Good afternoon, and welcome to the Perrigo Fourth Quarter and Calendar Year 2018 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Brad Joseph, Vice President of Global Investor Relations. Please go ahead..

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Perrigo's fourth quarter and calendar year 2018 earnings conference call. Hope you all had a chance to review the press release we issued earlier this afternoon. Copies of this release are available on our website, as is the slide presentation for this call.

Joining today's call are Murray Kessler, Perrigo's President and CEO; and Ron Winowiecki, Perrigo's CFO. I'd like to remind everyone that during the call, participants will make certain forward-looking statements.

Please refer to the important information for investors and shareholders and Safe Harbor language regarding these statements in our press release issued earlier this afternoon. In addition, in the appendix for today's presentation, we've provided reconciliations for all non-GAAP financial measures presented. Turning quickly to the agenda on Slide 3.

First, Murray will discuss his early observations and progress we've made since he joined Perrigo, followed by his highlights of the commercial results for the quarter. Ron will then review our fourth quarter performance results and walk through the details of our P&L statement and balance sheet.

Ron will then review business trends heading into 2019 before turning the call back over to Murray for closing remarks and Q&A. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Murray..

First, we believe that Irish revenues assessment conflicts with revenue’s longstanding tax treatment of Elan Pharma, which was carrying on a trade of intellectual property for over 20 years.

As noted in the judicial review proceedings, we believe that Irish revenue breached Elan Pharma’s legitimate expectations based on that tax history when it wrongly recharacterized Elan Pharma’s trade some 20 years later in the amended assessment.

And second, the judicial review proceeding is a separate process that must be pursued in the Irish court rather than before the Tax Appeals Commission. The appeal before the Tax Appeals Commission has been stayed until the court makes a decision in this judicial review proceeding.

If the court finds that Elan Pharma’s legitimate expectation was breached, the court would set aside the entire assessment. To be clear, this is a challenge of the process, not the assessment itself. If the court does not agree with our assertion, then we will proceed to challenge the tax assessment on its merit and the Tax Appeals Commission.

With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Ron Winowiecki to cover more specific financial results for the fourth quarter and year. And while I said that we will not provide full 2019 guidance until our Investor Day meeting, he will give you some rough planning input as you think about your model.

Ron?.

one, adding capacity and our capital value stream. And two, important process, technology and structural improvements to drive and sustain operational performance. As previously indicated, we are now refocused on regaining the Perrigo advantage with customer service as a key pillar.

This is a top priority, while we are making progress, it will take time for these actions to be realized in our financial statement. As previously inventory operating variances were rolled through our income statement, in 2019, the inventory is sold in the first half of the year.

This means that weakness we saw in the second half of 2018 will depress 2019’s first half results in the form of higher cost of products sold. Second, we have already begun our strategic investments in various aspects of our consumer businesses.

As evidenced by the planned increase in advertising within the Consumer International segment in the fourth quarter along with build out of capabilities in R&D, innovation and business intelligence, which will also impact first half results.

We will show specific action to help offset these investments at our Investor Day, but they will come later in the year in the form of cost reduction program. Given its operating framework, Consumer adjusted operating margins are expected to be lower in the first half of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018 improving as we march through the year.

Finally, within the RX segment, there are two macro themes to consider. First, from a pricing perspective, we saw signs of stabilization in the fourth quarter. And as I sit here today, we expect 2019 price headwinds in our core products to be consistent with our 2018 year-over-year fourth quarter results.

And second, expect that we will continue to invest in our pipeline with dollar growth and R&D investments versus 2018. At our Investor Day, we plan to provide more details around each of these trends as we provide 2019 guidance at that time.

As you complete your models another important factor to keep in mind is our continued strong operating cash flow profile. In 2018, our adjusted operating cash flow conversion to adjusted net income once again exceeded 100%.

Our teams continue to remain confident in our cash flow generation, which will factor into our framework around capital allocation, that will also be outlined at the May 9 Investor Day. Now, I'd like to turn the call back to Murray..

Thanks, Ron. So look the key takeaway should be that the business is challenged, we understand that. We know what the issues are. The plans have been approved to fix it. We are aggressively making the necessary changes and the tough decisions to get back on track.

