And what is very notable this year is a stable level of debt. Despite the record investment that we made in several areas, as Paul mentioned, R&D, CapEx, as well as the Tironorm investment, the acquisition that we did, we've been able to maintain a stable level of debt at a very low level as well. I'll come back to that again in the detailed slides. So let's start now by going more into the details of the top line growth. You see it's been a broad-based geographical growth. All of the regions have contributed to the growth, even the Pacific, which has suffered during the first semester of 2025. We've seen a rebound during the second part of the year. North America has been leading the way with close to 15% growth, nearing 200 million euros of revenue in 2025. You see as well Europe and Latin America with more than 7% growth. Very solid performance on the back of both farm animals and companion animals with most of the supercharged categories that have contributed significantly to the growth of those two regions. And final comment on India within the India, Middle East and Africa region. India has had another very strong year with more than 8% growth during 2025. We've suffered some headwinds in terms of FX rate, which you see on the slide, minus 50 million euros on the top line, minus 16 million euros on the bottom line, and it has also impacted our profit as a ratio by half a point. And you see the majority is coming from three regions, Latin America, EMEA, and North America that concentrate the majority of the downside in terms of FX impact. will go very quickly on that slide the revenue split between companion animal and farm animals has not substantially changed we are at 59 percent companion animal as you can see on the on the slide and close to 40 percent in farm animals both segments have grown during 2025 an extremely dynamic 11 percent growth on companion animals and 7% growth on farm animals. Let's go a little bit more into the details of the segment, the contribution of all of the segments, starting with companion animals. What stands out is three main pillars that have driven the growth in 2025. Pet food, 19% growth. We continue to have an extremely dynamic growth. A portion of that has been... done through the acquisition of Mopsan in Turkey, who has a very strong pet food business. But even outside of that acquisition, we have had an extremely solid double-digit growth on pet food, which continues in many markets to grow and take shares. second one is specialty you've seen some of the launches that we've made part of these categories is one of the the super charge with the endocrinology and the contribution of one of the recently launched products supra lorin as well reproduction has contributed there to the 17 percent growth that we've seen on on that category and the third pillar with very impressive growth is the other segment. You see the 16% growth, and within that segment, we have one of the supercharged category, the dental, that has continued to perform extremely well across the board, across the geographies, but with a notable, very strong performance in the U.S., A part of that, we've been more or less stable in two categories on vaccines and parasiticides. You remember that we had a record year in vaccine in 2024. So we have had a stable performance in 2025. And to finish on that slide, antibiotics and dermatology, we have a strong segment in otics here with a recently launched product, Cortotic, that has again contributed to the growth of that segment in many geographies. Let's move now to farm animals. A bit of the same picture. We have some pillars that have contributed significantly to the growth. You see the vaccines, 13%. We have had a dynamic performance in Latin America with our range of ruminant vaccines, as well as in Europe. We've been able to respond to the blue tongue virus quite effectively with one of our products that have enjoyed a nice growth and was a good answer to that epidemic. Nutritional has had a solid double digit growth. The demand is increasing here. It's a preventive treatment. We have had a very solid performance in many geographies and notably in India with a very strong growth in that country. We can mention as well the antibiotics, parasiticides, all of them have had a growth in 2025. The only segments that have suffered is the aquaculture segment, as you can see on the slide, minus 5%. And this is linked to the intense competitive pressure that we have, notably in Chile, surrounding the parasiticides and our vaccines range. but not different from what we expected when we entered 2025. So overall, again, a very solid performance, 7%. It's also a good testimony to the diversity of our portfolio, where we are able to compensate for some of the challenges that we may have every year by some strong dynamics in many other segments. So we've covered the top line. Let's move now to the profit and loss statements. It's also here a strong testimony to the resilience of our business. I mentioned the 16% EBIT adjusted, perfectly in line with our guidance. We are moving from 