Earnings Call Transcript - ATR Q4 2025

Mary Skafidas, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thanks for being with us today. Our speakers for the call are Stephan Tanda, our President and CEO; and Vanessa Kanu, our Executive Vice President and CFO. Our press release and accompanying slide deck have been posted on our website under the Investor Relations page. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and the reconciliations are set forth in the press release. Please refer to the press release disseminated yesterday for reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures discussed during this earnings call. As always, we will also post a replay of this call on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Stephan.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on the call today. I will start by highlighting our annual and fourth quarter results. Later, our CFO, Vanessa Kanu, will provide more details on the key drivers for the quarter. For the quarter ending December 31, 2025, we had very strong top line performance, with reported sales growing 14% to $963 million, up from $848 million in the prior year. Core sales increased 5%, reflecting healthy underlying demand across our portfolio. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was approximately 20%, slightly affected by higher-than-expected production costs in our Beauty and Closures segments, as well as shifts in product mix, including the decline in demand for emergency medicine products that we discussed last quarter. We will continue to focus on vigorous productivity measures in 2026 and beyond, leaning into our cost reduction initiatives and pushing further on back-office centralization through our global talent centers. Vanessa will address these dynamics in more detail shortly. Looking at the broader picture, our teams executed well, with all three segments delivering core sales growth this quarter. In Pharma, growth was driven by strong demand for our elastomeric components, ongoing momentum in our systemic nasal drug delivery technologies, and a rebound in our Consumer Healthcare division. Our Beauty segment achieved double-digit core sales growth, with robust performance in the fragrance, facial skin care, and personal and home care categories. Customer feedback indicates that holiday sales, particularly during pre-holiday events like 11/11 in China and Black Friday in the U.S., were encouraging. In Closures, we experienced solid product volume growth, reinforcing the strength of our market positions. Vanessa will discuss the operational disruptions we faced in Beauty and Closures, which were disappointing, but our teams are actively addressing these issues. Overall, these results demonstrate the resilience of our business, the strength of our global technology platforms, and the advantages of our innovation-led application portfolio. Now, let me review our full year performance. For the year ending December 31, 2025, reported sales rose 5% to $3.8 billion from $3.6 billion in the prior year. Core sales increased 2%, indicating steady demand across key product categories. We also achieved growth on the bottom line for the full year. Reported net income was up 5% to $393 million, and reported earnings per share grew 7% to $5.89, compared to $5.53 a year ago. Adjusted earnings per share were $5.74, a slight decline of 1% from $5.81 in the previous year, factoring in comparable exchange rates. We are maintaining a disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation. In 2025, we returned $486 million, nearly $0.5 billion to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. Capital expenditures declined year-over-year, representing about 7% of sales, highlighting our focus on efficiency and prioritizing high-return investments, a focus we will continue in 2026. Importantly, 2025 marked our 32nd consecutive year of paying an annually increasing dividend, underscoring our commitment to shareholders and the resilience of our business model. These results illustrate our capability to deliver consistent performance, invest for long-term growth, and return capital to shareholders while navigating a dynamic operating environment. Before I pass the call to Vanessa, I want to highlight our important Pharma pipeline, where our core business remains strong. In 2025, systemic nasal drug delivery accelerated, and injectables accounted for a larger share of our opportunities. Core sales for our Pharma segment, excluding emergency medicine, rose 10% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2024. We expect our pipeline and recent launches to help us achieve our long-term core sales target of 7% to 11% growth, with adjusted margins of 32% to 36%. Our prescription drug pipeline includes a broad range of therapeutic areas across respiratory, injectable, ophthalmic, and dermal drug delivery methods. The leading therapeutic categories in our pipeline, ranked by weighted value, are respiratory, biologics, injectable formats, systemic nasal drug delivery—especially in central nervous system, pain management, emergency medicine, small molecule injectables, ophthalmology, allergic rhinitis, vaccines delivered intranasally and via injection, and dermatology. The key takeaway is that we are building a well-diversified portfolio of medical indications and delivery technologies. Injectables have become increasingly significant in our pipeline, and systemic nasal drug delivery has expanded, particularly for central nervous system therapies, which we anticipate will continue to be a major opportunity. Historically, our pipeline contributes about 10% of annual revenue, while the remaining 90% comes from repeat business. Within that repeat business, we expect Pharma's primary growth driver to continue being volume growth and a richer mix. Our core business performed very well in 2025, with systemic nasal drug delivery accelerating and injectables making up a larger share of the pipeline, which supports our sustained growth across various therapeutic areas. I also want to highlight the significant progress in our Pharma pipeline and the strong momentum we are witnessing with our customers. Recently, many key programs have advanced, many relying on Aptar's leading nasal drug delivery technologies. For instance, CARDAMYST from Milestone Pharmaceuticals is a breakthrough self-administered nasal spray delivered through our Bidose delivery system for adults experiencing acute symptomatic PSVT, also known as paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia. This provides a major milestone for patients by offering rapid, on-demand treatment, transitioning care from emergency rooms to home. The FDA's approval in late 2025 marks this as the first new PSVT treatment in decades and supports future development for atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular rate. Piper Sandler noted that the U.S. launch, expected in the first quarter of 2026, is projected to scale significantly over the next decade. Additionally, our Active Materials Science division designed a portable dual container system for CARDAMYST that safely houses two Bidose devices and prevents accidental activation. In vaccines, our status as a partner of choice is growing. CastleVax's Phase II study of its intranasal COVID-19 vaccine is utilizing Aptar's LuerVax and