Significant change is underway and I am excited and our leadership team is excited to share those plans with you on May 9th, and not just the plans, but real progress against those plans. So let's open up the line for Q&A..

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Louise Chen with Cantor. Please go ahead.

Based on the business trends that you gave for 2019, is there still a possibility for growth on a full year basis in 2019? And then in terms of the pushes and pulls on the earnings, can you talk a little bit more about what the big levers are? And then my last question is just as it pertains to the tax issue, what percentage of the challenges that go through the process that you're going through now actually result in something positive for the company? Thank you..

Well let's break them up into three. Louise it's a little bit hard to answer the question on growth without you seeing the entire plan which is the whole point of the May 9th Investor Day, because there are -- I keep setting the stage for multiple components.

So we obviously believe we're going to be, as Ron said, starting the year a little bit slower because of cost but then as we start to bring up a number of these initiatives, which we will give you a real life example of, there's no way for you to be forecasting them in your trend.

So I hate to say it, but you're going to have to wait to see the plan on May 9th.

So I tried to give you a little bit of a new piece of information that I haven't seen people talking about much which is, that we understand there is dilution from the separation, we understand that there are investments and that -- so that's why you heard us talking about there will be a cost component to this initiative as well, which again is difficult for you to model.

But you're going to see some major, major change coming in here May and I think and hope that you will be very excited about where we're going when you see it.

And I don't know if you want to add anything to it Ron, because I'm not going to put any percentages against the loss?.

Next question comes from Chris Schott with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. .

Great. Thanks very much for the questions. The first one I just had is on the CHC International business.

If I'm hearing the comments correctly, is this a business that's largely structured how you'd like at this point, so just may be more focused on the Americas side or is there also a significant opportunity on the international side of the business to improve performance and structure, et cetera? That's the first one.

The second one is just, turning my hands around with this pending tax liability and you got a very strong view this is something you will prevail ultimately, but how does that pending liability impact your capital deployment priorities and how you think about putting capital to work as you look to reposition the consumer business while you're waiting for some of the organic kind of initiatives to take hold? Thanks very much..

Sure. So on the first issue on the CHCI business, the International business, we outlined a little bit that there's been major restructuring. I think in 2018 alone, there were $55 million of purposely discontinued products. That’s the number really.

So, you have to look at that growth within the context of what they've been doing, consolidating markets, they have discontinued thousands of SKUs that were non-profitable, and that's how you're seeing the margin enhancement along with significant organizational changes.

They are most of the way through, so you should start seeing the top-line growth that's underlying one of the core business to show itself in 2019, and I think there are plenty of opportunities and they have a very robust new product pipeline they've been working at.

Having said all that, International, it has plenty of opportunities, it's not the issue facing like company and it's not in my mind what unlocked significant value for our investors.

Right now getting the Americas business right, getting service levels, getting that new product engine going again, revisiting and when it makes sense bolt-on acquisitions and doing all the things that made Perrigo great before it, started focus being distracted internationally and with a number of other things we did is the top priority for this company to create value.

So job number one is the Americas.

And as it relates to -- give me the second question?.

[Indiscernible] How does that impact the capital allocation?.

As it relates to our capital allocation plans, that was like one of the first questions that I asked and it's a good question because I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to inhibit any of our ability to do what we need to do and the answer is for the most part it doesn't.

Could it influence the way we allocate capital being a little more conservative to shifting some money towards paying down debt for shares versus dividends et cetera we’ll outline all of that in May 9th as well.

So we want to make sure that we remove uncertainly, as you invest in us, you don't have to be worried about that and I've had to deal with that for over a decade in the previous industry I was in but it does not get in the way of doing what we want to do.

And you know what I think you think about our capital structure, our balance sheet everything, you should be thinking that we have our eyes clearly set on being a top performing CPG consumer-based company with our evolution from healthcare to self-care.

And that means we want to stack up well on all of the benchmarks relative to other top performing consumer companies..

The next question comes from Randall Stanicky with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead..