16.6% in 2024. The majority of that decrease is linked to the FX impact, which we've suffered in 2025. At constant rates, the level of profitability has been quite stable versus last year. And if we go a little bit more into the details, we had some headwinds that we had to manage during the year. One of them was linked to the temporary shutdown for maintenance of one of our antigen production sites. It lasted longer than what we originally expected, and as such, we have not been able to absorb all of the fixed costs that we were supposed to absorb in 2025, and it hit us quite significantly, around half a point in 2025. Again, a temporary impact. We've had also higher inventory write-off in 2025 versus what we had in 2024. But some of that has been offset by improved operating expenses in terms of ratio to revenue during 2025 and the operational discipline that we have throughout the group. A final comment on the EBIT adjusted is on R&D. We have had a more or less stable ratio of R&D investment as a ratio to revenue at around 8%. And Paul mentioned that in absolute value, we had a record investment here in terms of R&D at 115 million euro. Let's continue to go down the profit and loss statement. You see the other non-recurring income and expenses that have gone from 10 million euros to slightly more than 3 million euros. You remember last year we had the one-off expenses linked to the SASEA, the Japanese acquisition. This year we have recorded essentially two elements. One of them is the one-off expenses linked to the Tyronorm acquisition that has been mentioned. And the second one is linked to the depreciation of inventory and equipment associated with the decision to stop one of our R&D projects for slightly more than 2 million euros. So overall, our EBIT has remained stable in terms of ratio to revenue. Our net income, as you can see, has slightly improved, which is a consequence of a slight improvement in financial income and expenses, moving from 9 to 8.6 million euros, and a slight increase in our income tax expense. And I wanted to conclude on that slide by saying a few words on the effective tax rates. Our effective tax rate has slightly increased in 2025 versus 2024, moving from 25.5 to 26.5, and this is essentially linked to a country mix effect. Let's move now to the cash situation. You see that our net free cash flow has stand at 81.4 million euro, slightly down versus last year. Essentially, this decrease is essentially linked to two effects. One of them is the CAPEX. We have had a record year of investment in CAPEX to prepare the future of VRBAC. And the second one is linked to the FX impact that has been higher than what we had last year. But the operating cash flow has remained quite dynamic, even increasing versus last year. So all in all, when you add to that the M&A acquisition spending that we did for Tironorm at slightly more than 100 million euro, we have been able to maintain a stable level of debt, a low level of debt, I shall say, since you can see on the slide our net debt on EBITDA ratio is below one, around 0.5, which give us plenty of room for any future, potential future acquisition in the coming months or years. Very quickly, some comments on our balance sheet. I wanted to call out one element, which is our working capital situation. You see on the slide in light blue, we have improved in 2025 our working capital situation. The ratio has improved by around three points, which is quite significant. Essentially linked to the evolution of our inventory. You remember that after some of the supply chain crises that we have suffered in the years 2020, 2021, we have seen an increase of our inventory. We said we will go down gradually to the level prior to that period. And that's what we have achieved. It's been now three consecutive years that we've seen our level of inventory as a ratio to revenue going down, and that has benefited quite nicely to our working capital. Shareholding structure has not fundamentally changed, as you can see, versus the end of last year. The Dick family remains the majority shareholder with slightly more than 50% of the shares and 66% of the voting rights. And to conclude, before we move to the Q&A, our final slide is... On the first step of our 2030 strategy, which is obviously 2026, and I wanted to share our guidance, which we have communicated in January, which we are confirming today. We expect a solid net revenue growth next year between 5.5% to 7.5%. That is including the impact of Tironor, but excluding any potential additional acquisition we could be doing in months or years to come. EBITDA margin is stand at around 17% for 2026. This is one point improvement versus 2025. And again, this is also at constant rates and scope, but including as well the tyronorm impact for 2026. Cash generation, we expect 80 million euro of cash to be generated in 2026. Despite an increase of our capex, we expect to have around 125 million euro of capex spending for 2026. And I suggest we move to the Q&A sessions now. And we are very pleased to answer any question you may have with Paul.