Spray Divider platforms to evaluate mucosal immunity in approximately 200 adults. This collaboration highlights our extensive regulatory and technical capabilities in nasal vaccine delivery. In ophthalmology, we formed an exclusive agreement with Bausch + Lomb for our Beat the Blink eye care delivery system, which employs a horizontal spray action to deliver medication. Internationally, we have achieved regulatory milestones that further validate our technologies. For example, in Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration approved Neffy, the first needle-free epinephrine nasal spray for anaphylaxis, marking a significant shift in emergency allergy treatment in over 20 years. Lastly, LTR Pharma has initiated its Phase II pharmacokinetic study of SPONTAN, a rapid-acting intranasal therapy for erectile dysfunction, involving both younger and older adult cohorts, with results expected in the second quarter of 2026. This reinforces the trend toward fast, predictable intranasal delivery, an area where we believe Aptar is exceptionally well positioned. These examples clearly demonstrate Aptar's ongoing innovation, enabling major advancements in Pharma, with our technologies at the heart of some of the most significant and exciting new drug platforms in development. During the quarter, we also supported multiple new product launches in Beauty and Closures. In Beauty, Unilever selected our new high-dose all-plastic pump technology for their Nexxus hair care line, covering all of their shampoo and conditioner products in North America. We also created a custom version of our premium Airless beauty pump solution for Chanel's HYDRA BEAUTY Micro Serum in Europe. Additionally, a new skin care line from a Chinese beauty brand features our airless pump and reloadable solutions for improved shipping durability, utilizing high-value technologies from our beauty portfolio. In Closures, McCormick launched a new condiment line called Cholula Cremosa with our flip-top pour spout closure, enhancing clean and controlled dispensing for their sauces in North America. Coca-Cola's Powerade and BonAqua water, as well as energy drinks in South Africa, feature our spout closure with Tamper-Evident technology. Unilever has partnered with us to develop a custom 100% post-consumer recycled resin dosing closure for their Comfort concentrated line of fabric softeners in Brazil. Lastly, I want to mention the recognitions we received this quarter. We are pleased to maintain our leadership in sustainability through measurable climate actions and a strong commitment to transparency. In 2025, over 22,000 companies disclosed environmental data via CDP, representing more than half of the global market cap. We are honored to once again be part of the CDP Climate A list, ranking among the top 4% of companies with the highest scores. Furthermore, for the seventh year in a row, we were recognized as one of America's most responsible companies by Newsweek, ranking 56 out of 600 U.S. companies. Now, I will turn the call over to Vanessa.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Thank you, Stephan, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin by summarizing the highlights for the quarter. As Stephan noted, our reported sales increased 14% and core sales, which adjust for currency effects and acquisitions, grew 5% compared to the prior year. We achieved adjusted EBITDA of $191 million, a decrease of 2% from the prior year and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19.8% compared to 23% in the prior year due to a combination of less favorable product mix and higher-than-anticipated production costs in our Beauty and Closures segments. I will touch on these factors momentarily. Adjusted earnings per share were $1.25 compared to the prior year's adjusted earnings per share of $1.62 at comparable exchange rates. With those high-level comments, let's take a closer look at segment performance. Our Pharma segment's core sales increased 4%. Let me break that down by market, starting with our proprietary drug delivery systems. Prescription core sales increased 1%, driven by strong year-over-year demand for dosing and dispensing technologies for systemic nasal drug delivery, especially for central nervous system and pain applications, asthma and COPD therapeutics. This growth, coupled with growing royalty payments, more than offset lower emergency medicine sales. Excluding emergency medicines, which declined 36%, prescription core sales increased 10% in the quarter. Consumer Healthcare core sales increased 3%, primarily due to an increase in sales for nasal decongestants and cough and cold solutions. This marks a shift back to positive growth in this division after a period of inventory normalization at the customer level. Injectables core sales increased 24% with strong demand primarily for elastomeric components used for GLP-1, antithrombotics, and small molecules. Services also contributed positively in the quarter, and we continue to see strong pipeline build for Annex 1 and biologics projects. For our Active Materials Science Solutions, core sales decreased 10%, driven by a challenging comparison from a large tooling sale in Q4 2024 that did not repeat. Pharma's adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 32.4%, a 330 basis point decline from the prior year. The margin decline was driven by product mix and volume due primarily to a decline in demand for emergency medicine. Moving to our Beauty segment, core sales increased 10% in the quarter, of which one-fourth of the growth was tooling. The double-digit growth in core sales provided a strong top-line lift despite some operational disruptions. Looking at the two largest end markets for Beauty, Fragrance, Facial Skin Care, and Color Cosmetics core sales increased 7%, primarily due to higher sales from both masstige and prestige fragrance pumps as well as color cosmetics. Personal Care core sales increased 17% with broad-based growth across all regions. Applications for body, hair, and sun care continue to show strong demand. Beauty's adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 10.2%, a decline of 220 basis points. The decline in Beauty's margin primarily reflects certain customer projects, including tooling at lower margins. Additional impacts included required environmental upgrades at one of our metal anodization plants as well as operational disruptions at an existing supplier that required us to qualify a new supplier and perform additional quality testing. These impacts will abate through the first half of 2026, and we expect to see steady improvement in Beauty's margin quarter by quarter. Moving to the Closures segment. Core sales increased by 1% compared with the prior year period. While volumes were up, core sales were impacted by the pass-through of lower resin pricing. Looking at the two largest end markets for closures, Food core sales decreased 1%, primarily driven by lower sales of infant nutrition and granular powder. Beverage core sales increased 7%, primarily driven by increased sales for dairy and functional drinks. The segment's adjusted EBITDA margin was 14.9%, representing a 120 basis point decline over the prior year, primarily due to continued equipment maintenance that impacted production and higher tooling sales that are typically at a lower margin. Our closures team is working through necessary repairs and the maintenance issue is expected to be transitory. At the total company level, consolidated gross margins declined by 371 basis points in Q4 year-over-year as a result of the mix and production impacts I just discussed. I also want to point out that Q4 2025 was a record quarter for tooling sales, culminating in the full year 2025 being the second-highest year for tooling sales in over a decade. Although tooling typically carries lower margins, this performance bodes well for customer retention and potential new business. SG&A expense in the quarter increased in absolute dollars, largely due to currency effects, nonordinary course litigation costs incurred in the quarter, and the effect of acquisitions. SG&A as a percentage of sales decreased from 16.3% in 2024 to 15.7% in 2025, a 60 basis point reduction year-over-year. Overall, consolidated adjusted EBITDA margins decreased by 320 basis points to 19.8%, reflecting the dynamics I just highlighted. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.25 were down 23% year-over-year at comparable exchange rates due to higher depreciation and amortization expenses associated with our capital investments and acquisitions and higher interest expense due to a higher average debt balance compared to the prior year. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 19.4% compared to the prior year's 13.5%, which, as a reminder, included a one-off benefit related to an acquisition. On November 20, we issued $600 million of 4.75% senior notes that are due in March 2031 through an underwritten public offering. The notes which pay interest semiannually are unsecured and rank equally with our other senior unsecured debt. Finally, during the quarter, we repurchased $175 million of common stock and returned $206 million to shareholders, inclusive of dividends. Now let's take a look at full year 2025 results. Reported sales increased 5% and core sales increased 2%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 5% and adjusted EBITDA margin remained consistent with the prior year at 21.6%. Reported earnings per share increased 7% to $5.89. Adjusted earnings per share were $5.74, a decrease of 1% compared to the prior year at comparable exchange rates, reflecting again higher depreciation and amortization expense and higher interest expense year-over-year. The adjusted effective tax rate for the full year was 21.4% compared to the prior year's 20.5%. Free cash flow was $303 million, comprising cash from operations of $570 million, less capital expenditures net of government grants of $267 million. Free cash flow was $64 million lower year-over-year, largely due to the timing of tax payments of about $44 million, along with higher pension contributions of about $10 million as well as some higher working capital. These were partially offset by lower capital expenditures. For the full year 2025, we repurchased 2.7 million shares for $365 million, the highest repurchase amount in the past decade and returned $486 million to shareholders, inclusive of dividends. Yesterday, we announced a new authorization from our Board of Directors to repurchase up to $600 million of the company's common stock. This new authorization replaces all existing authorizations. Finally, we ended the year with a strong balance sheet once again, reflecting cash and short-term investments of $410 million, net debt of about $1.1 billion and a leverage ratio of 1.38. Before we move to the outlook, I'd like to briefly update you on our emergency medicine portfolio and reaffirm the guidance we provided last quarter. We continue to anticipate near-term headwinds extending through 2026. Based on what we currently know about end market demand, funding dynamics and customer inventory levels, our outlook remains unchanged. Specifically, we expect the decline in emergency medicine to represent a 2026 revenue headwind of roughly $65 million. We expect the impact will be more pronounced in the first half of the year, driven by challenging comparisons to 2025. And while we do not anticipate a recovery in the second half, the year-over-year impact should moderate as we move through the back half of the year. Given the high-value nature of this portfolio, this dynamic will put some pressure on overall margins ahead of any mitigating actions we may take. This is a short-term headwind. Demand for nasal drug delivery technologies continues to be strong as we expand to new therapeutic areas, and we are able to deliver larger molecules through the respiratory system over time. Now on to our outlook for Q1. We anticipate first quarter adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of $1.13 to $1.21 per share. This reflects the higher interest rate environment and our bond offering completed in Q4, an effective tax rate range of 21% to 23% and a euro to USD exchange rate of $1.18. For full year 2026, capital investments are expected to be in the range of $260 million to $280 million, and depreciation and amortization expense is expected to be between $320 million and $330 million. As I mentioned during our Investor Day presentation in September, we have sustained cost savings and productivity improvements well north of $100 million. These savings are structural rather than onetime, resulting in a leaner cost base, improved scalability, and lower cost intensity. We continue to drive productivity through footprint rationalization and targeted investments in automation and advanced manufacturing technologies, including AI, energy efficiency, and continuous improvement initiatives. As we've noted before, structural actions are ongoing, and we regularly assess opportunities to optimize our global manufacturing footprint. Recent actions include further centralization of back-office and support functions into global talent centers enabled by greater standardization and process automation. Within our Beauty segment, we are further consolidating our metal operations in France and rationalizing a U.S.-based beauty R&D office to better align and leverage resources. These actions reflect our continuous improvement mindset as we continue to pursue additional organization optimization opportunities. With that, I will turn it over to Stephan to provide a few closing comments before we move to Q&A.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Thank you, Vanessa. Looking ahead to 2026, Aptar is well positioned for broad-based growth across all three of our segments. We expect continued strong growth in our Pharma segment, excluding emergency medicine, which has experienced a period of destocking. We continue to see solid growth momentum across injectables, systemic nasal drug delivery and our consumer healthcare solutions, all of which remain well positioned for growth. In Beauty, improving demand in prestige fragrance is an encouraging sign that the category is beginning to return to growth. In Closures, we expect a steady performance supported by ongoing innovation and continued category conversions. Our disciplined focus on productivity, together with our strong balance sheet gives us the ability to return capital to shareholders while also retaining strategic flexibility and investing in the business to support long-term value creation. And with that, we are looking forward to your questions.