Hey, how you’re doing? So there's been some, I think understandable investor pushback on the differentiation of the new strategy going forward moving the self-care and when we look at the current CHCA business that the new product sales continue to attract under that $50 million level obviously the pressure that you've called that on the core business.

So question number one, can you just give some concrete examples in terms of things that you can do to drive the growth higher? Is this going to be a largely a bolt-on strategy or there's things you can do with the core business? And then the second question is, are we going to get an RX announcement on May 9th, and is there a scenario where you guys step back and say, hey, the math or the demand for this asset isn't there, we're going to separate on the platform, but maybe we'll hold on to it for some period longer until things look different? Thanks.

.

Well as I sit here right now we are full steam ahead on the RX separation and we hope to be able to present very clear plans and believe we're on track to do that. I mean I'm ever going to sit here and make an ultimatum and say nothing could adjust our plans but I don't see it right now.

When you talk about the consumer side of the business, that will be a major, major, major portion of May 9th.

But if I had to give you an example, and by the way, my answer is it can come from bolt-ons, it can come from innovation on core business, it can come from share building and it all relates to the consumer understanding of how people buy our products and what our relative shares are in different categories.

So let's see nicotine cessation as an example, that's the category where we’re the market leader by far, much bigger than the national brand. If you're in that position, that means you need to be the one that's doing a lot of innovation.

And you may look at that and say, well, in order to do that, you have to go through FDA long slow processes in that particular category. That's not true. If, there's nothing that stops us from innovating on, forms, packaging, flavors, and alike to drive that business and grow that category, segment itself.

As I sit here coming from the industry I came in, we in the company at Perrigo I think we've done a good job and but it's tiny compared to what's going on in the world of, let's give an example of how explosive vapor products have been to switch consumers from smoking to vapor.

So, the total tobacco industry starts at $100 billion and we're a tiny fraction of that. So to me, just sort of treading water the way we are, isn't good enough and innovation needs to ramp up with new forms and new ways to satisfy smokers. Pretty much all of them want to quit.

So, that would be an example of an area we push for innovation and I think that one, because we've already gone to market with a couple SKUs this year that are not offered by the national brands..

Your next question comes from David Risinger with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. .

I have a couple questions Murray.

First, with respect to reinvestment requirement in order to enhance growth, could you just maybe help us with order of magnitude of thinking about the income statement, so are the greatest reinvested requirement in SG&A or in R&D or in cost of goods sold in order to position the company to grow better in the future? Second, with respect to guidance on May 9th, should we assume that, that will be excluding generics, I know that you are thinking of an operating Perrigo now as a consumer company.

So I'm just wondering about that? And then with respect to the purposely discontinued hit to Consumer Healthcare International in 2018, could you just mention that number again? And then how much will that dollar hit be in '19? Thanks very much. .

Ron, you do the last one..

You bet. So if you look at our 10-K that will be issued you can look back David on to answer this question. Roughly $35 million of discontinued exited businesses and around $20 million of discontinued products for the total $55 million is the right number.

And as Murray referenced that anchor 2018 as we go forward not giving guidance are largely behind us relative to the exiting and discontinuing the portfolio and improving our focused brand strategy. That's largely done through 2018..

Yes, it's a pretty small number and by the way those numbers are -- and we'll outline all of this on May 9th, what's happened over the last three or four years, because I don't think we've told that story very much so far.

But I mean, what Svend and the team in International have done, they've done a masterful job of cleaning up this portfolio and getting their hands around a very complex and diversified portfolio with a lot of things that didn't make sense in certain markets and didn't make sense.

So you'll see how he is pruned product lines, how he's pruned countries, how he has consolidated markets, how he has changed tone, all of that will become very apparent, but it will not be the same drag that it's been over the past couple of years.

As it relates to guidance with or without RX, we hope to provide you -- I mean depends on the progresses but we would like to be able to provide you without and show you the impact and where we are, that's what we're working towards but we'll see how it ultimately progresses.

But I don't -- I need you to get a good understanding of what remainco, the core business looks like going forward and by the way that's how I'm going to be incenting the management team and leadership team going forward of driving those consumer businesses going forward.

As it relates to the level of investment, there's a number of things, there are some investments that are related to some new products that will spell those kinds of things out but some of them are on longer term plans, et cetera.