Good afternoon, Christophe Raphael Gannet from Odo. Actually, a few questions. One will be, the first one will be on M&A. Is it possible to have an update of the deal flow currently, the multiples and the chance we would have to see something coming out for 26? That's the first one. The second one is related to the former acquisition. I'm talking about Globion and SSAE. Would it be possible to have a little update on Globion with the potential extension of the approval or the portfolio of products you had locally? You said originally that you wanted to geo-extend those products potentially. Are we there? And with SSAE? Here again, some figures about contribution, integration, and was it diluted for 2025? And last question is about the pipeline and the different partnerships and agreements that you have signed. Not the one you signed by 2025. I mean, I'm talking about the previous deals. Is it possible, I mean, to have your view about the – Monoclonal antibodies, generations of products, and JAK inhibitors. Elanco and Zoetis have been very vocal about those products. Where are you? Are you in the race? Will you be a follower? When do you think that it could change the market? Is it possible to have your view on that? Thank you.

On M&A, we've been obviously repeating that, but you need to be too, too dense, as always. So we cannot say anything on the probability of having something signed or announced. What we can say is that it remains a strong priority. That's what Paul shared. We have a full team, which is dedicated to that. We continue to have that organization, that structure. We continue to look at things. We have also the mean of our ambition within M&A. But, I mean, we cannot be more precise, as you can imagine, at that stage. A second question on Globion and Sasaya. I can start with Sasaya. What we can say is that we've been quite pleased with the performance of Sasaya so far. We are in line, even slightly better than our business plan, acquisition business plan with the acquisition of Sasaea. We knew and we anticipated that we would not have an extremely high growth rate with that acquisition. We know what the market in Japan is. But the performance has been quite solid. We anticipate the slight dilution of the profitability of SASAEA during the first years because of the kickoff of some of the amortization linked to the building, industrial building that they had. So that was part of the plan. And regarding integration, the team is in place. A lot of work has been done in integrating the overall structure within the Virbac company, and that has progressed extremely well. And also the local integration with the Virbac Japan local organization that we had. And last one on Globion, the primary focus really on Globion was the local India developments. The priority that we had was really to leverage our very strong commercial infrastructure in India in order to make the Globion available to a larger customer base. And that has worked quite well. We have diversified. Gradually, our operation will find new customers as well. And we are also here very pleased with the performance in terms of top line. We are significantly ahead of the original plan. We anticipated that the geographical extension would take some time. It was supposed to be focused in Africa and Middle East. That's what we shared. And that is ongoing, but obviously that takes some time.

the final question was the final question I think was on the R&D pipeline I just give a little bit of flavor on that again unfortunately like a like M&A R&D pipeline something that we can't always get into all the details that we would like to perhaps but but just to say yes on one side we do have programs including things like monoclonal antibodies At the same time, if you look at our growth rate, as we shared earlier, last five years, 8% CAGR, we believe there's still a significant space for alternative treatments, alternative therapies. If you see today, there's a couple of things as well happening. Well, yes, some fantastic therapies and solutions. On one side, pricing in a cost of living, sudden crisis. becomes also a significant theme and therefore alternative solutions, therapies are also going to be continued to be important. There's also been certain of those therapies that have had a certain pushback from the vet community in terms of unwanted side effects and other challenges. So yes, we're exploring, can't say too much more, but we also believe that the strength of our Virbac model and what we've been able to do And you saw that the 2025 launches, I think there was eight or nine launches on the page of which there were at least four or five different formats technologies. So we have that capability. So we'll continue to strongly invest in R&D. And yes, we do have a number of different platforms across different technologies. And also, of course, across vaccines, pharma, and other OTC categories.

Gentlemen, Arnaud Cadart from CIC. One question on the investment cycle you are guiding for 125 million euros of capex in 26. How should we see it until 2030? Is it a long investment cycle in which you are entering? First question, maybe. Just to complement on the M&A, do you confirm the firepower of 500 million euros, I think, that we were mentioning recently? And... Two points maybe on the blue tongue and the vaccination. Is it bearing a risk on 26, the hot basis effect on that? And lastly, maybe on Australia, there seems to have some new droughts in Australia. So maybe it could affect your business here. Thank you.