Operator, Operator

Your first question comes from Paul Knight with KeyBanc.

Paul Knight, Analyst

The first question is great performance in the elastomer business with GLP-1 growth. Do you see any deceleration in GLP-1 demand and elastomers in general in 2026? And then the second question is for Vanessa, your EBITDA margin trends as we roll out through the year.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Paul, good morning, let me take the first one, and then Vanessa will come back on the second one. So overall, we see injectables to grow in the high single digits, low double digits. You always have fits and spurts. If I go back a little bit as we constructed the new plant and validated equipment and put an ERP system that we were kind of not being able to deliver everything customers wanted. Now that we are able to deliver everything customers want and catching up with demand, we had some strong quarters, and we expect that to continue, but in steady state, I would think about high single digits, low double digits. GLP-1 certainly is important for us, but let's put it in context, overall of our Pharma business, it's tens of millions, maybe from the low tens of millions to the mid-tens of millions, but it's still not the sole driver of the injectable growth. It's much broader-based vaccines, other biologic projects, blood factors and so on.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Paul, and then on the second part of your question about margins, for the full year, we certainly expect margins to be significantly more robust in the back half of the year, driven by a couple of factors. So first, as I mentioned earlier in my prepared remarks, the year-over-year impact of the emergency medicine decline will be more pronounced in the first half. And of course, that being a very higher-margin portion of our portfolio. So therefore, the margin pressures will be stronger in the first half than the second half. We also expect sequential quarterly improvements in the margins for Beauty and Closures, as I mentioned as well, as we progress through the year, and that's driven by increased volume and also the production dynamics we saw in Q4 will start to abate as well. Lastly, across all the segments, as I mentioned, we are pursuing additional productivity measures that will help to partially mitigate the emergency medicine impact. I would expect those measures to contribute more meaningfully in the second half of the year. So all that to say, while we don't guide for the year, and we certainly do have some moving parts in terms of mix and other dynamics, I would expect the second half to be much stronger than the first half. And for the full year, certainly at a total company level to be within the long-term target range. I hope that answers your question, Paul.

