Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (ELAN) Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Elanco Animal Health Inc. (ELAN -4.57%)
Q1 2019 Earnings Call
May 9, 2019, 8:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning and welcome. My name is Susanne and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Elanco Animal Health Q1 2019 Earning Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time simply press *1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question please press #. Thank you. At this time, I'm going to turn the meeting over to Jim Greffet, Head of Investor Relations. Please, go ahead.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Thanks, Susanne. Good morning. Thank you for joining us for Elanco Animal Health's Q1 2019 Earnings Call. I'm Jim Greffet, Head of Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are Jeff Simmons, our President, and Chief Executive Officer; Todd Young, our Chief Financial Officer; and Katy Grissom from Investor Relations. During this conference call, we anticipate making projections and forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. Our actual results could differ materially due to a number of factors and including those listed on slide two and those outlined in our latest forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As a reminder, our financial statements for the first quarter of 2018 have been derived from the consolidated financial statements and accounting records of Eli Lilly and Company. The information we provide about our products and pipeline is for the benefit of the investment community. It's not intended to be promotional and is not sufficient for prescribing decision. You can find our press release, the slides referenced on this call, and an investor workbook on elanco.com. We will continue to use our site to distribute important and time-critical company information. The slide and the press release also contain further information about the non-GAPP financial measures that we discuss during today's call.

After our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff to provide the highlights.

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Jim. Let me start by saying how much we appreciate your interest in our company and support through the Lilly exchange offer process. We were thrilled with the demand for Elanco shares in the exchange, which was nearly eight times oversubscribed. Elanco is now a fully independent company focused and in execution mode on our innovation, portfolio, and productivity strategy. Let's begin with the highlights on slide three. Our Q1 results show execution across the board. Profitability is improving, our new products are growing, we're launching more presentations in more markets, we've augmented our pipeline with business development investments, and we are building the foundation for a fit for purpose independent Elanco.

Our sales results for the quarter again show the variability across categories that we've seen in prior quarters and which is common in the animal health industry. It is important to understand the underlying trends in our business and I will provide more details in a moment, which demonstrate the strength of our fundamentals. In summary, our sales are in line with our expectations. I'd like to begin with our gross margin, which is a key element of our productivity and margin expansion agenda. We've taken many actions over the past several years to rationalize our infrastructure, reduce SKUs, consolidate contract manufacturing suppliers, and implement lean manufacturing techniques across our operation to name a few.

You can now start to see the benefit of these actions in our income statement. We are pleased with 180 basis point improvement in adjusted growth margin this quarter to 52.9%. The margin improvement drives accelerated growth in our income. For example, our adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization grew 12% in a quarter. Our new products also continue to perform well. The portfolio of 11 newly launched products grew 59% and now represent 13% of our total sales. We continue to expand in new geographies and offer additional presentations. And as we announced last week we have made important strategic investments with our intent to acquire Aratana and a commercial agreement with VetDC.

These actions advance all three pillars of our innovation, portfolio, and productivity strategy. Our execution enabled us to deliver adjusted earnings per share of $0.25 for the quarter. Now, let's take a closer look at our sales performance on slide four. This quarter, I think, it's particularly important to put our sales results into context. My key message is that the fundamentals of our business are strong and we are tracking to our goals. A key variable here is African swine fever, which we will address more during the call. To reinforce our confidence in our portfolio approach, you will see that we are maintaining our guidance at constant currency for the full year, despite the African swine fever headwind.

The quarterly variability in sales is especially apparent this quarter. Taking a slightly longer view of performance provides what we believe is a more representative assessment of our trajectory. For example, while companion animal disease prevention declined 6% this quarter, the six-month growth rate is 16% at constant exchange rates. Likewise, the 34% growth in companion animal therapeutics this quarter is 19% over this six-month window. This longer view normalizes for anomalies and purchasing pattern fluctuations that are common in this business and often impact a given quarter.

The leading indicators of demand at the vet clinic are consistent with this longer-term sales trajectory. Todd will talk more about specific things impacting Q1 later in the call. Overall, we are pleased with our performance and are on track. Now, regarding African swine fever since our Q4 call, the situation in Chine has worsened and the disease is spreading to other Asian nations. Herd losses are significant with some industry analysts citing a 25% to 35% reduction due to the epidemic. We estimate that African swine fever impacted our total sales approximately 1% in the first quarter, or $7 million. This is a fluid situation that will impact global protein markets.