I said on the last conference call that we had about the right level of R&D in total and about the right level of advertising on in general on our core businesses in total. My concern on the R&D business right now is not that there isn't sufficient money, it's the productivity of the initiatives.

If you look at a few years ago and again we'll show you all of these, we were getting bigger hits for our new product development program and higher productivity than we're getting today.

We're working on just as many approvals, but we strategically have to identify the right and bigger ideas and that's why I brought in Jim Dillard and consolidated R&D in the last month who is a pro who I -- and you'll love them when you meet him.

He's a very aggressive guy and I think, within a very short period of time, you're going to see that, that new product program ramp up pretty aggressively..

The next question comes from David Maris with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. .

Good evening. Just maybe Murray, if you could explain to us what between now and May you need to complete in order to unveil the plan? I know you mentioned a few large hires, I would imagine you have to bring those across the line and then you need to go to King & Co to print up all the presentations.

But other than that, what are you still working on between now and then?.

I think you'll be surprised how much you see on May 9th, David, and I'll remind you of this question on that day. I think you're going to see a lot more activity than you're expecting to see. And I would like to not just talk about promises for the future. I would like to bring you action..

I appreciate that.

I'm just trying to understand what's left to do, what you've put in, have you finalized the plans already or where are you in assessing the situation and putting in place the plan?.

We are through the strategic planning process. And so that the sort of a blueprint, right, you want to build a jet plane, you don't start with a jet engine, you have to have the entire plan. And now all the pieces are in a very aggressive plan are being put together and work through on various themes.

And I don't really want to be more specific than that. It's a few months away and you'll get to see the whole plan. And I think you'll see a lot of action when you come in May..

The next question comes from Ami Fadia with SVB Leerink. Please go ahead..

Hi, good evening. Thanks for the question. You talked about a couple of headwinds across the business in 2019. Can you quantify that for maybe at the EPS level? And it sounds like you're saying that you may come up with initiatives to do R&D differently or focus of change the prioritization.

So can you confirm that you think that the total spending level is unlikely to change meaningfully from wherever it is at right now? And with regards to the Irish tax rate appeal process, could you give us a sense of the timelines around how long it would take for the judiciary process to complete and if they rule favorably then do you win the appeal, and then what is the next step beyond that? Thank you..

Thanks, Ami. This is Ron, I'll start with the answer to your first couple of questions and come back on the tax side. So first of all you asked about headwinds and quantifying those at the EPS level, I tried to give you some good numbers within my commentary, only kind of break it down for you.

So first of all, CHC Americas, let’s focus on that segment, so we talked about gross margin effects, there's two items, forget mix, because that doesn’t flow. But the two items are highlighted pretty detailed, was one the Ohio issue, facility issue. We talked about $13 million impact in Q4.

I also mentioned in my comments production starts in March, so what we’ll have here some overhangs, I’m not going to give you the dollar amount but you're going to have some overhang as that facility was down for two months, you get it back into production, you recognize the sales, certainly have some overhang in the first half of the year as that converts into production and sales in the first half of 2019.

The other one is I think I rather quantified and that was the one around service and production variances. I gave you a number of $16 million. That's a pretty firm number.

In other words we have to work through now in Q1 and Q2 of 2019 as we've experienced those, if you will look at the accounting part it goes to your balance sheet, it turns with sales, but you can expect margin on CHC Americas to be in the zone that you saw in Q4 working its way back up to that 20% level as we exit the year.

So we've been pretty open about that, it's going to take some time for those service dynamics to manifest themselves and benefit the P&L as we resolve the issues and sell the product that we've already produced.

You asked about R&D in a general context, we look at R&D, I'll reiterate Murray's comments which I thought was a good one, we'll see R&D as a percent of sales changing materially in the consumer businesses, we look at productivity.

In other words if you look at the percentage of sales you may see a little bit of shift as a percent of sales in consumer. The real focus will be how do we get better value, margin value per R&D dollar on a go forward basis is really the key focus of the team. So you have some percent of sales increase but it won't be material.