So on the first question, on the CapEx cycle, we expect, and that has not really changed, several years above 100 million euros. We have a heavy transformation, industrial transformation program. We have many new sites that we are building for the future of Virbac, vaccine new sites in France for dog and cat vaccines. We have a new pet food unit, a new logistics center that we have shared in the past. So it will require for several years above €100 million. That's the first answer. The second one on the firepower could even be above €500 million. It really depends on the target that we can, on the level of EBITDA of the target that we will incorporate as well. What we've shared in the past, just to give an order of magnitude, is that between two and three in terms of ratio of net debt on EBITDA could definitely be feasible. Above three, if there is a nice opportunity or several, you know, within our programmatic strategy, there are several that put us above three, but we have a good opportunity plan to come back with potential synergy and all of that to below three in a foreseeable limited horizon of time, then we could contemplate that as well. So we have a significant firepower when you compute those figures that could be even above beyond 500 million. Your next question, Arnaud. Yes, the blue tongue. So, yes, and that's, you know, we know that there are cycles in the farm animals. That's also the beauty of being both a companion animal, but it's definitely less prone to cycle versus farm animals. So when there is an epidemic, you can have a strong demand for one year, and we know that the demand, and that's a good thing in a way, because it means the blue tongue epidemic has been... is limited in terms of development that could have an impact. But all of that has been included as part of the guidance that we have communicated.

24 votes in Australia, so is there something to say on that?

Yes, so that's what we've seen historically with Australia, and that's also part of the cycle within farm animals. Some countries and some activities are exposed to weather. We know when it's humid, more parasites, more grass, so it's a better time for the farmers, and they need some of the product that we are offering. And to the contrary, when you have a dry time, you could have an impact. And that's what we've suffered for the past 18 months. The situation was much better in 2025. The market has grown again, has rebounded in 2025. what we've seen. We had also some stock adjustments that we shared, which explained part of the dynamic that we had last year, but all of that is beyond us. We expect still a difficult year in Australia, but more for competitive reasons. But again, that's also been computed as part of the guidance that we have communicated.

Hello, hi. Good afternoon. Delphine Lorette from Bernstein. A few questions on my side, and coming back to the very beginning in between the mix. Hello? Sorry for that. In the mix when it comes to the volume and the price. And so can you tell us, you mentioned effectively a bit of a crisis around the world regarding the cost of living impacting the animals. And so can you come back into this pricing evolution you've been seeing and probably making a separation in between the companion and the farm? How should we consider that in the next two, three years? Suddenly back to the evolution of the margin, probably Abid for you. How should we think about the gross margin evolution and especially regarding the capex cycle? When are we going to see any activation? of the impact of some of the restructuring or building up or whatever it is on the manufacturing to start to be visible into the gross margins? Or shall we consider in the near future to have a vision which is probably more driven traditionally with the traditional mix, regular volume price? So first two questions, please.