While increased swine production from other markets and increased global beef and poultry production may mitigate the supply gap, we are not projecting a full offset in the near term. Importantly the underlying demand for protein persists. This bodes well for the longer term recovery process in China and the prospects for swine, poultry, and to a lesser extent beef production globally. We will continue to monitor the situation and will support our customers as they work to contain the spread of disease and rebuild herds. Roughly 3% of our total company sales come from Chine. Our current estimate is the African swine fever may impact our international sales by approximately $25 million to $35 million for the full year.

Our intent is to offset this headwind elsewhere in our portfolio. We will keep investors apprised to this evolving situation and the headwind we see to our business. Slide five summarizes some of the main events since our last earnings call across the three pillars of our strategy. On the innovation front, as I mentioned our portfolio of innovation launched since 2015 grew 59% over Q1 2018 to $98 million in revenue. You can see the growth trajectory of these products on slide 15. We continue to expand our reach by launching these products in new geographies. We launched Galliprant for dogs in the EU and are seeing strong demand signals across the EU.

Additionally, we received approval for Correlink in Brazil as well as other several smaller markets outside of the US. On the portfolio, we delivered top line revenue of $731 million an increase of 2% when excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Strategic exits continue to decline as a proportion of the overall business, and our core revenue excluding these exits accounted for $709 million in sales. Also, growing 2% at constant exchange rates. Our targeted growth categories companion animal disease prevention, companion animal therapeutics, and future protein and health grew 4% in the quarter and represent nearly 60% of our sales.

All Galliprant backorders from Q4 2018 have been cleared as of early April. In fact, in the first quarter of 2019, we've already manufactured more bulk batches of Galliprant than we did in the entire year of 2018. We continue to expand our offerings for Credelio. In the US market, we now have a full suite available for dogs, and in the EU we now have a full suite available for cats after launching new presentation in the quarter. Finally, in April, Elanco launched a direct-to-consumer television campaign for Credelio to drive awareness and continued growth. This compliments our digital multi-channel approach for a number of companion animal brands.

We are investing aggressively to maximize the value of these innovative products with a bolus expected in Q2 and Q3. Now turning to our third pillar, productivity. I discussed the improvements in our gross margin from the work our manufacturing organization has been doing for some time. The efforts continue in support of our long term expansion goals. In Q1 we completed the insourcing of the manufacturing process for chewie platform and Cheristin product driving cost reduction and better capacity utilization of several internal sites.

Additionally, we established a new source of active pharmaceutical ingredient API for Credelio and over the course of 2019 will begin to transition to the new site, which will result in a meaningful future reduction in API costs. Finally, we've completed a number of technical improvements in our poultry vaccine manufacturing process, which have enhanced our availability to produce the products more reliable and consistently while reducing manufacturing costs for several vaccines.

On the SG and A, we're executing on the decision to change the go to market model in 16 countries we announced last December. We've established agreements with various partners to provide commercial services in a number of markets and are now complete in 10 countries. Overall, our productivity agenda continues to progress and is delivering meaningful financial benefit. Now I'll turn the call over to Todd to provide more color on our Q1 results and financial guidance for 2019.

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, John. Slide six summarizes our presentation of GAPP results. While slide seven describes the items considered in the adjusted financials. Slides 16 to 19 in the appendix provide a summary of the adjustments made to the GAPP results to arrive at our adjusted presentation. I'll focus my comments on our adjusted measures to provide insight into the underlying trends in our business, so please refer to today's press release for a detailed description of the year-on-year changes and our first quarter GAPP results. Looking at the adjusted measure on slide eight, you'll see total Elanco revenue declined 1% in the quarter. On a constant currency basis, growth was 2%. As Jeff mentioned earlier, core revenue also increased 2% at constant exchange rates.

Overall, revenue growth this quarter was driven by the continued uptake of our companion animal therapeutics products, aqua, poultry vaccines, and nutritional health products. Gross margin as a percent of revenue was 52.9% a significant improvement of 180 basis points over last year driven by our manufacturing productivity initiatives, offset slightly by product mix and the impact of foreign exchange rates. Total operating expense was flat for the first quarter.

Marketing, selling, and administrative expense increased $1.1 million reflecting incremental expenses as a result of operating as a public company partially offset by continued productivity initiatives, benefits from foreign exchange rates, and cost control measures across the enterprise. This modest increase in expense despite the early separation from Lilly, the establishment of a full, independent board of directors, and strategic investments across the business demonstrates our productivity's agenda impact throughout the company. Note also that we deferred some DTC investments originally planned in Q1 into Q2, which will also impact the quarterly spend trajectory.

