Q1 2025 Phibro Animal Health Corp Earnings Call

Jack Bendheim

Thank you, Glenn and thank you to everyone. Joining us this morning, we had an extremely strong start to the year with our annual animal health business growing sales at 14% and a quarter. Let my vaccines grow to 22% and MFA another growth of 15% and continuing the trend we saw at the end of our last fiscal year; our minimal nutrition segment grew at 5% in the quarter.
While our performance products segment grew at 27%. These results reflect successes in many different areas. As we look to increase our share of customer wallet, raise prices where appropriate benefit for industry tailwinds and in certain areas increase seasonal disease pressure.
Our leverage bottom line growth also reflects some increased attention to operating efficiencies.
We anticipate that these gains will be highlighted in the future as we begin to roll out the initiatives of our fiber program. As previously discussed, most of the impact of proper forward should be seen in the upcoming fiscal years. These results are impressive in their own right.
But even more so with the backdrop of the incredible amount of work done by so many of my colleagues preparing for the close our position of the Zoetis medicated feed additive business as such. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the many fiber employees for their pilot work and welcome our new colleagues who have joined us with the closing of the acquisition.
As I stated in our press release, we see an extremely bright future for the new fiber as we are not only well positioned to grow our MFA’S and other categories, but we are now at a much more significant size and scale overall which we tend to leverage for the benefit of all our portfolio.
If Glenn will further detail, we are also providing updated guidance for our fiscal year 2025 which shows mid, single digit growth is revenue and a limited P&L on a stand-alone basis. We anticipate the favorable momentum. We saw this past quarter will continue throughout the fiscal year. The guidance provided is fiber stand-alone and does not include the Zoetis portfolio.
Preliminary estimates for the Zoetis portfolio for the eight-month period in fiscal year 2025 including net sales of approximately $200 million with an adjusted even down margin of approximately 20% and adjusted earnings per share of approximately $0.25 inclusive incremental interest expense. Negative GAAP earnings per share is driven by required purchase price, accounting adjustments on cost of goods sold and one time deal cost. They give it back to the win.