so i start with the margin i'll say a couple of words on the on the price as well and if you want to to complete then uh on the on the margin the gross margin so it's true that obviously the the capex will have an impact in terms of amortization we don't expect one single year where you will have a huge you know increase because of that it will spread The go-live for those projects are not going to happen, all of them at the same time. And on top of that, we expect for those projects to have a beneficial impact on the productivity, the efficiency. So if I take one example, it's a pet food industry. And we mentioned that in the past, the paid food news site will enable us to increase the margin. We will internalize some production that are being made today by an external partner and that will have a positive impact. So that will compensate some of the amortization that we will have. So we don't expect a significant surge in gross margin or demand. In the coming year, to the contrary, the objective is to improve gradually that gross margin and the trajectory that we have. On price, so you asked a question over the past... I'll make first a generic comment which is, we've shared that in the past as well, it's quite difficult to comment on the price because of the number of products that we have and the dynamic around those products on price which could be very different from one to the other. In some categories of products, or some of our products, we are in a monopolistic situation, so the price elasticity is much easier than when we are in an undifferentiated generic, and we have that type of product within our portfolio, even if it's not the majority, and share the competition could be fiercer. And then we can have even some dynamic of price decrease. But if we look at the average, obviously what we've seen is linked to inflation, a significant price increase after the strong inflation. And that has gradually come down to what we've seen this year at 3%. We expect next year. And I'm talking here not taking into account the crisis that has just recently been happening. I can comment on that later on. But prior to that, the expectation was around 2% approximately in terms of average price increase across our portfolio. And then there is a question, obviously, of what is going on as we speak and the impact of that. There are three elements that we are looking at. The first one is, obviously, the impact that it has on some of the both activities, transport, for instance, and buying on some of raw materials. So we cannot exclude, depending on the duration of the crisis, that We see some impact there, and that could obviously have an impact on the price that we have versus our customer, but it's really too early to tell and to say. The second one is a disruption in the supply because of issues that we could have with transport and all of that. We don't see that happening as we speak. We see longer duration, but that's the same for everybody, but no blockage of our product. And we have some stock also to compensate for that. So for the time being, we don't see any impact linked to that. But obviously the situation could evolve and could change. And the surprise location, the last one is obviously the activity in the areas where the crisis is happening, Middle East notably. And here we have a very limited amount of revenue that is being done in that zone. It's below 1%, significantly below 1% of the group revenue. So here as well, we don't see any potential material impact linked to that.

We have some questions on the line. First one is, how do you expect to win 100 BP margin points in 2026? Have you a target for the mid-term?

So the target for the midterm has been shared. It's 20% EBIT adjusted by 2030. We are at 16, around 16 in 2025. We expect 17 next year. So the 17 is a mix of some reversal of the temporary effect that we had this year. I was mentioning the... the temporary shutdown of the antigen production site, so that will reverse. The production is ongoing, so it will reverse in 2026, and that will have a positive impact. And the remaining will be the operational level, obviously. Usual operational level of our activity, we will benefit from the solid top line growth. And by managing, continuing to manage carefully with a strong operational discipline, our cost base will be able to gain that additional half a point. I can also mention to be very precise that we have a positive impact from Tyronorm also, which will play on the one-point increase. And at the same time, we expect a slight dilution, which will compensate for that, on the R&D investment. Obviously, we've been around 8% for now two years in a row. We may be slightly above 8%. at the end of 2026. So those are really the four main drivers that will impact our profitability in 2026.

Looking forward to the pet food business, can you tell us what is your first feedback, where we are in terms of market penetration? Give us the example of what is happening right now when it comes to the mix, distribution mix, where we are, what are the targets? Can you be a bit more vocal on that? And so we can have a bit of perspective coming out.

Sorry, just to be clear, specifically on total pet food? Okay. As we've shared, you saw in 2025, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's two or three years, I think, in a row of double-digit growth on pet food. So this continues to be a strong, strong growth driver. and that continues to be in the existing markets where we're present, but also more and more that expansion into further countries. Habib specifically mentioned the example of Turkey, but across Europe, strong momentum on pet food in general. We clearly see a shift in overall in the pet food category towards more specialized therapeutic solutions, which overall is favorable for Virbac because that's very much our heartland. That's where we really come from. A big part of our portfolio is more specialized therapeutic for kidney, for weight loss. That's really the strength of Virbac and the vet recommendation that comes with our pet food. We're not really playing in mainstream supermarket-type pet foods and price ranges. But you can see from the financial performance and from our strong symbol with the investment that we're making in a new pet food site that we see, and you saw it as well, as one of our supercharged platforms, we believe that we still have significant positive results Momentum ahead for the pet food category and there back is today and to me. That's a really exciting part of our story and really the only true animal health player that has that full view of animal health, right from nutrition and prevention with vaccines through to treatment with medicines and other therapies. And the more and more I learn and talk to vets, that true view of health, just like for us as human beings, starts from prevention, starts from nutrition. And it also gives us an ability, as you see with something like the galley, to look at conditions and therapeutic needs, regardless of the form or the product that goes with it. So we get to look at what's the best way to treat kidney, renal disease, right from, again, nutrition through to other therapies. And that's something that today, at least, is quite a unique position of Virbac. We're really the only pharmaceutical animal health company with that pet food part of our business. Right.