R & D expense decreased 2%, or $1.1 million primarily driven by the project spin fluctuations and external innovation milestone payments in the first quarter of 2018, which created a favorable comparison for this quarter. The combination of sales growth, gross margin improvement, and flat operating expenses produced an operating income increase of $10.5 million or 8% compared to the first quarter of 2018 resulting in an operating margin of roughly 19% for the quarter. Our effective tax rate was 21.2%. At the bottom line Q1 adjusted net income was $92.2 million, a reduction compared to the prior year primarily driven by the interest expense we have in 2019 that we did not have in 2018.

Moving onto slide nine, let's take a look at the effect of price, rate, and volume on revenue growth. As previously noted, the effect of foreign exchange on core revenue was a 3% headwind overall. Excluding this, our revenue growth on a constant exchange rate basis was 2%. Volume growth was 2% while the price was flat. On the slide, you can see the breakdown of revenue across our four categories. I will focus on the constant exchange rate growth. Companion animal disease prevention, which includes parasiticides and vaccines, declined 6% in the quarter, 3% from volume and 3% from the price.

Declines in older generation parasiticides and companion animal vaccines were partially offset by growth in Credelio, Interceptor Plus, and certain over the counter parasiticides. Volume declines largely reflect purchasing patterns, which impact the yearly comparison. Price changes are driven by a higher percentage of sales through alternative channels and a change in mix of dosage strengths, which offset list price increases. Alternative channels tend to have lower pricing but similar overall profitability for more effective promotional effort. Companion animal therapeutics increased 34% in the quarter, up 28% from volume and 6% from the price. The increase is driven by continued uptake of Galliprant, the resolution of Q4 backorders and the launch of Galliprant in Europe.

Overall, Galliprant sales were $23 million in Q1. Future protein and health grew 5% in the quarter, 2% from volume and 3% from price. Growth of our aqua portfolio driven by the continued uptake of Imvixa and Clynav was offset by an unfavorable comparison for our poultry feed additives portfolio. Imvixa continues to drive value for salmon farmers in Chile and exceeded our expectations in Q1. Strong salmon prices provided a tailwind to that industry. As we discussed in our Q4 call our poultry portfolio benefited last quarter from international purchasing patterns ahead of anticipated price increases and the increased rotation to Elanco products in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Our Q1 results reflect these buying patterns. Ruminants and swine were flat for the quarter. Price decreased 1% offset by volume growth of about 1%. Our US and international businesses largely offset each other in Q1. The US cattle business benefited from the replenishment of the channel for Micotil after the stock outage in the fourth quarter of 2018 and purchasing patterns for Rumensin. Internationally our swine antibiotics business, particularly in Asia, was negatively impacted by African swine fever as Jeff mentioned earlier, continued implementation of antibiotic programs across the region, and product rationalization aligned with our productivity agenda. Slide 10 provides details of our performance in the US and internationally.

Overall growth in the quarter is driven from the US. International results were most significantly by the softness in the swine business. International growth in future protein and health and companion animal therapeutics is offset by the declines in the other two categories. Before discussing our financial guidance, I would like to discuss two other topics. First, our intentions with respect to our dividend and our cash balance at the end of Q1. In our merger agreement through our proposed acquisition of Aratana, we agreed that we would not pay a dividend until that transaction is closed, which we expect late in Q2 or early Q3.

We have discussed the dividend with our new board of directors and have their support to pay a $0.06 per share dividend on a quarterly basis as described in the S-4 filed as part of the Lilly exchange offer. We will recommend this dividend to our board at the first board meeting after our Aratana acquisition is complete. While we typically focus on the income statement during our earnings call, I wanted to provide context on our Q1ending cash balance in advance of our 10-Q filing. Our unrestricted cash balance as of March 31st was roughly $200 million less than it was on December 31, 2018. This is primarily due to a large cash receivable from Lilly that was not remanded to Elanco in the quarter.

Nearly all the amount has been collected as of today on our cash balance and cash flow fundamentals remain strong and in line with our expectations. I wanted to be proactive and detail this in advance of the 10-Q filing. Now, turning to our financial guidance for the full year 2019 on slide 11. We are updating our full year core revenue guidance to reflect the impact of foreign exchange. We now project full year core revenue to be between $3.02 billion to $3.08 billion, a reduction of $20 million in both the low end and high end of the range to reflect the FX challenges of a stronger dollar. We continue to expect strategic exit revenue to be approximately $0.06 billion.