Paul Knight, Analyst

Yes, it really does.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of George Staphos with Bank of America.

George Staphos, Analyst

I would like to focus my two questions on Beauty and Closures to gain a better understanding of what occurred, as the overall margin performance there was somewhat disappointing. Vanessa or Stephan, you mentioned ongoing maintenance in Closures, but I'm unclear on what that entails since maintenance is always present. In Beauty, it appears that demand exceeded expectations, leading to issues that affected the rest of the organization and impacted margins. Could you provide some specifics about what occurred in these two segments during the fourth quarter? Also, when might we expect margins to improve? You mentioned they are sequentially improving; when do you anticipate they will turn positive again? Is that in the first or second quarter? Any insights you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Let's maybe tag team here. Hi, George. You raised a number of topics. Maybe a couple of things. One is we are, of course, very encouraged by the top line growth. of Beauty, noting a couple of things that Vanessa mentioned, about one-fourth of that growth came from tooling sales and fragrance coming back. Regarding the operational issues, I respectfully do not agree with your characterization. Basically, we had some new environmental measures that were required at one of our anodization plants at different permit levels and so on that required significant action, including once that hit the cost line. It's not ongoing, but it needed to be done to remain in compliance. And on the Closure side, I'll let Vanessa speak to that. But yes, I'm not happy with some of the uptime and unscheduled maintenance. The team has a lot of work to do to address that. But maybe, Vanessa, you try to fill in here what I didn't answer.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes. And I don't know that I would add much more color to it than that. There's a backlog of maintenance that we're dealing with in Closures. The team is working through the repairs as we speak. So we do expect those issues to start to improve. George, I can't specifically guide you to what quarter we expect Beauty and Closures to hit the long-term target range, but we do expect steady improvements quarter-by-quarter. And...

George Staphos, Analyst

Vanessa, I wasn't asking about when you will meet your guidance; I want to know when you expect to see year-on-year growth, just to be clear. Please continue. I apologize for that.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes. Yes, we're working through these issues.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, we anticipate a significant improvement in the margin starting in Q1, and these are not recurring issues. To provide some context, one of our suppliers had a fire, which required us to onboard another supplier with lower pricing and quality, leading to increased costs. It may take a couple of months for our main supplier to resume production, but the environmental challenges are resolved. While we don't plan for these occurrences, I'm proud that we achieved EPS in line with expectations despite these issues. We certainly do not expect such challenges to recur at that scale in Q1.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Matt Roberts with Raymond James.

Matthew Roberts, Analyst

Stephan, Vanessa, and Mary, I appreciate the color given on emergency medicine, and it seems like it's unchanged from last quarter. But 4Q Pharma core sales were still up. So while that's good. Could you provide additional color on the emergency comp in 4Q and what it will be in 1Q and 2Q in emergency medicine and that 10% ex-emergency medicine in 4Q, are the drivers of that sustainable in the first half enough to again offset that tougher emergency comp you saw in 4Q? Or is it just that much harder and not expecting growth in the first half? And then I'll go ahead with my second question. When you look at the Pharma margin, I think it was down 3 points year-over-year. How much of that was due to the mix of emergency medicine? And over the past couple of years, I think 1Q generally is the lowest margin for Pharma seasonally. Should we expect a similar 3-point decline we saw in this quarter? Or anything else that we should consider year-over-year? I think prior year had a royalty benefit as well, so maybe that was inflated. So just any additional color you could give there on the Pharma margin for 1Q?