And more in detail about the manufacturing, where are we in terms of the yield? What's the plan in terms of capacity? How should we think about the capacity in the next three years?

The investment that we're making and that is underway and on track would be something that would significantly, significantly increase our capacity, i.e. it would allow us to bring all of the existing external manufacturing that Javier mentioned in-house for at least for Europe, which is really our strength at the moment in pet food, It will allow us to not only bring all of that in-house, but also the additional geographic expansion in this part of the world that we see for the next years ahead. So this is an investment, of course, not just for the short term, but an investment that would give us significant more capacity for the next five, ten years in pet food.

And so are we talking about three to five times outputs from where we are now or ten times?

It's a little bit difficult to compare just only because of the way we currently supply, but you could certainly say that it's more like three to five times capacity versus our existing setup.

And coming back to first part of my question when it comes to the distribution channel and possibly the multi-analysis of the distribution, can you tell us the world and tell us where we are, what the game, how you want to penetrate direct selling, how is working, you know, buying groups, direct vets, tell us anything.

I think the most important probably evolution that we see and that we're making very strong progress on. Of course, with the vet where we've been present, we continue to focus and do very well. And that will continue to be a key part because we're so focused on this therapeutic pet food model. But to give you an example, we've been rolling out through 2025 our direct-to-consumer pet food platform into a number of countries. And in those countries where we've gone live with that new platform, we see a significant uplift in the subscription rate and the repurchase rate of those consumers. So we see a very, very strong growth. loyalty that comes through by having that direct relationship with the customer, being able to really have a more one-to-one conversation with them. Now, that's a program that's rolling out still into 2026, but that's one part. Of course, on top of that, we have platforms, the Zooplus, here in Europe, the CHUI in the US, where we also start to take back more control because previously this was not really managed directly by Virbac. This was happening through third parties where you don't have any control over the quality, the materials, the information that's being shared. And we start to take back much more control of that relationship to ensure that, of course, we want to make sure that we show up with the right information and with quality product that arrives for the

for the consumer so a number of pieces happening across those different channels so question on the top line guidance you are forecasting slow growth in 2026 and in 2025 can you tell us more about this

Yes, indeed. One element is the expectation of the market dynamic for next year. Paul mentioned it. The market has been extremely dynamic in 2025 at around 7%. We don't see that lasting, I think. It will slow down at 4%, 5%. That's what everybody is expecting. So one element, one reason is linked to that, the dynamic of the market.

Another question on the guidance. We'll invest 25 million more in 2026 versus 2025. Can you give us more color on this increase?

It's really linked to the phasing of some of the projects that we have that are entering into intense momentum in terms of spending. One illustration is Bio5, which is our new vaccine site in France that I mentioned. 2026 will be probably the year of the highest investment for that. Obviously, it's an investment that is spread. It's around 100 million spread within several years. But 2026 will be a year of very significant investment for that project. So it's really linked to the phasing of some of our big projects.

The next question is related to the margins. Could you clarify how much of your 2026 margins trajectory depends on internal efficiency gains versus external market factors? There's another question. I will come later to it.

On the margin, all of it is internal. It's what we can deliver and what we will be delivering by controlling our cost base and leveraging the top line. So if the question is more related to the operational level, which is what is driving by the top line, is what I mentioned. It's half a point, but still it requires some strong discipline to make it happen.

To what extent do you see scope for productivity improvement in manufacturing and supply chain that could offset rising regulatory and compliance burdens?