We are maintaining our guidance for earnings per share. We expect EPS on a GAPP basis to be between $0.36 and $0.48 and on an adjusted basis to be between $1.02 to $0.12. Keep in mind, the year-on-year EPS growth is impacted by the full year interest expense that Elanco has for 2019. In summary, our results are in line with our expectation and they illuminate the value of being a portfolio innovator. We are pleased with the trajectory of our margin expansion goals and remain committed to delivering our guidance. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now I'll turn the call back over to Jim to moderate the Q and A session.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Thanks, Todd. We'd like to take questions from as many callers as possible so we ask that you limit your questions to two or a single question with two parts. Susanne, can you please take the first question.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Of course, not a problem. Our first question comes from the line of Chris Schott. Your line is open.

Chris Schott -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Hi. This is actually Katarina on for Chris. Thank you for taking my questions. So, my first question is gross margins are clearly a focus of this story and those performed very well this quarter. You touched a bit on this in your prepared remarks, but can you elaborate a bit more on what drove the strength in Q1? And then, as we think about the trajectory for gross margins going forward, can you give us a sense of how much of the improvement that you expect will be coming from mix, as companion becomes a bigger part of the portfolio versus kind of these productivity initiatives that you're implementing? And what still needs to be done from an operation standpoint to drive your margin improvement? Thank you.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Great set of questions, Katarina. Todd --

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you for the question. We're thrilled with the gross margin improvement over the last year. We've been very much focused on driving the productivity agenda throughout our manufacturing organization. We've worked hard to implement lean practices across the enterprise to find more suppliers of lower cost API much like what we just announced with respect to Credelio. And these initiatives taking contract manufacturers lower from down to 100 at the end of 2018. All of those efforts were driving value in the cost of our inventory but you didn't see that in 2018, despite the efforts that occurred from 2016, '17, and '18. That inventory that was made at a lower cost now is coming through the P and L and driving the improvement that you're seeing.

We have more initiatives under way. The Credelio API sourcing won't have an impact in 2019 that will allow the productivity agenda to continue to grow over the next few years as we continue to expand our gross margin. With respect to gross margin in 2019, the percentage you say today was probably the upper bound of what we would expect. These improvements are there but over the course of the year, we don't expect to exceed this amount. But very much feel like the 52% to 53% range is where we'll land.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Great. Susanne, do we have another question?

Operator

Of course. Our next question comes from the line of Erin Wright. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Erin Wright -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Thanks. A couple of questions here. First, on African swine fever, you alluded to potential offsets for that for the remainder of the year. Where would this potentially stem from? Is it increased exports from other markets? Improvement in underlying trends throughout the US? Or new product launches throughout the year? I'm just curious how we should be thinking about that quarterly cadence particularly across that ruminant and swine business. And then on the companion animal disease prevention segment you mentioned that stocking dynamics potentially hurt you in the quarter. I guess, how much did it help you in the fourth quarter? How should we be thinking about the quarterly cadence there as well in terms of those distributor stocking dynamics?

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Jeff-

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Erin. I just want to really highlight again we've been talking about African swine fever since early in the year and just want to really highlight again that I think this does need to be considered an endemic. There are challenges. There's spread now from China now into Vietnam and Cambodia. And as we've mentioned, you know, losses of 25% to 35%. So, when you look at that 1% or $7 million this quarter and the $25 million to $35 million we've talked about, it's going to be offset by I'll start off with just a highlight of portfolio approach here we've been talking about. So, portfolio products, portfolio therapeutic areas, and portfolio geographies.

So, the first would be definitely coming from what's driving growth our growth categories. I would highlight areas like poultry and aqua, as well as the whole companion animal segment. And then I think innovation when you look at products like Clynav, Galliprant and others even our vaccine portfolio being up 59%, innovation now representing about 13% of our portfolio. So, that's where we see the offset at that stage.

We'll continue quarter to quarter as we see both African swine fever evolve. The second thing I'd say on ruminant and swine. Yes, this is going to create, I believe, quite a shift in the protein markets but it's going to take some time as breeder placements, as animal numbers, and trade all play into this. It's going to take some time for that I think more in the medium term. We don't see that playing out in any materiality in 2019, but maybe later this year or early next year.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Todd, you want to talk about some stocking dynamics and companion animal disease prevention?

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

I'll focus on slide four where we showed the 16% growth on a six month over six-month basis. We've done this to demonstrate that there are a lot of variabilities especially between the companion animal therapeutics, companion animal disease prevention. As I look at it, one of the key items is with respect to our distributors. They have incentives that are tied to companion animal products, not these two categories. And so, with the stock out we had at the distributor level, not at the vet clinic level for Galliprant in Q4 there were some incentives for them to buy more vaccines and parasiticides to meet the tiering incentives in Q4.