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

So Stephan, would you like me to start and then you can add in? I will do my best to address as many of your questions as possible, Matt. Thank you. As you mentioned, Pharma had a strong quarter with overall revenues increasing by 10%, excluding emergency medicine, driven by solid performance in other areas of the portfolio. We experienced significant demand, with sales growth in the central nervous system, asthma, and COPD. Turning the situation around in consumer healthcare was crucial as it did not hinder growth in other areas. We’ve previously discussed the 24% growth in injectables, which came from GLP-1s, antithrombotics, and other parts of the portfolio. All these factors contributed to the 10% growth excluding emergency medicine. Now regarding your question about whether we will see 10% growth excluding emergency medicine for the remainder of the year, we cannot provide such specific guidance as we do not forecast for the entire year, but we do expect ongoing strength across the Pharma portfolio. We do not view this growth as a one-time event for the first quarter. We anticipate broad-based growth in Pharma moving forward, again excluding emergency medicine. Concerning your query about margin, there wasn’t much else affecting the Pharma margin aside from the mix and volume of emergency medicine. You are correct that this was the main factor in the fourth quarter. We expect Pharma margins to improve on a full-year basis compared to fourth-quarter levels.

Matthew Roberts, Analyst

Okay. That 3-point decline in emergency medicine, can you comment, that would be similar in 1Q? Or is it comp harder so we should expect a greater magnitude? If you could give anything additional, that would be great.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes. So we quantified $65 million as a full-year headwind and most of that being in the first half. I would give you maybe a rule of thumb as think 2/3, 1/3, H1 versus H2, 70, 30-ish in that ballpark.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

But I just want to highlight that Vanessa said for the full year, we do expect to be within the long-term target. So we can't really give you the quarter-by-quarter evolution. But looking at everything that we see, we remain confident in that.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Rizzo with Jefferies.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst

Okay.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

We heard you there for a second, Dan, then you were gone again.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst

Yes. I'm sorry, I'm having more of technical issues. Can you hear me now?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst

Sorry about that. I was asking about NARCAN after the headwinds from this year when things kind of stabilize and get back to maybe a more normalized environment, how we should think about growth over the long term? I mean, obviously, there's a big surge. This is the offset of that. But I mean, how should it kind of shake out in the out years?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

What we hear from our customers is that they fully expect a low to mid-single-digit growth rate from the new baseline. Everyone is eager to determine exactly where that new baseline is. The reason for this expectation is simple: it is being used daily by first responders and is saving lives regularly. It remains the most straightforward method for utilizing harm reduction funds at the state level, particularly in spending the opioid settlement money. Compared to other resources, like finding a fire extinguisher or a defibrillator nearby, customers recognize significant potential for growth by increasing accessibility and breaking glass boxes in buildings, on airlines, and in buses. There is ample opportunity for continued growth, and when considering geographic expansion, we acknowledge that the U.S. faces the most significant challenges, but we also see growth potential in Canada, Europe, and other areas. Therefore, we anticipate low to mid-single-digit growth.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst

All right. That's very helpful. And then just with cough and cold with the nasal delivery. So you had kind of a soft winter maybe a year or so ago, led to some destocking afterwards. When do you kind of know if the winter was strong or soft or how it's shaping up for the outlook? So I mean, I'm assuming this year is actually pretty strong in terms of cough and cold. So would you know that by the second quarter? Or how does that read?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, we certainly will be able to update you maybe as early as the Q1 call, but for sure, the Q2 call. Clearly, we see the consumer healthcare destocking behind us and back to growth mode. And then how rapid that growth will be impacted by how strong the cold and cough and flu season is. And as we all know from experiencing ourselves or those around us, it's a pretty strong season this year.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair.

Matthew Larew, Analyst

The first one I want to ask about was on margins. So leading into this quarter, you had improved your EBITDA margins 10 straight quarters, reflecting the great operational performance there. And then there were a number of one-off issues here. Vanessa, you called out the tooling mix, the maintenance issues, obviously, the loss of the NARCAN business. Is there any way you could quantify those issues? Or were you able to internally, to give you confidence that you still improved underlying margins? And it sounds like, Vanessa, based on your comments at the end of the call, that you still feel good about the trajectory and opportunity to expand margins from here.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

While Vanessa is considering those numbers, I want to clarify that we did not lose any NARCAN business. We were the exclusive supplier for that opportunity due to the strength of our intellectual property. However, we did experience some destocking or similar challenges and had a strong comparable.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes. And Matt, I think you called it out. To be clear, we're not happy about the operational issues in Beauty & Closures, and you heard that in Stephan's script. So we certainly don't want to trivialize that. But those should be transitory, those should be nonrecurring, and the teams are actively working through those issues. If I sort of isolate that and isolate the impact of the NARCAN mix, the rest of the business is quite healthy in margin. As we progress through the year, as I mentioned earlier, I do expect margins to be stronger in H2 than H1 and for the full year to still be within the long-term target range at the total company level. So absolutely, some of these items are isolated to what we're going through right now but should start to correct themselves as we proceed through the year.