I did highlight in RX, R&D in RX will be upon a dollar basis, I didn't guide you on a percentage, but assume we take RX dollars in 2018, we are expecting with our strong pipeline to continue investing in that pipeline next year as well.

So all that carries forward some color, I should comment and also on CHC International playoff your -- first got your earlier question, listen we're confident high teens margins in this business, I’m assured very clear CHC International we are pointed at those high teens.

Now we’ve been messaging for some time we are reinvesting back in the business, now we don't think we're going to go backwards at Ohio margins but you could see us pause, you could see us flatten out for years, we reinvest in business, we invest in advertising and promotion next year and alike but we're still confident in the next couple of years we are pointed at the high-teen adjusted operating margin percent.

So hopefully that gives you Ami the answers to your questions on a go forward look. On the tech side, I'll refer you to steer back to Murray on that. .

Yes. Just to add and by the way that’s sort of like the ongoing level coming in, has nothing to do with any initiatives that we do going toward. So Ami there are initiatives that will take some investment.

We've been very open about that we spent $50 million to buy NASONEX and that product has to be now be bought to market and there's marketing and kinds of investments that go along with that but on -- it's not more R&D dollars that we will be throwing in there. We are making investments in capacity, we are making investments in technology.

We will show you why and were on May 9th. As it relates to the timing of the judicial challenge, the full process has been a surprise so far. But if it wasn't, it wouldn't surprise us of that first round, took around a year, could be longer, could be shorter, if it went through kind of a normal process, which we'll find out, if it does.

So -- and then depending on how it goes either side would have the ability to appeal that. And then if all of that didn't come out in our favor, and we hope that it does, then it starts over again in the tax appellate process. So it's going to be a while..

The next question comes from Elliot Wilbur with Raymond James. Please go ahead..

Just want to follow-up on some of the commentary around these service issues in the consumer side. And Ron appreciate the detail you've provided there in terms of the actual impact.

But just trying to understanding, is this more of an op income earnings issue or is this more of just an actual cash issue? And when you do have this service issues, I mean what actually happens in terms of, from a customer side.

Is it just that you're not able to book sales and there's a risk of losing business to another supplier or do you actually have some sort of performance penalties like you have on the RX side? And just a couple follow-up questions here on the RX business. Ron, you mentioned that price erosion in 2019 probably will be similar to 4Q.

What was the rate in 4Q? And could you give us a little bit of insight into some of the key expected launches or re-launches in '19 including albuterol HFA. And maybe more importantly to scopolamine? Thanks..

Yes. Let me just do around the first part -- any -- just the rest of the questions. As it relates to the effect of service on customers, the big customer services issue which was a one-time start-up has a meaningful effect, you lose revenues, but we're fortunate that there's not a lot of competition in that particular business.

On the ongoing services of course it’s effective. I mean part of your ability to withstand pricing pressure and everything else is your ability to both innovate and service at a higher level than anybody else. So when you don't increase more competition, that has to be this company or this division’s top priority to fix that and it is.

So I mean, you felt that and you see is as that the businesses are pressured somewhat due to that. So all of these plans are designed to fix that. But in general the business despite that has held up pretty well, still growing when exclude animal health..

Yes. In that kind of elaborate on that as well Elliot. If you think of a cash effect, you see inventories increase in CHC Americas this last year. You'll see that in our balance sheet and so we've serviced the cash part of it. We don't see inventories increasing next year.

And in my comments I commented we are putting capital into our capital value streaming. We have one high class problem here, net volumes are up. We just have not caught up with the volume spike and servicing our customers. So you will see some cash from a capital standpoint come in over the next six to 12 months as well.

You come back with RX let me give you some details that you've asked for. So you asked about pricing, we did not call pricing, just assume those in high-single-digits on our core products. We talked about Q3 was above that, right north of 10.

So again, we saw some stability, I'd like to have to say no erosion, but we're still seeing erosion at a more stabilized level. You asked about launches going in the next year.

Listen right now, you saw one come out acyclovir was an announcement we made most recently, the nice thing I'll call it a doubles, single doubles that you'll see in our portfolio launch next year. ProAir we are still optimistic and we take a look at that product, we're working very closely with the FDA.