That's a strong focus for us. You've seen within the first pillar, from the growth, which is the last one. A big element of that one is productivity. We know that we are below some of our benchmark in terms of gross margin. It's an area of focus. We have some projects in place in our manufacturing sites to improve the efficiency, the productivity. So it's definitely an area of focus that we have. And as rightly said within the question, it's a good way also to compensate customers. for the increased regulatory requirements that we see in many parts of the world, which is a constraint, and it's also a strong barrier to entry within our industry.

Next one is a little bit more strategic, maybe for Paul also. Could you quantify how much overlap you see between your chronic care therapeutic classes, derma, gastro, renal, and the fastest growing therapeutic nutrition segments in the U.S., and whether cross prescriptions between pharma and diet could create incremental revenue pools?

Yeah, it's an excellent question. And it's exactly the way we think about those growth drivers and those growth platforms. We don't think of them as a product. We certainly don't think of them as a regulatory classification, RX or OTC or vaccines. In the end, what the pet owner, what the farmer, but also what the vets want, of course, is a great solution, a great outcome for the animal. And the regulatory pathway to get there, we're rather... agnostic to that and we have this benefit of having the portfolio across all those different classes so we we really want to start from the therapeutic area the unmet need of the animal or the convenience and the challenge for the for the pet owner or carer and really come at it from that way and exactly that we see an opportunity with some of our platforms where we have positions of strength where we have superiority to then bring complementary solutions so mobility is a nice example where we have both a therapeutic solution, which is performing really strongly in the U.S., but also a pet food that can be connected to that to provide complementary benefits and, of course, a certain amount of synergy in the way we go to market and talk about and develop the science behind some of those solutions. And we believe that can go even further across those different therapeutic areas. So, yes, it's really the growth drivers are not a product. It really is. a platform that we believe we can invest behind over these next five years and expand further.

Last online question. With the current FX environment, what do you expect for the full year impact on revenues and margins?

Unfortunately, so far, we don't expect a positive impact in terms of FX. What we are seeing for the beginning of the year, and you will be updated in April when we will publish our Q1, but what we are seeing is still a negative evolution of the FX when comparing 2026, the first two months, versus the first two months of 2025. Yes.

To come back on the direct-to-consumer strategy, is it possible to have first aggregates in the market and at Virbac, percentage of sales for example, And what is or what are the key factors of success here? What do you think you have on which you can capitalize? And what do you think feedback do not have to be a good player here? That's the first question. So did you see? Second question is around pet food. Is it possible now to have more granularity by spaces? uh not species but space is a geographical area sorry um and where you see growth for the the coming years we have understood that it will be double digit but do you see that you're still um ramping up slowly in the us and can you come back on the reasons mainly and last point is on vicali Is it possible to have what's your first feedbacks from the market and what would be the peak sales for such a range of products? Thank you.

Remind me your first question. Yes, the die. So we don't provide any details on the structure of our top line by channel, so we won't be able to answer that. We can comment qualitatively on our product. it really depends on on products some products have a strong part of their revenue that is linked to digital channels and that's the case for instance for the dental product in the u.s that's the case for pet food in in some some countries but it doesn't mean that and that was the comment of paul it doesn't mean that the vet is not part of the part of the loop And that's the positioning that we have with a strong science and the vet recommendation and endorsement. But the split by channel is very much dependent on the product that we have. Your second question, and I will let Paul comment on Vicari. The second question was the split of sales of pet food by geography. So here as well, we don't go... I won't be very specific. I won't give you some figures by geography. What I can say is that obviously France is the number one country for us in terms of pet food. We have a significant market share. We've been in the market for a very long time, much longer than in the other countries. in terms of pet food availability. And we know that the pet food is a slow takeoff. That's what we've seen in many, many geographies. Then we have some emerging position in many other countries in Europe. In Germany, in Spain, we have some very strong dynamic in some Latin America markets. In Mexico, for instance, we are doing very, very well with significant year-on-year double-digit growth, even 20%, 30% for some years. So we've been able to grow very, very nicely in that market. Turkey as well has been a strong country for us in terms of pet food. You are very strong there. And you know that more recently we have geo-extended the product in many other geographies in Asia. And it's still a little bit early. It's a slow takeoff. So it will take some years to expand. start to have a sizable position. And I can finish maybe by commenting on the U.S. The situation has not fundamentally changed. You remember that we've made a first launch, but it was with a diet only and not the therapeutic pet food. The majority of the market, the vet market in the U.S. is really therapeutic. So we are working toward making available our therapeutic pet food for the U.S., and that will enable us to relaunch the products. Vikali, maybe some words?

