One of the things that I learned in my career in the animal health industry is that to open a new chapter, the old chapter needs to be closed. The context for this was usually an acquisition, which happened to me five times, or a significant job change. But this week, let’s expand the opening and closing of chapters to the financial performance of companies on our stock table.
This week we have posted the full year stock price performance for 2024 for the animal health companies and next week the reporting of 2025 stock price performance will begin. Because of the large variation in stock price performance, we added the 2023 year-end performance for comparison. A few things stand out.
First, we have had two years of good and similar performance in the broader indexes – the S&P 500 and the DJIA. Second, of the currently public animal health companies, only Freshpet had two good years in a row – and their growth is about three times the S&P 500 growth. Third, for several companies, the gains seen in 2023 were given back in 2024 (Elanco, IDEXX, Neogen, Zoetis and Zomedica). Finally, 2024 was a much better year for only a few companies (Chewy, Phibro and Trupanion).
As we close 2024, let’s open 2025 and hope for impressive performance the publicly traded and private animal health companies. We’ll track it for you.
Bob Jones
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