We're committed to being a bringing a very important product in the marketplace and we're optimistic so the launch that product in the I’ll call it in very near future. But again we have announced the launch and we will keep the market updated as we move forward with that important launch as well. .

Scopolamine?.

Scopolamine, still working with the FDA. Similar dynamics. Again we're optimistic. That's a little different product. There's a little different issues. We took it off the market. It's a patch. It is complicated relative to I will it called dissolution curves. We have to work with the FDA in a very complicated product -- partnership products.

So it's a little bit different but still we are confident. Again as far as timing, it may not have the same timing as ProAir in 2019. ProAir is likely to come earlier than scopolamine to take away there..

The next question comes from Greg Gilbert with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please go ahead. .

I have just a two parted. Murray year said you wouldn't comment on the progress of the RX sales process. But can you comment on whether Perrigo is also considering strategic options for other parts of the company or the entire company? That's number one.

And number two, I suspect will learn a lot more about what self-care means to you guys on May 9th but are you willing to include things in that definition that are not proven to work by FDA standards or things that may not have high barriers to entry from a regulatory standpoint? Just trying to understand how much you would relax the sort of historical Perrigo lens of FDA regulated sort of higher barrier regulatory types of products that would be launched in the future? So any sneak preview on your thinking on that would be helpful? Thanks..

Okay. On the self-care issue, I'm not sure I would call it relax, because in any product we would launch, we would want to have a unique selling proposition and a highly differentiated product. It may not be a strict FDA and it won't be and we do that all the time. We have products, 40% of our volume internationally is branded products.

That number of those are in self-care categories that present opportunities here in the United States as an example and the company has a good track record of expanding.

So there is a two part answer because the first part was some of the expansions we've done have been in the areas where there are good barriers to it like infant nutrition or in nicotine cessation. Although one could argue other companies could get into that but we've done it so well with our overall store brand model which is hard to match up again.

So there are plenty of opportunities for growth and companies do that all the time.

And we will show you how we've done in the past, how we will do it in the future at various levels from incremental opportunities that help just keep the brands fresh and make it harder for competitors to sort of know where we're going next all the way to bigger incremental opportunities to potential bolt-ons that have the kind of barriers that you're talking about.

So we'll give you -- I'll tell you that one of the biggest changes I've had from my old job to the new job is just how many opportunities there are. And it's sorting through finding and making sure we're investing in the right ones but there's no shortage of opportunities for growth.

It's just doing it the right way and getting to the market with them. Refresh my memory on the first question. .

Strategic options for any other parts of the business?.

Not the business in total or some massive thing but I'm looking at the entire portfolio and whether it belongs and whether it fits the consumer self-care lens. So, of course, whether that's under the timing of May 9th, we’ll see. But yes, no, we're taking look at the whole company, not the whole company, let’s say, pieces within the whole company. .

The next question comes from Patrick Trucchio with Berenberg Capital Markets. Please go ahead..

Thanks. Good evening.

So understanding and look many more specifics regarding initiatives in May, can you tell us which metrics you believe are most relevant to compare Perrigo to consumer packaged goods peers, are there metrics where you think you’re currently comparing well, where do you see the opportunity to improve? And then if I may, just on the international business, can you discus how you're evaluating which brands, which countries should get the increased investment in advertising and R&D? How are you evaluating return on those investments and just with regard to the R&D specifically, is the investment focused on improving existing products, or introducing new products? Thanks..

I mean, on international the answer is that they're doing all the traditional metrics that you would expect, right? So when they go through a very traditional -- they're more of a traditional consumer company than we are here in US, which is more of a store brand business.

So that means everything from the quantification of the idea to when they're going to do any kind of advertising, they test the advertising in various research services, they have action standards at each of those.

That advertising has to hit, they have action standards on product testing, the product once it goes into the market they measure those and they adjust and they look at the returns they're getting and if the returns in market aren't generating the kind of returns and metrics that pay out that advertising then they shift it elsewhere to somewhere that does.

They have a priority list of -- this is a very big portfolio of brands and they have split the way they look at the business and sort of their core growth brands, their exit brands, which we already talked about and their sustained that brands and they are -- and again, we'll walk through all of that, but they put the most investment in the ones that meet the criteria to get into that growth category.