One quick word back on the omni-channel and the capability piece. I do believe it's a strong opportunity for Virbac. We have that very strong vet heritage. We do that really well. Habib mentioned the example of something like dental and toothpaste. We're the number one, take example of U.S. because it's a little bit simpler, but we are the most recommended dental brand in the U.S. by the vet. If you compare our market share for products bought in the vet clinic where we're a strong number one, I mean a strong, you could say dominant number one, compared to our market share today online where, of course, many consumers, after getting the first purchase and recommendation from the vet, look for convenience, especially for products like dental, which they're buying every single month. Today, if you compare our market share with VET compared to online, we have a significant opportunity to evolve that model to make sure we continue to get our fair share in the online space. It's not something that's not been done at Virbac. We've been on that journey, but just given our heritage and where we come from, still an opportunity to bring those, let's call it more FMCG capabilities on Omnichannel, ensure we have the right content, that we're showing up when and where people are looking for us, and that we really benefit from, because having or being the most vet-recommended brand is exactly what in today's world of misinformation and complexity, exactly the sort of thing that many consumers are looking for in that moment of purchase. So an opportunity, of course, we need to build some of those capabilities. But it's not new. It's not that we haven't started. But it will be something that we'll be focusing on. It was mentioned as part of our Strategy 2030, that second pillar around innovation and capability building. And we called out that omni-channel piece is really the key one. that we'll be doing there. On Vicalli, we launched in France in October and then began the rollout country by country just because of regulatory reasons across a few more markets at the very end of 25 in a few more European countries. It's too early to, and we won't disclose individual product sales, it's too early to give too much of a flavor. The thing that excites me is the vet reaction, the customer reaction, which is just strongly, strongly appreciative that for a chronic condition, which again is difficult to treat, which for potentially 10 years of the life of a cat, the only solution today is a daily pill and daily medication that we're able to bring something as simple as a pet food, which is already part of the life of the cat and owner. Now, the reason why Habib says that in the pet food space, we see that it's a slower buildup is that any pet parent who's experienced trying to change the pet food of their pet knows that it's a moment of a certain tension, unease, and of course there's also an element of simply their pet becoming used to a certain pet food and product. And every time you try to make them or they think about changing, it comes with some certain anxiety and it comes with a certain adoption period for the pet. That's why, in general, changing the pet food It might sound simple, but requires some patience. Obviously, for a medicated pet food, it's even a step further because we need to, first of all, ensure that the vet changes their prescribing habits and that the vet takes the time to explain that to the client, to the pet parent, and to really talk them through the process of how to do that. That said, the reaction from the vets is incredibly positive. incredibly appreciative of the efforts we've made to bring such an innovation. And I hope in 26, we can give a bit more flavor on how it's performing. It's very early beyond just the initial vet reaction.

Eric Mlin, Finance Connect. Just to precision, first, can you remember what was the negative impact of the shutdown in 2025 in percentage on your margin? And does your guidance of 17% for this year include the negative impact or change you have right now?

so half a point half a point that's what we we shared for the negative impact of the temporary shutdown of that antigen production site in 2025 and yes the guidance in 2026 includes the recovery of of that No, we guide at constant exchange rates. It's a guidance at constant scope and constant exchange rates.

Thank you very much. If no one has any more questions, we will close this meeting. On behalf of the Virbat team, I first want to thank our host, but also thank you all for your presence and your loyalty to our company. We are very happy to have you here, and again, you can find all the material online on our investor relations section. Thank you very much to everyone.

Thank you. Thank you very much.