Thanks Jack.
We’re starting with our Q1 performance on slide four consolidated net sales for the quarter ended September 30th 2024 were $260.4 million reflecting an increase of $29.1 million or a 13% increase. Over the same quarter. One year ago, the animal health segment grew 14% while mineral nutrition grew at 5%. And the performance product segment grew by 27%.
GAAP net income and diluted EPS increased significantly driven by increases in demand in both domestic and international regions improved gross margin due to favorable mix and lower input costs offset by increased SG&A due to higher employee related costs.
After making our standard adjustments to GAAP results including acquisition related items, foreign currency losses and certain one off items. The first quarter adjusted EBITA increased $12 million or 64% versus prior year adjusted net income can adjust the new EPS both significantly increased, increased gross profit driven by sales growth was partially offset by higher adjusted SG&A and higher adjusted interest expense. With a benefit from the reduced adjusted provision for income tax.
Moving to segment level financial performance. The animal health segment posted 182.5 million of net sales for the quarter, an increase of $22 million or 14% versus the same quarter prior year within the animal health segment. We reported MFA is and other net sales growth of $13.7 million or 15% due to demand in both domestic and international regions.
Vaccine that sales growth of $5.8 million. A healthy 22% increase driven by poultry product introductions in Latin America plus an increase in both domestic and international demand.
Nutritional specialty products. Net sales increased $2.4 million or 6% mostly due to higher sales of microbial and from an animal products.
Animal health adjusted even though was $40.4 million a 42% increase due to higher gross profit from increased sales partially offset by higher SG&A moving on to the first quarter, financial performance for our other business segments on slide six, starting with mineral nutrition, net sales for the quarter were $59.1 million. An increase of $3 million or 5% due to increased sales volume and price, mineral nutrition adjusted EBITA was $3.8 million reflecting a year-on-year increase of $0.9 million driven by higher gross profit.
Looking at a performance product segment, net sales of $18.8 million reflects an increase of $4.1 million or 27% as a result of higher demand for the ingredients used in personal care products.
I just believe that the was $2.3 million and grew $0.9 million versus the same quarter of priority.
Corporate expenses increased $1.7 million driven by increased employee related costs.
Turning to key capitalization related metrics. On slide seven, we generated $41 million of positive free cash flow for the 12 months ending September 30th 2024 we generated $84 million of operating cash flow and invested $43 million in capital expenditure, cash and cash equivalents and short term investments were $90 million at the end of the quarter, our gross leverage ratio was 3.9 times at the end of the first quarter, based on $477 million of total debt and $123 million of trailing 12 month adjusted event.
Our net leverage ratio was 3.1 times at the end of the first quarter. Based on $387 million of net debt and $123 million of trailing 12 month adjusted EBITA turning to dividends consistent with our history, we paid a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share or $4.9 million in aggregate. As a reminder, $300 million of our debt is at a fixed rate of $0.51 plus the applicable margin.
In addition, in September of 2024 we entered into a new swap arrangement for $150 million at a fixed rate of 3.18% plus the applicable margin.
As of quarter end the remaining $27 million. Our total debt is subject to variable interest rates. Although offset somewhat by interest income earned and short term investments as of the date of the delayed draw of the $350 million in additional term a loans, the remaining $377 million of our debt is subject to variable interest rates effective July third.
We refinanced our credit facilities, our new 2024 credit facility as an initial aggregate principal amount of $610 million consisting of a $300 million term a loan and a $310 million revolt included a $300 million term loan which replaced the company’s existing 2021 term a loan and 2023 incremental term loan included a $310 million revolver which replaced the company’s existing $310 million revolver extended the maturity date of the company’s 2021 credit facilities from April 2026 to maturity dates ranging from July 2029 to July 31.
It also included a $350 million delayed draw provision that has been exercised with the closing of the transaction.
Additional information regarding the terms and conditions of the 2024 credit facilities are contained in our form10-Q that was filed yesterday.
Let’s turn to slide nine which lays out our guidance for fiscal year 2025.
Please note that our guidance is on a stand-alone basis without giving effect to the completed acquisition of the zoetis medicated feed out of the portfolio included in this guidance for fiscal year 2025 are early benefits related to our fiber forward income growth initiative that will help drive additional EBITA and margin growth.
Onetime costs related to this initiative are also included in our GAAP guidance and primarily consist of onetime consulting fees.
The initiative is focused on unlocking additional areas of revenue growth and cost areas such as potential price increases, expanded product offerings, procurement initiatives and other cost savings initiatives.
Please note we do not anticipate significant account reductions as part of this mission, our increased guidance for fiscal year 2025 on a stand-alone basis is as follows net sales of $1 billion, $50 million to $1 billion,$100 million.
This represents a growth range of 3% to 8% and a midpoint of approximately 6% growth versus prior year is driven by continued growth in our animal health segment as well as recovery in both our mineral nutrition and performance products adjusted EBITA of 124 to $132 million. This represents a growth range of 11 to 19% with a midpoint of approximately 15% adjust the net income of $55 million to $60 million. This represents growth of 14 to 24% with a midpoint of approximately 18%.
This growth is driven by growth in EBITA and an improvement in our adjusted effective tax rate partially offset by incremental interest expense due to our new debt deal.
Definite income and EPS assumes constant currency and no further gains or losses from the effects. Movements also included in our GAAP net income and EPS are one time costs related to our Fiber B Income Growth initiative.
As mentioned previously, this guidance does not include the Zoetis MFA acquisition as we just closed on the business a few days ago.
Our preliminary estimates for us for the eight months remaining in our fiscal year 2025 are as follows.
Approximately $200 million in revenue, approximately 20% even at the margin, approximately $0.25 adjusted ups impact.
We will incorporate Zoetis into our fiscal year 2025 guidance in our Q2 earnings release, the preliminary estimates for the Zoetis MFA contribution to fiscal year 2025 includes some of the usual impact you would expect during the integration such as destocking of inventory, the impact of blackout periods and incremental costs related to transition service and distribution service agreements.
We remain confident in our ability to deliver over $0.60 adjusted EPS in our first full fiscal year 2026 and our ability to deliver below three times net leverage by fiscal year 2027.
In closing, we’re excited about the strong performance in the quarter and the momentum for fiscal year 2025.
We are confident in the demand for our products around the world and look forward to seeing continued improvement in our business as we move forward with that Regina. Could you please open the line for questions.

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Ekaterina Ermakova with JP Morgan.

Ekaterina Ermakova

Hey, thank you so much. And congrats on the quarter. So first question is just around gross margins seems that that was, you know, particularly healthy, especially relative to last year. Can you talk a little bit about what drove that? Is that coming mostly from price or product mix or something else?
And then second question is just on the on the acquisition, just any surprises as you as you’ve gone through the process of closing that transaction, any areas of the portfolio where you’re seeing any incremental opportunities or any areas where you think you will need to put additional investment behind. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Katherine. So gross margin, there are a number of factors that drove the positive gross margin that we saw in the quarter. First was mix starting very strong performance in our vaccine portfolio with 22% growth.
And also, even within the ma and other category, there are certain products that have higher gross margin performed very well in the quarter. We also saw a benefit from input costs in some of our products being favorable and also foreign exchange had some favourability as well in terms of the overall gross margin. In terms of surprises from the acquisition, as I mentioned, we’re only a few days in at this point.
And we’re, you know, we’re obviously we’re working through additional information that we got at closing, but nothing initially, you know, poses any big surprises that we’ve seen.

Jack Bendheim

And let me, let me just add to that, that, that our sales force, both domestic and internationally continue to be very, very optimistic about the portfolio that we acquired. And you know, as obviously, we’ll, we’ll work through some early, early, early month starts, early day starts. But overall, I think this is going to be proved to be an exceptional acquisition for the company.

Operator

Thank you so much.
Michael Ryskin with Bank of America.