So -- and markets that may go down and they look at profitability by SKU and all the metrics that you would expect. I'm not sure how to answer the consumer company. We will look at top quartile performance. We want to get to be a top quartile performer.

That means we're going to measure and target revenue growth, EPS growth, margin, leverage, all the typical balance sheet metrics that you would look at and that's what we'll be working against over the next couple of years. And then hopefully get the multiples that those consumer companies earn, which is part of the idea here..

We'll take one more question please. .

Your next question comes from David Steinberg with Jefferies. Please go ahead..

Yes. Thanks very much, I have three questions. The first one is another one on the Irish tax liability. I want to focus on best case, worst case scenario, so obviously best case is you don't have to pay any money, although you don't know the timing.

But in terms of the worst case, if in fact, you’ve determined, however remote the possibility that you do have to pay, an Irish tax expert told us there will be an 8% annual interest charge and I think it was five years ago the transaction happened and then there'll be a penalty on top of that anywhere from 3% to 100%, with 3% being what they call a general penalty and a 100% where there's deliberate willful behavior.

So is the calculation of worst case somewhere between no matter how remote it could be $2.3 million and $3.9 million? Does that make sense? Second question -- sorry $1 billion. Second question is a tuck-in, I think Murray, you said, you want to get back to it, made the company great i.e. tuck-ins.

How does the outlook appear? Are you close on anything? Are you looking mostly domestically or internationally, private, public and how are valuations shaping up right now? And then thirdly, just to clarify on the input costs you discussed.

Is this -- relate to a lot of companies you are seeing now is rising input costs and why is it just a short-term situation versus a longer term impact? Thanks..

Now, I'm going to let, Ron, do the first part, do the input costs. But -- and on the first one, I'm just not going to speculate. I mean, it makes no sense. And this company -- if you look at this, read the challenge, to sit there and have a discussion of willful fraud or something like that is silly. But beyond that, we believe, we went on the merits.

We believe that, when you look at the actual legitimate expectations that Elan Pharma had based on 20 years of trading history that this is unjust and we'll see how it plays out. But we have good advisors, a good team working on this and you're going to have to watch it.

What you need to hear from me is answering the question that was very early on in the call here, which is that this will not get in our way of our ability to go forward and do the strategic initiatives that we need to get Perrigo growing. And this will play out over the course of years and we will keep you informed.

But I'm quite confident and have built a lot of value whether it was a UST, which had a massive -- and I trust overhang on it or on Lorillard that had massive regulatory challenges that were going on, on that business.

So the key and my experience with those as we fight them very aggressively and a fight on the behalf of our shareholders especially when you believe you're right, and we do believe we're right. And then make sure that you're building the business. So top priority, top focus is build the business, that's what's going to create value here.

On the tuck-in, I mean my answer is almost like yes. It's are we looking at all kinds of things and going through a funnel here and all that we will put, we will scrutinize and make sure that we are making good investments. But there are many opportunities and we will bring clarity to that on May 9th.

And I can hear the frustration by a lot of you that you're looking for more answers right now it's not that far. In a couple months here we will be back to you with the full plan..

To answer briefly then, David, the input cost, if you step back and take a look at it. First of all, we have incredible advantages, we have scale, we have purchasing power. We think we've appropriately identified and quantified what those input costs are, you heard our comments today. We also partner for our customers.

What does that mean from a channel standpoint? These are industry issues.

What makes sense from a partner perspective? I would say probably the biggest disappointment from my chair, traditionally we are very, very good at offsetting input costs with productivity and because some of the supply chain issues we've had at customer service and some of that complexity, we have been able to do that.

So to my mind that's the reason I look at these in short-term. And we get that supply chain back to the Perrigo advantage that we can continue the productivity curve that we've been very successful at historically. We can offset these input costs in a productive way.

That's the core focus that we have as a company to ensure that we offset these input costs appropriately. .

So I think we're done with questions. For now, we appreciate your interest in Perrigo. I can't wait to see you all on May 9th. We hope to answer all your questions in great detail and for you to walk away as excited about the opportunities for the company as I am. So thank you again..

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect..