Doretta Mistras
Chief Financial Officer at Viatris
Thank you, Corinne. Building on the team's comments around our operational performance, I'll briefly highlight full-year and 4th-quarter results. As a reminder, my commentary on our financial performance will be on a divestiture-adjusted operational basis. We reported 2024 total revenues of $14.7 billion, which was up 2% year-over-year. This reflects growth across all segments and new product revenues of $582 million, which was at the high-end of our increased range. Adjusted EBITDA was $4.7 billion, which benefited from adjusted gross margins of 58%, also at the high-end of our range, driven by strong brands and complex generics performance. As it specifically relates to the 4th-quarter, total revenues of $3.5 billion were in-line with our expectations and grew 1%. We saw continued momentum and growth across China, developed markets and emerging markets.
Our global generics business grew 2%, driven by new product launches and complex products. Gross margins were in-line with expectations and moderated in the 4th-quarter due to expected segment and product mix. We had a strong quarter of free-cash flow, totaling $685 million, excluding the impact from divestiture costs and taxes. Our free-cash flow and proceeds from the divestitures were used to pay-down approximately $1.4 billion in debt, which enabled us to achieve our gross leverage target, ending the year at approximately 2.9 times. Now that we've closed the year, we are also providing an estimate of our 2024 results on an ex-divestiture basis. These estimates exclude the benefit from the divested businesses totaling approximately $490 million in total revenue and $255 million in adjusted EBITDA. Moving to our plan for 2025, I'll summarize the key drivers to give you a full picture of the year ahead. Given the continued strength of the dollar, we have assumed an FX headwind of approximately 2% to 3% on total revenues.
As a reminder, approximately 75% of our revenues occur outside of the US. Excluding the impact of indoor, we expect our operational revenues to benefit from continued momentum and strong fundamentals, primarily in Europe, China and emerging markets. These trends give us confidence in the continued strength of our base business going-forward. And as you heard from Scott, with respect to indoor, ongoing remediation has been an all-hand effort and is a top priority for our organization. We take the quality of our products very seriously and are making progress on the remediation plan, including the transfer of products across internal sites and with third-parties where deemed possible and appropriate.
Discussions with the FDA and our customers have been ongoing and have evolved to a point where we now have clarity on the products and scope and the anticipated associated financial impact, which we have included in our guidance. We estimate an impact of approximately $500 million to 2025 total revenue and $385 million to adjusted EBITDA. This includes estimated penalties and supply disruptions of approximately $100 million, which we believe are mostly short-term in nature. Lenalidomide, which after discussions with the FDA was not granted an exception, is the largest product impacted and represents approximately 40% of the total revenue impact and 50% of the total adjusted EBITDA impact given its margin profile.
Also, based upon the existing settlement agreements with generic manufacturers, we expect this product will face significant additional generic competition in early 2026. In Europe, we expect limited impact to select generic products. We believe this impact to be short-term and expect to recapture some of this volume in the future. In emerging markets, we anticipate our lower-margin ARB business to experience certain disruptions over the short-term and we estimate an impact on total revenue of approximately $125 million. Moving to the drivers of gross margins and our adjusted EBITDA and EPS guidance. We expect gross margins to be impacted by indoor, normal base business price erosion and an increase in some product supply costs, partially offsetting this impact is the expected benefit from segment mix. As it relates to our outlook for SG&A and R&D, we are taking a disciplined approach to managing our expenses and allocation of resources. Total operating expenditures are expected to decline as we work to optimize the portfolio and reduce stranded costs associated with the divestitures.
Our guidance assumes a reduction of approximately $150 million, predominantly benefiting SG&A. And with respect to Idorsia, as Scott mentioned, we have amended the collaboration agreement. As a result, we expect to incur an incremental R&D expense of approximately $100 million in 2025. In exchange, we have received a $250 million reduction in contingent milestones, of which $200 million is from future development milestones. We have also gained additional territory rights for. We expect our effective tax-rate to increase by 150 basis-points in 2025 due to anticipated impacts from Pillar 2. A few points on our expectations for free-cash flow and cash available for deployment in 2025. We expect strong free-cash flow generation of approximately $2 billion, which takes into account indoor remediation and foreign-exchange totaling approximately $300 million. Net of taxes and transaction costs associated with the divestitures, we estimate that we'll have approximately $1.7 billion available for deployment throughout the year. Consistent with our stated strategy, we continue to prioritize capital return in 2025 with a focus on share repurchases. As such, we expect to repurchase between $500 million and $650 million throughout the year, preserving flexibility to the upside. With the approved annual dividend policy of $0.48 per share, we expect to return over $1 billion of capital to shareholders, nearly 70% of our available capital. Now a few comments regarding phasing of our guidance. Total revenue is expected to be higher in the second-half, driven by the back-weighted launch of new products and normal product seasonality. We expect operating expenses to be evenly phased between the first-half and second-half. Taking into account phasing of revenue and margin, we expect adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS to also be more heavily weighted towards the second-half. And as we think about the sequential quarterly roll-forward, we expect the first-quarter levels to step-down from the 4th-quarter, attributed to lower net sales from indoor-related products and volume and seasonal impacts in Europe and Jam Jams. Finally, we will continue to be disciplined with our financial policy and remain in a very strong position given the breadth and diversity of our global portfolio, strong base business fundamentals, expected, expected significant free-cash flow generation and efficient low coupon fixed-rate capital structure. Looking ahead, we have laid out a clear and transparent plan for this year, and I have confidence that our strong foundation will position us for long-term success. We look-forward to updating you each quarter on our progress and being available for your questions. And with that, I'll hand it back to the operator to begin the Q&A.