Michael Ryskin

Great. Thanks for taking the question guys and congrats on a on a great start to the year. Let me fire some of these off in rapid succession first on the Zoetis MFA acquisition, the $200 million in revenues 20% EBITA margin. I think you previously talked and $0.25 of EPS, right?
I think you previously talked about full year, first 12 months of $400 million in revenues and$0.60 an EPS. Is this just timing, is there some seasonality? I mean, I guess, you know, is I realize it’s eight months versus 12 months, but I would have thought that the eight-month contribution would be a little bit higher. So just kind of can you walk me through the bridge there?

Sure. But so when you look at the guidance that you mentioned, right, we had talked about a trailing 12 months revenue initially at the time of the deal of about $400 million. We updated that in one of the future calls that the trailing 12 months was around $375 million.
And I’ll say all dual terms did not necessarily translate that exactly into what the future revenue would be. When you look at the revenue of $200 million obviously, that’s some lower than what we’d expect for a normal eight month period within the first eight months. There is de stocking related to the deal. And that’s just the stocking that you sort of required as part of the transition.
There are certain markets where due to the regulatory transition, you’re not allowed to sell, call it six months to a year. And the customers then had to purchase in advance to make sure that they could satisfy the customer need over that time.
And then in a lot of our larger markets as well. There are certain blackout periods as we transition to us providing new orders as well. So those are all normal things that you’d expect. And those hit most impactfully and call it the first three to six months of the deal.
So, it’s really more transitionary impact and not a reflection of lack of confidence and still being able to deliver a significant normal 12 months of revenue gain. And in terms of you know, $0.25 in EPS, as you mentioned, we’ve guided to $0.60 for the first 12 months. You know, if you translate that to eight months, that’s $0.40. Some of these impacts that we’re talking about and revenue which again are just transitionary in nature did impact that, you know, delivery of what would have been a straight $0.40.

Michael Ryskin

Okay. Okay. Alright, that’s helpful. In the in the press release, I think you also called out that, you know, as you’re curating your portfolio, you discontinued the atopic Derm product project. Just curious on, you know, any additional color you could provide, there was that tied to any of the other developments in the DERM space that you’ve seen from, from others in the last couple of months.
And just sort of how should we think about the animal investment going forward? Is that money just directly being shifted somewhere else? Is there? Just how do we think about the pipeline there.

My, I’ll take it, Donny. So, you know we’ve always had a very strong target product profile for our, for that product as well as all of our products and, and we stick to it. We have, you know, quarterly updates where we look at where we’re doing and how we’re doing versus our TPP. \
And frankly, it a miss the mark and, so we, we discontinued it with you. I’m not going to get into specifically where, where it is because it’s not fair to our license.
And so, but, you know, we are continue to be bullish about our, our overall pipeline and continue to invest in it. You know, as far as where the dollars from Dermacare, you know, what we call the top of Dermatitis product go, you know, I think that’s still to be determined. But, you know, we will continue that going. Forward

Michael Ryskin

Okay. And if I can squeeze in one last one, maybe just a high-level question on the MEA business on the legacy on your existing, MFA and other business, 15% growth in the quarter. You guys have Honestly had a really impressive stretch here, multiple quarters in a row. I mean, going back the last couple of years, what I would think to be above market growth or above what we would historically have thought of MFAs.
You know, you called out a couple of drivers in terms of just demand some new products, but just maybe take a step back and put that M fa performance for fiber over the last year or two in context. Just how sustainable is that, is this meaningful share gains from others? Is this, the market is sort of, you know, take an incremental step higher and now it’s a better performing market. Just big picture thoughts on, on the strength of MFAs for you.

Larry Miller

Third one, this is Larry, I’ll take the question. So as you mentioned, the first thing in, in particular, as we look, first quarter performance, it was continued a strong trend that we experienced, particularly in the second half of our FY24. So that trend continued within the first quarter itself, we do certainly have had some favorable seasonality disease challenges, particularly in the southern hemisphere their winter months.
That really added a lot of demand for our products in the fourth quarter of 2024 or FY24 and the first quarter of our FY25 and we did have a couple timing pattern order that that took place in our first quarter, that you know, were favorable to the first quarter of last year. But I guess overlying, you know, we just see very strong continued demand for our products. And you know, I think that’s how we see it.

Yeah, Mike, I would just add, right. I think it’s products and people and we have strong focus on these products, and we are dedicated day to going out and discussing these products with our customers and, and really sharing the benefits. And that’s what gives us additional confidence in acquiring the Zoetis MFA portfolio and believing that we could have better performance than perhaps they’ve had in the past.

Jack Bendheim

And within our animal health products. Certainly M FAs but also we have very strong performance in our nutrition, specialty products as well as our Vaccines.

Michael Ryskin

Great, thanks so much. Congrats again, guys.

Operator

Navann Ty with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Navann Ty

Oh, hi. Actually, my question has been answered. I had the same question about the different numbers on the ma and, and maybe a strategic priorities after the discontinuation of a. Yeah, I think my questions were answered unless you have anything to add. Thank you.

I think Thanks so much.

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
And with that, I will now turn the call back to Glenn David for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Regina and thank you everyone for listening. In on today’s call. We really appreciate your time, attention, interest and support of fun on and help and hope you have a great day.

Operator

That will conclude today’s call. Thank you all for joining and you may now.