Matthew Larew, Analyst

On capital allocation, you did a small deal in late 2025 with Sommaplast. You just announced a new buyback plan. Maybe just give us a sense for capital allocation priorities and what you're seeing out there in terms of Sommaplast or other interesting areas of potential investment in 2026?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Let me address the last part first, and then Vanessa can provide more details about the buybacks. Our merger and acquisition strategy is actively being implemented. We evaluate numerous opportunities, often reviewing ten deals to pursue one. As you know, we seek bolt-on acquisitions that come with strong management willing to remain with us and continue to drive growth. This has been our approach historically. Additionally, we look for technologies we can acquire to enhance our intellectual property portfolio and leverage across the company, particularly to expand our Pharma packaging business by building on our active material portfolio. Our activities in Brazil reflect the type of opportunities we are pursuing. Overall, enhancing our geographic presence in major markets is a priority. This includes growth in Asia and the Middle East, which are crucial for our Pharma business, as well as the U.S., which is also a key growth area. We consistently aim to expand our geographic footprint. Now, I will pass it on to you, Vanessa, for more specific insights.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Sure. Yes. And Matt, on the capital allocation policy, we're not changing our policy. We will continue to allocate capital towards our own growth and, of course, return a portion of that capital back to shareholders. We very much continue to see ourselves as a growth company. You've heard the numbers, Q4, the strength in Pharma and so on. And so we'll continue to invest for growth. But the Board authorization gives us the flexibility for us to buy back shares when it makes sense. And we like the flexibility, but it is completely discretionary, and we'll pull on that lever when it makes sense as you saw us do in certain quarters of 2025.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gabe Hajde with Wells Fargo.

Gabe Hajde, Analyst

Vanessa, you mentioned $100 million of cost savings and productivity. It sounds like there's a, call it a laundry list of things that you guys are chipping away at. I feel like the last formal number that you've given us was $80 million starting in 2021, getting after some of these, again, productivity initiatives and things like that. First time I'm hearing a number, can you tell us maybe how much you're going to get in '26 and what the runway is on that?

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes. Gabe, we shared those numbers during our Investor Day. At that time, we mentioned about $110 million in annual cost reductions over the past couple of years. This isn't new information. You might have heard about $80 million a year earlier, but what we presented in September was $110 million. We have continued to implement cost reductions since then, which is why I referred to well over $100 million. That figure reflects the various strategies we are considering. Productivity is a significant focus for us, and we have several initiatives planned for 2026, which are also a priority for this year, especially to address some mix issues. However, we are not providing guidance on a specific savings target for the year.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

And maybe let me build on that. Clearly, as you guys know, we changed poise and rigor somewhere in COVID around '22 to get much more serious on productivity. We've done a lot of work in terms of the consumer-facing businesses with respect to Beauty and Closures, and a lot of work on back-office streamlining. Vanessa talked about earlier. It's funny, when you build this muscle, you start to get additional ideas. We ended the year with a very robust productivity agenda. Not only to address these short-term issues, but really to further drive efficiencies across the network. We have ideas for '27 and beyond. It really is part of our toolkit, and we've built the muscles. I'm very proud of the team that they come with additional ideas to reduce costs in place, so to speak, further streamline the network, take less efficient operations offline, take advantage of more efficient operations and so on. It's part of our DNA.

Gabe Hajde, Analyst

I want to ask about CARDAMYST receiving FDA approval. I understand these situations can be challenging, but are you anticipating any initial pipeline fill in 2026? You mentioned a 10-year ramp-up period to reach its full potential. I'm aware that introducing a new drug comes with difficulties in getting physicians used to it and ensuring consumers use it as well. Do you think it might help to offset some of the NARCAN decline in the first half of 2026?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes. Indeed, I agree with you that it's not easy to kind of give projections on how a new drug will do, especially in the short term, as you know, you have to work through prescribers, payers, supply chains and so on. Our normal way of being in this industry is that it takes several years to kind of establish a trajectory. NARCAN certainly was an exception in terms of kind of steepness of the adoption curve and going generic and over-the-counter and all that. Other examples for Aptar, I will give didn't go anywhere for four years and then took off and now it's a blockbuster and continuing to grow and everything in between. So Neffy seems to be a no-brainer, if you ask me, but it's not easy to go through all these hurdles from getting it prescribed and getting it reimbursed. For me, the cardiac treatment also seems to be a no-brainer. But if you have to not go to the emergency room and just take a puff, in layman's terms, of cardiac medication then that seems to be a no-brainer. But we will have to see how it plays out. I think I quoted Piper Sandler; I certainly don't pretend to be smarter than them.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Baird.

Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst

Can you hear me okay?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, hi, Ghansham.

Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst

Okay. Perfect. Stephan, just going back to 4Q and the emergency medicine component. Did that come in, in line with your initial view? I'm just asking the question because, obviously, you're going through a chaotic sort of destocking in the supply chain, etc., visibility, I assume, is low. Just curious as to how 4Q specifically tracked relative to internal projections.

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

It was in line.

Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst

Okay. And then in terms of 1Q guidance year-over-year on an EPS basis, we're within striking distance from a year ago. Is that a reasonable proxy for 2Q, again, given all the dynamics with the destocking, etc.?

Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes, that's a tough question to address without discussing our quarterly guidance. To answer it, Ghansham, we've reviewed the full-year models you've created, and we believe you've appropriately incorporated the information we provided. We've reiterated today that we expect approximately a $65 million year-over-year headwind related to NARCAN, which aligns with what we communicated at the end of last year. Therefore, we think you've captured that accurately in your models for the full year. However, we cannot offer any additional guidance on a quarterly basis beyond the H1 and H2 dynamic I mentioned earlier, with H1 experiencing the most significant year-over-year headwind.

Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst

Okay, that's helpful. Yes, go ahead, Stephan.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes. Just to add, say in different words maybe. We feel very good about the momentum with which we entered the year, emergency medicine aside; the rest of all the Pharma businesses, whether it's Rx, CHC, injectables, active materials is growing nicely. Beauty is returning to growth. Closures, we expect to continue to execute on category conversion. So yes, we have to overcome that high-margin $65 million headwind. We also have to overcome some taxes and interest rate costs. However, we feel very good about how we enter the year and how the full year should unfold.

Operator, Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Matt Roberts with Raymond James.

Matthew Roberts, Analyst

Stephan, I wanted to ask about the nasal and respiratory pipeline. As in the prepared remarks, I believe you noted respiratory was the top ranked by weighted value, which is somewhat surprising given there's been such strong growth in the nasal reformulation side. So is that a function of growth rate or revenue base? Or maybe said differently, how do you think about the underlying growth rate of respiratory and nasal categories in the pipeline? Or is it a function of maybe a higher revenue base on one of those? And any themes or what's driving the respiratory drugs in the pipeline?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes. I mean, first of all, it's a large and important business. And that category is going through a change in propellant with lower greenhouse warming potential. So I think that makes it maybe disproportionately bigger without getting into all the specific projects. We're extremely excited about the systemic nasal drug delivery. But let's remember, a handful of years ago, that category was almost zero, so versus the existing base. That it's already that high up on the list is actually pretty good news, but inhalation is an important part of our business. Thank you. Let me summarize the call. Our teams delivered solid top line performance in quarter 4 with core sales growth from all segments. We feel really good about that momentum. Despite the unexpected cost challenges that we discussed, we stuck the landing and EPS came in line, wrapping up a strong year, especially when you consider the highly dynamic trading environment our customers had to navigate all year. We continue to be very, very excited about the strength and the diversity of our Pharma pipeline on the back, as we just discussed, of the ever-growing number of systemic nasal drug delivery projects and a higher participation in the injectable projects in the industry, including, of course, GLP-1s. We did talk about this pipeline and our excitement at the Investor Day in September; maybe it was drawn out a little bit by the NARCAN news. We gave you more color at JPMorgan last month. Again, the recent launches of two cardiac treatments, again, edema, and tachycardia are the clear proof points of the power of that pipeline. Today, we gave you some more examples of the kind of clinical work that's going on, and these are just examples that we can talk about. As we enter '26, emergency medicine aside, we are well positioned for broad-based growth across all three of our segments. Of course, continued strong growth in Pharma, excluding emergency medicine, with solid momentum across all the pillars, injectables, systemic nasal drug delivery, consumer health care, and active materials. Beauty is returning to growth and Closures will continue to drive category conversions with innovations. We have a very rigorous productivity roadmap for the year and the years ahead—not only to address the short-term issues but to drive efficiencies across our operations and supply chain networks as well as SG&A expenses. Last but not least, our strong balance sheet gives us the ability to both invest in the future and return capital to shareholders, while retaining strategic flexibility to take advantage of any opportunities that may arise. With that, we look forward to talking to you on the road in the coming weeks.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.