So, they were pretty fully stocked on those versus in Q1 the incentive was to buy Galliprant given we'd resolved all the backorders and had lots of production on that side. In addition to that, there was a flush of inventory in Q4 2017. We've mentioned before that was a build back then in Q1 of 2018 that made for a tough comparison. But finally, just want to emphasize, we feel very good about the underlying demand at the vet channel and feel like while the 16% to 19% is certainly not what we project for the full year, we do feel very good about where we're positioned with our companion animal portfolio for the rest of 2019.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Thanks, Todd. Susanne, do we have another question?

Operator

Yes. Our next question is the line of David Risinger. Your line is open.

David Risinger -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

[Audio cuts out] -- previously but a couple of quick ones. First one, is could you please update us on the specific cost reduction plan for calendar year 2019 and 2020, and what percentage of those represent cost avoidance? And the second question is what was the extra Galliprant benefit in 1Q due to channel restocking following the fall Q supplier constraint and will the 1Q Galliprant figure represent a tough comp for 2Q sequentially?

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Todd, do you want to start and I can supplement if there's more detail that we need.

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Certainly. I'll start with the Galliprant. There was a restocking effort as we took care of all of our supply constraints. We think that was probably about $6 million to $8 million in the quarter. We're also very excited to have Galliprant in a number of European countries. Again, that expansion internationally we expect to provide additional tailwind going forward. But given the $23 million in total sales in Q1, would agree that sequentially the Q2 comp was more difficult. And then with respect to specific cost reduction efforts. A number that we've outlined being taking our manufacturing organizations lower. We're at 100. At the end of last year, we said we're targeting to be at 80 by the end of this year.

As we continue to invest in lean, we see the benefits of the API at lower cost coming through on our inventory. All of these items continue to drive this productivity agenda. We're very much on track. The team there is doing a great job of identifying additional opportunities to allow us to continue to meet this upward trajectory over the years to come and feel great about how the team is delivering and really owning this area of improvement for us.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Let me add just two clarifying points. I think it was the end of 2020 was our goal to get to the 80 contract manufacturing organizations. And then one other thing that is also a theme of this call from actions we've taken in the past, for example, facility exits like the consolidation of our vaccine manufacturing plants. The action is taken and then you see the benefit of the income statement over time as we complete the technical transfer and the costs finally dissipate down to zero. So, the continued improvement in the gross margin will also be a function of just a completion of costs and the tail off from actions already taken. So, we're well on track to the gross margin goals. Susanne, can we continue?

David Risinger -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Of course, not a problem. Thank you, gentlemen. Our next question comes from the line of Umer Raffat. Your line is open.

Umer Raffat -- Evercore -- Analyst

Hi, thanks so much for taking my question. I have two, if I may. First, perhaps on gross margin. The long term gross margin expansion target of about 900 bps. I'm just trying to tease out how much of that is driven about the previously announced things like site shutdowns and the CMON skew rationalization. I know the first couple hundred bps is kicking in versus some of the new initiatives announced today. Should we expect 50/50 or 70/30 kind of thing? It would be really helpful to understand that. And secondly, I know you have a policy of not disclosing pipeline. So, my question is this, without specifying any specific product is it reasonable for investors to expect that you can file a $300 million-plus peak sales type of a product within the next 12 to 18 months.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Umer, you win the prize for the clever question of the day. Todd, do you want to talk maybe a little bit about gross margin. I can supplement in. And pipeline to you, Jeff.

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Umer, as you know we have single, benign basis point improvement. As we previously stated 85% of those actions have been identified and are under way. And as you see a number of the ones that we've talked about executing over the last few years have come to fruition here in Q1. As I said, we expect to generally hold this 52% to 53% range for the rest of the year. As we move forward, a strong example is Credelio. As we mentioned earlier mix was a slight headwind to gross margin as Trifexis slows down as an older generation parasiticide and Credelio comes up as a replacement in our portfolio. Credelio is at a lower margin right now, because it doesn't have that historic efficiency of scale. As we know, with the Credelio API becoming cheaper for future years, that will then offset and grow the gross margin that we've identified. So, overall most of what we've done is identified. As we've said about 85% and the other items we're quickly identifying here in the course of 2019.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

I'd say just to reiterate some specifics that we've provided. We had outlined about $215 million of both savings and cost avoidance in the time window we said there was mid-'18 out through the end of 2020. From a lot of the things that Todd had talked about already having been identified and we're on track there. Post the 2020, I'd say there's another $100 million of ideas and targets that our manufacturing organization is looking after. We've been less specific of those things given that it's further out there in time. But the combination of those things gives us the outlook that really holding cost of product sold to be more flat in the face of growing sales would be the end game of the gross margin improvement. Jeff, do you want to talk about pipeline?

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Umar for the questions. So, let me come back to you with three points that excite me and I'll answer your question I think probably more indirectly as you may expect. Three things that excite me about innovation. Portfolio, our metrics, and our leadership. One is I think you got to continue to see us with the portfolio of innovation. We're not dependent on any one big product. That's a big part of the Elanco story. We like our shots on goal. We're always searching for additional products. An example of that is VetDC and the Aratana situation. Again now over 40 candidates. The second is just the metrics. When you look at, first of all, the innovation we have now. We have a high bar. There's an expectation every time we launch a product is how does that become a blockbuster as we made Interceptor Plus one last year. We've got our eyes on a few more that we're launching.

So, it's just as important in this industry to launch, as well as not just develop the products. But when you look at 40 candidates in development four years in a row with three approvals a year and I really believe that we're being known in the industry and working very hard whether it's from funds to companies, to partnering late stage licensing we believe that Elanco is set up to help the innovators that are out there in animal health be a partner as well. And lastly is just overall leadership. I believe that we've got a leadership team that they're vested on this. Innovation is one of our three key incentive bonus metrics. Everyone is totally focused on making sure this pipeline moves quickly. Those are three answers. I'm not going to answer the one specific question. But I think I would really highlight portfolio, our track record, and our leadership is the reasons why I'm very confident in going forward.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Susanne, can we continue?

Operator

And reminder in order to ask a question simply press *1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Ryskin. Your line is open.

Michael Ryskin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I got a couple of quick ones, hopefully, quick ones. One is, I think you appreciate all the focus on the moving pieces between the quarters particularly in disease prevention and I appreciate the clarity you've provided in the slides on the six-month growth year-over-year, but given that there was some weird inventory stocking going back to 3Q'17, 4Q '17 in disease prevention, I was hoping you could give us a little bit more the normalized underlying growth rate here. Looking at, you did $186 million in the quarter. Is something in the $195 million range more appropriate to account for that stocking? I'm just trying to parse apart some of the 4Q that you mentioned versus any actual underlying slowdown in the older generation parasiticides that you called out.

And then a follow-up question if I could. You also called out some positive ruminants purchasing patterns in the US. I was wondering if you had an update on the potential for generic competition and just sort of generally an update on ruminants.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Sure Mike thanks. This is Jim. I'll take a shot at some more details on the first parts. So, to quantify a couple of things and admittedly there are moving parts here across years that we would like have be less of a discussion for the future but we have these details for the moment. So, in companion animal disease prevention, we think that the Q1 '18 compare is inflated by $15 million or so for that restocking of the prior channel flush. And then the Q4 '18 to Q1 purchasing ahead for the overall distribution incentive that Todd talked about.

That one is difficult to quantify because we don't get that level of communication but in the low double digits, millions, we think is a reasonable estimate there just knowing what the back orders were for Galliprant as well as how the overall incentives might operate. And I can probably give less specifics on what the normalized run rate is. I guess, qualitatively, we're heading into the heart of flea and tick season. So, traditionally, you've seen Q2 as a setup. When we look at the underlying trends as we see pull through to vet clinics, out of distribution and the overall what we think is the leading indicator of the demand for the product and how the flea and tick season is going it looks to our expectations it looks strong.

So, we would expect to see an uptick in sales in accordance with those year-on-year market themes. There still maybe year-on-year comparison. So, we'll try to focus on absolute sequential growth and absolute sales produced in the period and then qualify things that the resulting range compares across the year. Jeff, do you want to provide any more macro comments and certainly the generic medicine.

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think overall, in this companion animal prevention area, Michael, I think is really important that one, we look every day at that vet clinic demand. We feel very good about that. That's the lead indicator. Second is our portfolio approach. Yes, there are some pushes and pulls but as we launched the company we talk a lot about the next five years how that portfolio will drive growth and the growth of the overall market. The third thing is we're putting a lot of time on the channel and the channel to not only drive demand, at multiple channels, but also compliance. And as we've talked compliances, again, one of the greatest areas of opportunity in this space and I will say in this last quarter we see that continued opportunity to execute there. Lastly, as Jim mentioned, we're leaning in. We're investing.

We're taking from areas that are maybe less strategically critical like these countries that we've moved out of. Can we execute at an international and rechanneling some of that investment, and that investment will increase in Q2. As you look at generic ruminants, good question. No change in our assumptions. We'll do that when we know information like you. I will emphasize again, we continue to innovate. We continue to grow this product. We continue to lean in. And this continues to be a very important value contributor to our customers. So, we're going to continue to represent and drive this product. We have competed, as you know Michael, against generic ruminants in many markets. We're prepared and actually doing increasing things as we go forward over our long-range plans to continue to keep ruminants as a very critical part of our cattle business globally.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Thanks, Jeff. Susanne, I think we have a few more in the queue perhaps.

Operator

Of course we do. We have some queued up. Right now our next question comes from the line of Kevin Ellich. Your line is open.

Kevin Ellich -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst

Just a couple questions. Jeff, I guess starting off with the new API source for Credelio. I appreciate your comment then Todd's updates that it won't really benefit you in 2019. But just wondering how much savings should we expect going forward and are there other products that you're looking at where you could find saving from new API sources.

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Kevin, good question. This is part of our bigger agenda that Dave Urbanek and our manufacturing team and the finance team are working on as we've talked about over the last six months pretty openly that procurement, active ingredients. We've highlights, maybe Jim can maybe give a little bit more specifics if there's anything there on the overall predetermined savings. But what I would say to you is this is part of the agenda that we've had in place that will drive this gross margin trajectory over the next five years. And we have that granularity as we've mentioned. We had over 85% that we've identified and are acting on and this is part of that. I won't give specifics on an active ingredient for a specific product. But just to simply say why we feel very strongly about our trajectory and our belief and our margin expansion agenda is things like this. That we're acting on, moving on, and they're lining up very much with our plans and our expectation.

I think on the procurement side itself, we've identified $100 million of savings. As Jim mentioned earlier, the goal here is to keep manufacturing costs flat as we continue to grow the top line to have that enhanced margin and these initiatives are clearly a huge contributor to that effort.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Susanne, can we proceed?

Operator

Certainly. Our next question on the line of Kathy Minor. Please go head. Your line is open.

Kathleen Miner -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. First, wick clarification if I may on the offset to the $25 million to $35 million on African swine fever this year. Do you consider the Aratana revenues as part of the eventual offset? Second question also on Aratana. Can you just please remind us of your current expectation for closing timing and also the impact on adjusted earnings both this year and in 2020. And last question Jeff, I wonder if you could just give us some brief comments on your latest thinking on US trade dynamics and how that might be impacting your business. I know you've spoken on the cattle, or the dairy impact in the past and just wondered any other species or any other thoughts you may have. Thank you.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Great list, Kathy. There's a bit of an assortment there. Todd, do you want to talk about some the Aratana financial items?

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure, so with respect to Aratana we expect that to close still late Q2 into Q3. Teams working very diligently to get the S-4 pulled together, to get that accomplished as well as working closely with the Aratana team on getting their shareholder vote complete to secure the merger. We have not included any financials in our 2019 numbers from Aratana. As mentioned on the call announcing the deal we did say we don't expect it to be dilutive in '19 and we generally expect it to be modestly secretive going forward. The secretion is a function of the current Galliprant accounting. We've basically recognized all of Galliprant through our income statement today and so this is a very positive deal from a cash perspective less P and L just as a result of how that accounting works.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Trade, Jeff.

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Great question, Cathy. So, I'll just highlight a few things. I think the trade relationship between the US and China no question has implications on the protein industry and how it's converging very timely with African swine fever and the significance in terms of the number of animals that are being impacted there. It will change some of the global protein dynamics and so I see an opportunity here. When you think about animal health, really our focus right now is one, continuing to emphasize the importance of trade and the movement of meat, milk, and eggs globally to continue to meet this growing demand for protein that continues -- animal protein shall I say. We need standards relative to feed ingredients to be more consistent. Whether they're code acts or anything else, where science and safety are in the forefront of the standards. So, that will be our agenda. We're working as an industry. We're working collectively on this and we think there are an opportunity here and a timeliness to be able to continue to move forward. But nothing specific new to report. As you know they're dynamic and they're continuing. And we're working in alignment with not only the global side but with the US and even the Chinese side.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Susanne, I think we have perhaps a couple more.

Operator

We definitely do. We have our next question from the line of John Kreger. Your line is open.

John Kreger -- William Blair -- Analyst

Hi, good morning. This is John Coughlin on for Kreger. I would like to dig into African swine fever in a little more detail. There's been some discussion on the part of the large poultry producers who say they're well-positioned to take advantage of potential pork shortages. Looking out over the medium to long term, if poultry were to begin replacing swine as a global food source what does that mean for your business from a profitability standpoint. And can you remind us of your relatively positioning in poultry and swine compared to some of the other major players

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Thanks, John. Great question. Well, we've been very clear as we launched the new company. That we've got three growth categories, two in companion animal. But we've talked a lot about future protein, which is poultry and aqua, and the nutritional health business, the antibiotic alternatives. We are a leader in many segments in poultry. It varies by country but we're in the top three in most all segments of poultry. We've got a diversified portfolio from feed additives that are key to antibiotic replacements to even a vaccine portfolio, as you know in salmonella and other preventative disease and a very nice pipeline. So, it's a priority area. It's an area of leadership. It is an area that is driving growth for us. And I would add in addition to products, I believe there's two capabilities that Elanco's been working on for 15 years. One is the ability to work with corporate accounts.

As you know this is a pretty consolidated industry. But not just the ability with our people to do that, technical and sales, but also having the analytics and the value beyond product services. That also is a key driver is we've got a database that is almost two decades in age that links health performance going forward. So, again I see continued ability to add increasing value to the poultry industry, to innovate in this space, as it's a growth driver as we go. I would caution us that I think the dynamics will take some time and I think the balancing this, as well as the trade aspects will all come into play. But we're very much aligned with our customers to continue to add value to them as it goes.

One other item, we've haven't quantified our sales by species but at least in ordinal ranking cattle is one, poultry is two, swine is three, and salmon is four. So, you can see that even in our existing portfolio poultry is a bigger piece of the pie. Susanne, I think maybe one more in the queue.

Operator

Yes, we do have one more. Our next question comes from the line of Navin Jacob. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Navin Jacob -- UBS -- Analyst

Thanks for taking the question. Just on Galliprant, been performing very well. If you could provide any color on current market share for Galliprant and where you think that could potentially go in two to three years. And second question if possible. It seems like there was some purchasing pattern benefits for ruminants and swine. If you could help quantify that so we could understand underlying demand. That'd be helpful. Thank you.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Sure. Jeff, do you have macro thoughts on Galliprant? I think as we look at the overall space there are a lot of various NSAID products there. As we look at our performance Galliprant is the number one prescribed branded NSAID. And there are a variety of products for different components of pain in the acute versus long term, early onset versus late needs. Macro wise I think we feel good about the Galliprant profile, what it's bringing to the market. With that there's opportunity there. We won't project market shares or talk in detail about where we are now, but we think there is upward potential.

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think we'll just continue to look at pain and osteoarthritis to a portfolio approach. We're excited about even the potential of the Aratana transaction with Nocita having another surgical pain product. And I would also say I think it's important that the actual segment is growing like some of the other companion animal therapeutic areas. We highlighted oncology in our last call. We've excited about the VetDC. In addition to derm, as we all know, pain is evolving in the same space where you've got organic market growth and then you've got entrants in innovation where innovation is heavily rewarded. On Galliprant our job right now is launch well, bring further SKUs and right now were getting that full suite that we need and then geographic expansion. So, right now the lead indicators look very good and we'll continue to not only support Galliprant but really become and build that pain leadership in that segment.

Todd, do you have thoughts on purchasing patterns?

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Certainly. On ruminants and swine, obviously it was a big quarter in the US offset by a tough quarter internationally. With respect to ruminants we did pull some sales expected in Q2 into Q1 that augmented that bit. When we show you the year-over-year six-month time frame, you can see negative 4% growth in that category. A lot of that is the antibiotic movement in Asia, as well as African swine fever. The other bit with respect to the US in Q1, we had a Micotil shortage in Q4. This product was replenished in Q1. And so that provided some additional benefit to the run rate over the Q1 ruminants and swine business. So, overall this category with African swine fever will continue to be tough, but overall in line with where we're headed.

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Great, I think that was all the questions. Jeff, do you want to offer some closing comments as we conclude?

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Absolutely. Thank you again for you time and support throughout the journey to Elanco becoming an independent, public company. AS you know, we are executing on our strategy. We are pleased at our efforts so far over the past several years are now delivering growth and profitability and accelerated income. I want you to hear my confidence lies in one, the value that is increasing that we're added to our customers. Two, I believe strongly that our strategy, our IPP strategy of innovation, portfolio, and productivity there's progress and hopefully you've seen the proof points in today's results. Three, is the engagement and ownership in our employees today is at a high that I haven't seen in a long time. And lastly is the business model of an independent Elanco is a stronger Elanco. We look forward to continuing to build a long term relationship with all of you, our investors. If you have any additional questions. Please feel free to reach out to both Jim and Katy. Have a great day.

...

Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you very much.

Duration: 55 minutes

Call participants:

Jim Greffet -- Head of Investor Relations

Jeff Simmons -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Todd Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Chris Schott -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Erin Wright -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

David Risinger -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Umer Raffat -- Evercore -- Analyst

Michael Ryskin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Kevin Ellich -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst

Kathleen Miner -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

John Kreger -- William Blair -- Analyst

Navin Jacob -- UBS -- Analyst

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